We have not discussed this, but I’m scared shitless of flying. When I was six years old I witnessed a horrible plane crash. It got a lot of national news coverage. It occurred at an air show that was happening at the Sacramento Executive Airport in South Sacramento. An F-86 Sabre fighter jet lost power on takeoff and skidded into an ice cream parlor that was across the street directly in line with the runway. Twenty-three people, including twelve children at a birthday party, were killed and dozens more injured. I saw the explosion and the towering flames from the jet fuel, heard screaming and people dying. Since that day I have been terrified of flying.
We were heading to Texas in 2006 to make Real to Reel, and I was fairly well medicated to get through the flight from Sacramento to El Paso. When I got to the studio, all the usual suspects were there: Frank, Troy was putting his drum kit together, Tom Zutaut was puttering around, Michael Rosen was waiting to mic things up. I was still a little out of it from the flight when I noticed this skinny little English kid. Michael said, “Brian, I want you to meet Jimmy Dean. He’s here from England doing an internship.”
I said, “Hi, Jimmy Dean.”
He said, “Hello, mate.” Needing a pick-me-up, I asked Jimmy Dean if he’d make me a cup of tea. He said sure, do I want cream and sugar? I did, so he went away and got me the tea.
The next day I walked in the studio, and he’s got a cup of tea already made for me, with just the right amount of cream and sugar. That was enough for me to take a liking to him. During the session Frank walks over to me and says, “I really like this Jimmy Dean kid.” He was a young gentleman and was ambitious with a respectful manner. He was perceptive too. He saw things that were needed and took care of them. And he was a people person. He was about twenty-two at the time and kind of crazy, doing more than his share of drugs and partying. He had long, dark, straight hair like Bob Seger.
When I’d go into El Paso on an errand, Jimmy Dean would come along. He told me about growing up in England. He was in an odd little band for a while. They’d take drums and flutes and stuff into these caves and chant and bang the drums. He also told me his real name was Dean Robson. Rosen came up with Jimmy Dean. We talked about my studio in Sacramento, and one day he asked if he could intern there. I called Monique and told her about the kid and his desire to intern at the studio, which hadn’t burned down yet. He’d have to live in our house since I wasn’t going to be paying him anything. Because Monique is such an awesome person and wife, she said if I thought it was a good idea then she was all for it.
He came out to Sacramento and was there when we recorded Volume 2 of Real to Reel. I took a real liking to the kid, and he was super helpful. After a few months his work visa ran out, and he had to go back to England. We were preparing to go out on tour, and Tom wanted to record all the shows. I proposed that we bring Jimmy Dean with us and let him handle the recording. So back over to the States he came.
It was during this time that we fired Tom Zutaut. We were booked to do shows in England, but Tom never set any of the logistics up: no visas, no flights, no hotels, no transport, no merchandising, nothing. So I called up Jimmy Dean, who’d gone back to England after the tour ended. I said, “Jimmy Dean, can you help us out?”
And he said, “No worries mate, I’ll get right on it.” And he did. He probably had no idea how to do a lot of what he had to do, but that didn’t stop him. What he didn’t know, he figured out and got it done.
After we were done with the England shows, Steve Emler, our sound engineer who was doubling as road manager, told me we should hire the kid to road manage. Obviously Steve thought he was a good fit and could handle it. He said he could tutor Jimmy Dean and turn him into a great road manager.
When Tesla got signed to Geffen and started touring, we always had experienced road managers whose job it was to keep the lunatics under control, meaning the band! Over all the years in the ’80s and ’90s we had all kinds of different road managers, some really good and some not so much. But they all had a kind of authority status, and the band would mostly just do whatever they wanted without question. After all those years, we realized we didn’t need or want that kind of relationship with our road manager. We wanted somebody who was more concerned with what we wanted, and could get that done properly, as well as represent and fight for us when those kinds of situations arose. After several misfires after we reformed in 2000, I believed we might have found the right guy in Jimmy Dean.
He went through the process of getting his green card, and Steve started mentoring him while we were on the road. We made him the road manager in 2006. Because we had our own record label, Tesla Electrical Company Recording, or TECR, I started educating Jimmy on that side of the business. We’d sit in the production office on the road and work on radio promotion and in-store appearances and all that stuff. He got a real crash course in the modern music industry. It’s been over sixteen years now, and he’s kicking ass. He stopped doing drugs and bought a house in Sacramento. He even cut his long hair off. He’s like my son now. Today he could tour manage almost anybody, he’s gotten that good.
Working with Jimmy gave me a new perspective on my career path and where I was in my life. Being in a successful rock band can bring out selfish tendencies and habits, but I realized I was getting a deep satisfaction out of imparting all this knowledge and experience that I had absorbed over the years, and as a result, helping somebody turn from a young kid into a man and a professional. I imagine that is how Steve Clausman must have felt when he was managing City Kidd. Payback. Or as they say these days, paying it forward.
I met another kid who came out with a band from Iowa to record at J Street. Brett Stezil was a roadie for the band, and they treated him like shit, ordering him around, being disrespectful, even mean. On top of that, they sucked. They were so bad that after one day of recording, I told them that I was going to give them their money back and send them home. They were that awful. The drummer was the typical I-can’t-play-worth-a-shit-so-I-have-a-lot-of-drums dude.
The night the band arrived at the studio, I took them out for pizza. Brett was sitting next to me, and I noticed a lip tattoo on his neck. I asked him, “What the fuck is with the lips on your neck?” He said they were his ex-wife’s lips. I told him, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. From now on, I’m fucking calling you Lipps.”
While I was attempting to get something decent out of them in the studio, I asked Lipps if he’d go down to the garage and straighten it out. Over the years it had become a real mess, with shit all over the place, disorganized and dirty. About three hours later I went out there, and the fuckin’ garage looked like Costco! Everything was cleaned up, on shelves, and organized into categories and sections.
He told me that he didn’t want to go back to Iowa, and could I help him stay in California? I thought about it and told him, sure, he could live with me and Monique, and I would pay him to paint the house, which had a real intricate nine-color design. I asked him if he could do that paint job. He said, “Sure, I can do anything you want.” Now that’s an attitude I love, but, if you say it, you’d better be able to back it up, because I’m going to hold you to it, and I’m going to push you to go even further. You may not think you can, but if I do, chances are you will. That’s a Clausie thing too.
It had been years since Jimmy Dean moved out of the house, and quite frankly, Monique and I missed having young energy around. Having Lipps move in seemed like a fairly natural thing to do. He’s worked out so well that he moved to Baird with me and Monique. He’s helped build and paint the new barn and paint the house. He and Jimmy are really like my two sons.
Jack, the guy I hired to run the studio in Sacramento, is a young dude as well. I’m definitely giving him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do it any way he wants, and he’s earned my trust in that. He makes good decisions, has an even temperament, and he’s growing the business. He came to me with a high-functioning skill set already, and I’m always there to talk about things when he wants, but he’s independent, and it’s a great peace of mind to not have to worry about the studio.
A big thing with me and these guys is, if I ask you to do something a specific way, then do it that way. Don’t go off track because you think you’ve got a better idea. Let me be the one who fucks up, not you, because whatever you’re working on, it belongs to me or it’s got my name on it. In other words, the buck always stops with me. All three guys understand that and are OK with it.
Maybe Jimmy Dean has earned his spurs to tell me he thinks I’m wrong. That’s part of his growth, and I’m proud to see it in him, but that doesn’t mean he and I don’t have the occasional shouting match.
There’s one more guy who’s come into our lives recently: Jonathan. Lipps met him here in Sacramento and introduced me to him. He’s a real muscular, quiet dude from Hawaii. Turned out he is a hell of a handyman and construction guy. At the time, we were getting ready to move to Texas, and I wanted to turn some of the rooms of our house in Sacramento into ’bnb rentals. I needed walls put up, plumbing and electrical put in, and Jonathan slid right in and did it. He lives at the house there and runs the property for me.
When we made the move to Texas, Jonathan drove one of the small fleet of trucks I had rented. He was at the new house unpacking one day when the doorbell rang. It was a reporter from the Abilene newspaper wanting to do a story about the rock star moving to Baird. Jonathan just kind of gave him this cold stare as he tried to get past the front door. He told the guy, “Mister Wheat has moved here to have privacy and does not want to be disturbed. If you give me your business card, I will see that he gets it.” With that, he shut the door. I think Jonathan enjoyed doing that. I know I enjoyed watching him.