Rising with the Sun
It was 1990, the Airplane tour was over, and I felt a mixture of peace and resignation. I was relieved that I could look, act, and think like a “real” person. I eliminated the goofy outfits—just took a shower in the mornings and put on some sweats. Like a “normal” human being, I went to the grocery store, did the laundry, fed the raccoons, and hung out with my equally casual friend, Pat Monahan. A small, determined Native American/Irish woman, Pat was both courageous and shy, blunt but self-effacing, spiritual and profane, funny and serious—the “five of one, half a dozen of the other” qualities that demonstrate the fascinating yin and yang of human behavior.
I found then (and I still find) extraordinary beauty in following a simple way of life. Those of you looking for “action” may not understand, but I was finished with my previous lifestyle. I enjoyed rising early with the sun, silently preparing my body and my surroundings for the day, studying a subject (biomedical research) that engaged both my intellect and compassion, trading love and lies with open-minded friends, and closing the night in a warm feeding ritual that coincided with the sunset.
Basic regeneration.
Although Skip and I were still married, we spent very little time together. He was located near Minneapolis, living in an apartment that was close to the large entertainment compound owned by “The Former Artist Usually Known as Prince.” Skip was doing production for the Purple One's projects, so although we spoke on the phone each day, I hardly ever saw him. Essentially, I was living alone, with his occasional visits on holidays. Neither of us could make the final break.
I didn't mind living alone, but it's sort of strange to see gas station attendants and grocery clerks more than you see your own husband.
My new boyfriend went by the name of Buckminister Ratcliff Esquire III. Every day, I'd drive to Tiburon and change his sheets, make his breakfast, straighten up his lodgings, and play with his fat, furry body.
He was a gentle, overweight lab rat.
“Bucky,” who'd been silently and carefully liberated from the University of California's research facility, was now living a pampered life, being looked after and loved by Pat Monahan and myself. Located on Main Street in Tiburon, Pat's animal store was one in a string of beautifully maintained turn-of-the-century shops along the San Francisco Bay. Early each day, before the customers started to fill up the area known as Arc Row, Pat and I would invite Bucky to have chocolate brownies with us in the store's center, which was filled with stuffed animals and various items for cats and dogs.
Like a little Buddha endowed with the ability to be charismatic without doing anything other than just being himself, he made converts of visitors who'd previously considered rats vicious, plague-ridden consorts of the devil. His girth gave him the friendly fat-boy appearance that is cute in animals and babies but gross in the adult human species. An excellent representative of his species, he lived as he eventually died—in peace.
So in the morning, it was the rat, and at night, the raccoons. Quite a shift from making “strawberry jam” with Jim Morrison, eh?
I often spent the middle of my days attending Marin Humane Society functions or participating in meetings on how to stop construction of the huge biomedical research complex called the Buck Center. After Beryl Buck left several million dollars in her will “to benefit the aging population,” local lawyers, business people, the University of California Research System, contractors, and a host of other opportunists saw a potential gold mine. But today, twenty-five years of objections later and with half the money now lining the pockets of the center's supporters, the facility still exists only on the drawing board. Architect I. M. Pei collected a million dollars just to draw the structure.
The Buck Center's proposed site, atop Mount Burdell in Novato, California, is located directly above an earthquake fault—a nifty location for a bunch of toxic chemicals. And, of course, many facilities already exist that do exactly the same sort of research. A better way to have spent Beryl Buck's money might have been to create the Buck Center for Research on Human Stupidity. We all suffer from that ailment to varying degrees, and if they ever figure out a cure for it by rat testing, I'll have to rethink my position on the subject.
But there are no cures for the hardball game of living; there are only processes that manipulate the symptoms. Meanwhile, we continue to mutilate everything in our path, trying, perhaps, to distract ourselves from the constant fear of death.
Which brings me to the ultimate topic of distraction: talk shows. Distract yourself from the living/dying process, sell your product, publicize your lifestyle by appearing on talk shows—it's the national pastime. Even when I was living my quiet life in Marin, I revved up a little excitement by playing “Butt Bongo” on The Howard Stern Show. I didn't even have a product to sell. I just like Howard and thought it would be an amusing experience.
When I was performing with Airplane and Starship and the records were climbing the charts, our publicist got on the horn and we were booked on all of the talk shows. Way back in the beginning, there was Jack Paar, but I was too young for him. Instead, I caught the polite boys: Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin; Dinah Shore's down-home chat; The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where goofy was okay; Dick Cavett, the reigning intellect; Geraldo “Hard Copy” Rivera; early irascible Tom Snyder; easygoing Larry King; and smart and smirky Letterman.
All of that was prelude, of course, to doing Butt Bongo on Stern.
My daughter, her then boyfriend Kelly, and I played look-out-here-comes-the-fast-ball with “The King of All Media.” Howard decided that China's beau looked liked the devil and told him so. Then he decided I should play Butt Bongo with him, which I did. I positioned himself across his lap and he did Ringo on my fully clothed butt cheeks. It could have been worse, and it probably will be when I do the promo tour for this book. Nobody is exempt from that fun-loving freak Howard Stern—especially not fifty-eight-year-old granny rock stars.
To liven up the usual chat format, I might bring along some of my own games to play with the Chin, Harpo, Worldwide Pants crowd (for a jargon translation, see back issues of Entertainment Weekly). Maybe I'll come on as my father, or be escorted by the police, or bring the current celebrity “in recovery” with me to see which of us unsuccessfully took more drugs.
As long as it's something tasteful.
Maybe I'll get everybody to streak into the bookstores, looking for an immediate upgrade in their spiritual condition by buying several copies of Grace Slick's autobiography.