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Lucky The Comets dig each other offstage, too — tours can be rugged.
By bus or plane, day or night, the story of our life Is "Go! So! Go!"
One big family on a bus — trying not to miss our own families back home.
Sharon Ann and Jackie are hialey's children by his first marriage — he has three more at home now. Billy Williamson and I hove kids, too. Billy's 'real gone on antiques, so — at a show in Rochester, below^he tried to sell me on a 100year-old doll as a take-home present for my daughter Linda.
30
at home — to say I got ninety bucks a week for playing the accordion. Billy, on steel guitar, got the same. We had settled our hotel bill, paid our union tax, picked up our laundry and pressing, and had taken care of those extras which always creep in. I pulled my remaining cash out of my pocket. It didn't take long to count. If I ate careful, I'd get through the next week.
Billy, totalling his loot, was even more disgusted. "I know kids back in Norristown, Pennsylvania," he said, "who deliver groceries to make date money and come out better than this."
"And live better," I added, thinking of my home in South Philadelphia. About now, my mother would be fixing the spaghetti, my sister. Rose Marie, and my little brother, Dino, would be buzzing around. Dad would get home from work and there would be laughing and singing. The family would be together.
Billy was homesick, too. He has the Irish gift for making a joke out of anything, but now his ■ face was long. "Man, we're nowhere. We work in a joint about as big as two phone booths pushed together, everybody's got a beef and no one gets a chance to play what he wants to play. This band is going to break up for sure."
That triggered it. We sat around getting all our gripes off our chests and our ambitions into words. When it came time to go to work, we had settled one thing — we both wanted to get into an outfit where the guys would stick together until we amounted to something. It should be a sort of a musical family. To head that family, we needed a leader — not just a guy who coiild stamp out a beat, but someone we could look up to, that we could learn from. A leader who would let you use every bit of talent in you.
It was quite a blueprint. "You know any such guy?" I asked Billy. It was about the same as asking for a good route to the moon.
Billy's brow had more furrows than his guitar had strings. "Matter of fact, I do. There's this Bill Haley — you've (Continued on page 86)