Fact #61680
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Short story:
In Los Angeles, California, USA, Dee Anthony of Bandana Management convinces Joe Cocker to set off on a seven week tour of the USA, to start in Detroit, Michigan, USA, a week from now. It will become legendary as the Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour.Full article:
JOE COCKER - MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN TOUR - EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS compiled by Johnny Black in March 2018
Mar 12, 1970 : In Los Angeles, California, USA, Dee Anthony of Bandana Management convinces Joe Cocker to set off on a seven week tour of the USA, to start in Detroit, Michigan, a week from now. It will become legendary as the Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour.
Denny Cordell (manager, Joe Cocker) : The same day that Joe arrived in Los Angeles, so did Dee Anthony and Frank Barsalona, saying, 'Look here, son, you've got to play this tour; otherwise you'll never be allowed into America again.' I think that the first time Joe mistrusted Anthony and Barsalona was when they forced him to do the Mad Dogs.
Denny Cordell: I hated (American manager) Dee Anthony. I never approved of him handling Joe as his management because, as far as I was concerned, he did not really know where Joe was coming from. He’d been handling Tony Bennett. That was a very ethnic circuit - and they all came from Italy. I had tried to get Joe away. I went to Dee and I spelled it out to him one day. He said, 'Let me think about it.' Then, a few days later, he had me up to his office and there was a lot of poking of the finger on the chest, saying, "If you don’t want to end up in the Hudson River with cement shoes…" It was very weird and we were much younger then and slightly less worldly. It had its effect.
Joe Cocker : I signed a contract where I got something like 95% of the gross, which I thought was fantastic. I didn’t realise I had to pay for every expense imaginable. I still have a deficit for making it.
Denny Cordell : Immigration said he couldn’t just cancel his tour or they wouldn’t let him into the Musicians’ Union or something. And all the promoters threatened to sue, so it was a question of force.
Mar 13, 1970 : Leon Russell offers his services as keyboardist and bandmaster for Joe Cocker's upcoming Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour. By the end of the day he has already rounded up ten musicians.
Joe Cocker : That came about via Denny Cordell, who was a wonderful producer … there was a record by Delaney And Bonnie and Leon Russell was all over that record. I heard it and I was stunned by how brilliant he was. I was talking to Denny and I said, 'God, I’d love to work with that guy'. And Denny got in touch with him. I flew over to LA but Leon was always a bit distant, y’know…
Leon Russell : Mad Dogs And Englishmen came about because Joe had this tour of America already booked. And then the Grease Band split and he didn't have a band. He tried to cancel, but there were lots of complications, so he decided to fulfil his engagements with a new band. Mad Dogs is a 10-piece band with a 10-piece choir and some other people. It was up to about 45 people at one time, and now it's down a few.
(Source : interview in Record Mirror)
Leon Russell : Joe had just come back from London and he didn’t have the Grease Band any more. And they were going to try and cancel the tour because he wasn’t really feeling well and needed the rest.
I said, 'What the hell, we might as well put something together just for the hell of it.' That’s what happened.
Joe Cocker : Leon said, 'If you want this, I’ll only do it if you let me put the band together.' And I said, 'OK'. My original idea, I just wanted a small band. But Leon brought in Bobby Keys and Jim Price, the horn players who had been working with Delaney And Bonnie, and a whole bunch of other great musicians.
We really weren’t going for the big band that it turned out to be. It was my intention of just making it a small group. But Leon said the only way he would do it was if he could put the band together.
We only had about twenty days to put that tour together.
Joe Cocker : At Leon’s pad the scene was wall-to-wall women running around naked. Seemed like we were going to have some amazing times. They’d float in and out. Leon had his Tulsa connection, so he had a web of women on call. There were an awful lot of groupies.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist, Mad Dogs And Englishmen) : To me, Joe Cocker was just the greatest. He got pretty railroaded because he had just finished a tour in England with The Grease Band and they had broken up. He had come to the States thinking he was gonna be able to take a break and get some rest.
He was exhausted and when he got there the tour was starting. There was no band; nothing was done. Leon said, 'I will put together the band and I’ll do the arrangements and I’ll do everything but I have to be driving this bus. Nothing will go on unless I say so.’
Leon Russell : For one reason or other Joe had fired his band in England. They had fifty shows booked in the United States and he was going to cancel them because he didn’t feel like doin’ it for some reason. The Musicians’ Union told him they wouldn’t let him play in the United States again if he didn’t play those shows so, suddenly, he was over here without a band and had to do the shows on very short notice so he asked me to put the band together for him.
March 14, 1970 : Joe Cocker holds the first day of rehearsals for his Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour at the A + M Soundstage, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Leon Russell : When we went down to start the rehearsals at the A + M Soundstage, we were making potato salad in huge garbage cans because we didn’t know really how many people were going to be there. That lasted about four days, perhaps five, and each day it sorta grew exponentially.
Denny Cordell : We go down there and Leon has contacted every man jack he knows who can play good. There are three drummers, each with their own drumkit. There are three guitar players, horn players – Bobby Keys and Jim Price. We decided we needed three girl singers – at least a dozen show up. There are tambourine players … you name it.
Leon Russell : When I first went down there it was just all the people I had invited. The second day was twice that many, and probably twice as many again each day following. The last day there was four hundred people there probably.
Denny Cordell : The buzz had gone round that something extraordinary was happening on soundstage number one.
Rita Coolidge : Prior to the Joe Cocker tour, Leon had become a total recluse. He wasn’t seeing anybody in the old group. Then, one day, we were at A+M, before we went into rehearsals and he came strutting across the parking lot in what looked like an Uncle Sam suit with a top hat - these outrageous clothes. And I just went, 'I think I know whose tour this could be.' There was just no doubt about it - he came in and he was laughing and cracking jokes and being real aggressive and outgoing, which is not his nature. He’s really a grump.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist) : I was straight out of college, ended up in LA and had this in my lap to pull together a choir and do Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and the things that happened on that tour I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.
Joe Cocker : One thing that disappointed me was we didn’t have very much original material. We re-vamped a lot of stuff.
March 17, 1970 : On the fourth and last day of rehearsals for his upcoming Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour, Joe Cocker has the first of two recording sessions for the song Space Captain at A + M Studios, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Chris Stainton : I admire Leon Russell so much. He’s an exquisite piano player, especially in that Louisiana style. He was so hot then, at the top of his playing ability. When Leon played piano, I’d play organ, and then I’d switch to piano when Leon took over on guitar.
March 18, 1970 : With rehearsals for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour now finished in Los Angeles, California, USA, a decision is taken to make a filmed documentary of the tour.
Leon Russell : My theory was that it could be recorded and filmed and they’d use the income from the tour to make the movie, which would be a larger event than the tour, which is pretty much what happened. It was based on the Woodstock film, but it’s obvious that films have a much longer, far-reaching effect than a series of concerts.
What happened in this case was Joe asked me my thoughts on it and I ran it down in about ten minutes, what could be done, what type of film crews … I requested news crews, because it was documentary and it needed to be shot all the time and to have some guys that were ready to shoot whatever came up. A day or two later there was two news crews standing there and a plane was chartered and it was all set up. Somebody did all that stuff that I’d said.
Rita Coolidge : Then A+M came in, brought in the film crew and Joe watched all of this going on around him while having absolutely no control. So, from the get-go, most of the time, Joe felt powerless until he hit the stage - and then there was no doubt who we were there for.
March 19, 1970 : Joe Cocker, with an entourage of 43 crew members and musicians, flies on a Super Constellation from Los Angeles, California, USA, to Detroit, Michigan, where Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour is set to start the next day.
Linda Wolf (tour photographer) : I met Joe Cocker a week before we took off — all 45 people, three kids and a dog named Cannina, plus a five-man film crew, on a mad, fabulous crazy two month tour of the US, hopping from stage to plane to bus, to hotel, to bus to plane to another stage. Joe was loving and funny and soft and broken-hearted. He was a ball of energy, often in his own world but always willing to connect. I had a crush on him, which he knew but never took advantage of. I was the youngest member of the tour, besides the children, and I had never been on a rock and roll tour before.
March 20 + 21, 1970 : Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour plays its first gig, at Easton Theatre, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist) : I couldn't have imagined what was in front of me. The drugs, the alcohol and everything. It was chaotic.
What I got from the Joe Cocker tour was a degree from Rock and Roll University in two months.
Joe Cocker : When we had put it together, Leon’s idea was that it was all a big family. There was over forty of us on the road, counting the choir and the people associated with it. Before each show we’d all get in a big group in a big circle and shake hands and sing.
Jim Keltner (drummer) : The communal thing was real heavy at the beginning, everybody sticking together and doing everything together. It was 1970 and we were still in the Love period … flowers and love and free sex and all that. The whole Mad Dogs thing was definitely one big, wild party.
Denny Cordell : Leon was very gung-ho on the whole thing. He was very community-minded - his community - in which he was the major figure. There was Joe, Chris and Me. the rest of it was his crowd and he was very much the leader of the commune. They looked to him for everything.
Jerry Moss : From where I was sitting, it felt OK to me. I think they had such great respect for each other musically.
Joe Cocker : But egos got in the way as we travelled down the line. I felt a lot of pressure because I seemed to be handling all the press, I felt I’d got lumbered with a lot of this stuff I really didn’t want.
Rita Coolidge : In spite of the fact that Leon kind of made it his arena, when Joe hit the stage and started singing it didn’t matter what drugs he had ingested, he was the obvious and powerful voice and talent that drove that tour. Nobody was there for Leon; everybody was there for Joe.
Pierre Adidge (director, Mad Dogs documentary) : It was no ordinary tour. They brought together the finest musicians in Hollywood, who all went because they wanted to go, because they wanted to be a part of this whole giant effort. They wanted to be together through their music.
Jim Keltner (drummer) : The real decrepit things went on. Sharing girls. Screwing every chick in sight. Most were there for that purpose. The drugs were just as easy to get. I wasn't a stranger to them myself. Now I feel like I'm lucky to have survived them.
Joe Cocker : At first it was a family thing. We were all shacking up in cheap motels; we had a cheap bus and a cheap plane. I wanted a much smaller group, but Leon was very persuasive. I got the blame for breaking up Delaney And Bonnie, because we took half their band. I didn’t even know who they were, but that got nasty. Yet it was irresistible.
Mar 22, 1970 : Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, USA
Mar 26, 1970 : Cincinnati Gardens, Cincinnati, OH, USA
March 27 + 28 1970 : When Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour plays at The Fillmore East, New York City, USA, the show is taped by Eddie Kramer, with 27 microphones, and will appear as the LP of the tour.
Leon Russell : The logistics of it were pretty amazing. At one point we had 45 people on the road, which at that time was quite a lot of folks. Just to arrive, for example, at The George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, with 45 people and the elevators were out … we had rooms as far up as the 40th floor. It looked like Bangkok. We had to walk up carrying all of our bags. Those kinds of things, with people spilling out onto the streets of Manhattan, are pretty much news events on their own.
Jim Keltner : We all got into a big huddle ands there we were, swaying back and forth, getting ready to go on. Everybody was psyching themselves up. And somehow, somebody had slipped some angel dust into something and all I remember is that I came to on the floor, in the hallway, among all kinds of crap and garbage and cigarette butts. And somebody was tapping me on the shoulder, 'Jim, come on, we gotta play. Time to go on.'
Jerry Moss (co-founder, A+M Records) : The album almost didn't happen. The tour was so taxing, I didn't see Joe for a couple years, and he was nowhere to be found.
Joe Cocker : I’ve always had a weight problem and on that tour I didn’t eat a lot and got skinnier and skinnier, ended up weighing about 150lbs. I wasn’t feeling great. I just kinda lost control.
Joe Cocker : I was about 26 years old, and I kind of felt indestructible. By the early '70s, the drugs and the booze took their toll. ... It was a long road back. A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realise, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.
Joe Cocker : I overdid it for a year. You can forget about your music and start worrying about different things for so long. I just stepped out of it for too long. I think I almost forgot what rock’n’roll was all about.
Mar 29, 1970 : Winter’s End Festival, Miami, Florida, USA.
Apr 4, 1970 : A new music venue, The Depot, opens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, with a two set evening by Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen. The venue will find greater fame after a name-change to First Avenue on New Year's Eve of 1981.
Apr 7, 1970 : State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA.
Denny Cordell : He was doing a lot of dope and he was drinking. He probably drank more to take the edge off it when he’d got to go through it night after night. And then, somehow, some con of Dee Anthony’s - the tour got into debt and therefore more dates were added. It was supposed to be a smallish tour - something like thirty dates over six weeks - but it went on a lot longer than it should have done.
Apr 17, 1970 : Community Concourse Theatre, San Diego, CA, USA
Denny Cordell : He was now just the vocalist in this big runaway band. There was no finesse about it - and Joe is a man of great finesse. He had to go up there and roar his guts out every night with this huge egocentric, pulsating out-of-control big band behind him. He wasn’t doing what he wanted to do. Leon was enjoying it - because he was being the majordomo.
Joe Cocker : We fell out pretty badly … a big ego clash. I’d revered the man but he’d make it obvious on stage. I’d be singing and he’d go, 'Alright! Come on! Come on!' He’d make it look to the audience as if he was pulling the strings.
Joe Cocker : The reason that tour broke up was I fell out with Leon and we all ended up very unhappy.
Joe Cocker : He became difficult. He got a bit strange. I felt lumbered because the other guys were getting completely wrecked. I was too, but I was doing all the promotion. Leon said, ‘Oh, you get the pleasure of doing all that’. And I got involved in some crazy love affairs. Rita and Leon had a thing going on, and then she was sleeping with a couple of the drummers. Then I had a dalliance with her. This was just before she hooked up with Kris Kristofferson. It was mad.
He (Leon Russell) took over the whole show, became like a slave master.
April 18, 1970 : Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California. Allegedly 7/8th of the film soundtrack was recorded at this show on 16-track remote gear by a team from Wally Heider Recording. Only two songs, Delta Lady and Feeling Alright, originated at Fillmore East.
Jerry Moss : I saw the tour when they came to California - and in a way, Leon was upstaging him. But still Joe had a tremendous power and everybody felt that he could take it over any time he wanted to. He was sort of letting things happen.
There were a lot of drugs on that tour and Joe was starting to become very evasive and not very communicative. Joe was a guy that, especially during that tour, would never say 'No' to anybody - about anything. This was apparent during the filming - and we had to make a decision on whether we wanted to shoot a film that was documentarily very interesting but somewhat damaging to our artist. I guess you might say we ended up a bit on the boring side, but we just didn’t want to make him look bad.
Tuesday, April 21, 1970 : The Municipal Theatre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
Dee Anthony : They also played Tulsa, Leon's home town! And Cocker lost $12,000 'cause we had to fly the planes from Seattle back to Tulsa for a picnic, and then back to San Francisco. At Joe's expense. We sent Joe a letter, before it happened, telling him it was a bad move. And we were threatened – Frank was threatened and I was threatened by them – that if we didn't play Tulsa, Leon would quit the tour.
Thursday, 23 April, 1970 : Fillmore West, San Francisco
Rita Coolidge : I felt so desperate to leave the tour because there was just a lot of shit going on. I was just so sad a lot of the time. I sat with Joe a lot on the plane, he and I were real close friends. I would sit there after the shows, flying into the next city, and I would try to explain to him why I couldn’t go on, why I had to go back home. And he would sorta turn round and look at me with that face sweeter than Jesus Christ and say, 'You can’t leave me. You cannot leave this tour. You’re the only friend I’ve got.' And I couldn’t leave. I’m telling you - his heart was the only thing that kept him going.
Friday 24 April, 1970 : Winterland, San Francisco
Saturday 25 April, 1970 : Winterland, San Francisco
Leon Russell : There were so many film men and other extraneous people walking around the stage that it was very difficult to concentrate on playing.
Sunday 26 April 1970 : Fillmore West, San Francisco
1 May 1970 : Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY, USA
2 + 3 May 1970 : State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA
8 + 9 May, 1970 : Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USA
9 May 1970 : The Letter enters the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, where it will peak at No7, during nine weeks on the chart.
Jerry Moss (co-founder, A+M Records) : The Letter was the first hit for Joe (from this album), and provided a tremendous glimpse of his amazing musical force. The record went platinum, and sold well; it also showed this incredible menagerie of musicians, like Leon Russell. That whole group was incredible, and it was an amazing experience - what they did live and on record was magnificent. After that success, we were able to get Joe back in the studio to make more great records.
10 May 1970 : Keaney Gym, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
15 May 1970 : Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL, USA
17 May 1970 : After playing their last show together, in Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, California, Joe Cocker and his Mad Dogs And Englishmen go their separate ways.
Leon Russell : We did those fifty or so dates he had booked and most of them were sold out and it was quite a popular event.
Joe Cocker : Once it was over, Leon and the rest all left, probably the next day, and moved on to The Rolling Stones and Derek And The Dominos, and they kept on partying.
Rita Coolidge : Joe worked his butt off and was the driving force. He was the star - he was the one everyone came to see. Everything was around Joe. Leon agreed to be the musical director, the ringmaster, but he said, “I’ll only do it if I have all the control - the songs, the arrangements - everything is my decision.”
After the tour was over, he went to [A+M Records co-founder] Jerry Moss because he wanted to buy a guitar, and there was no money. He probably came off that tour in debt and he didn’t have a place to live - he was sleeping on Denny Cordell’s floor, pretty much in the foyer of the house.
Denny Cordell : There’s no doubt in my mind that at the end Joe was pretty despondent with the whole thing.
Joe Cocker : When we finished the tour I hung around L.A. for about three months. I just laid up at Denny's place. Occasionally I do fall out with the music scene. It gets sorta stagnant.
Rita Coolidge : Nobody was looking out for Joe. I would call and say, "Denny, where’s Joe? How’s he doing?" because I think there’s a nurturing side to every woman but, being a Cherokee woman, I think mine’s a little stronger than others. I recognize when someone’s in trouble, and Joe’s certainly someone that I cared about so much.
Denny Cordell : My main concern was to get Joe working and there was obviously some personality something-or-other that made it hard for Joe and Leon to form a band together. Joe was despondent and didn't want to do much.
Dee Anthony : I asked him, 'Are you happy with everything, Joe?' He said, 'Yeah.'
'Then what’s wrong?’
He’d always say, 'Nothing. I’m just gonna get my head together, relax a little.'
'Fine,' I said. 'OK, Joe, take a little time off.'
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Sources :
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen/
http://teamrock.com/feature/2013-01-30/joe-cocker-friends-dogs-drugs-booze-and-the-queen
http://www.inthestudio.net/online-only-interviews/leon-russell-joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen/
Joe Cocker, Authorised Biography by J.P. Bean, 1990
Rolling Stone interview with Joe Cocker, May 1972
https://www.relix.com/articles/detail/delta_spirit_rita_coolidge_reflects_on_delaney_bonnie_mad_dogs_englishmen_layla_and_more
https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2016/07/08/rita-coolidge-qa-interview-delta-lady-leon-russell-layla/
http://www.yamahaentertainmentgroup.com/all-access/item/444-chris-stainton-keys-for-clapton-cocke
https://lindawolf.wordpress.com/tag/chris-stainton/
Leon Russell’s Zigzag interview with Pete Frame, 1970
Denny Cordell - Phonograph magazine interview with Patrick Salvo 1972
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Mar 12, 1970 : In Los Angeles, California, USA, Dee Anthony of Bandana Management convinces Joe Cocker to set off on a seven week tour of the USA, to start in Detroit, Michigan, a week from now. It will become legendary as the Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour.
Denny Cordell (manager, Joe Cocker) : The same day that Joe arrived in Los Angeles, so did Dee Anthony and Frank Barsalona, saying, 'Look here, son, you've got to play this tour; otherwise you'll never be allowed into America again.' I think that the first time Joe mistrusted Anthony and Barsalona was when they forced him to do the Mad Dogs.
Denny Cordell: I hated (American manager) Dee Anthony. I never approved of him handling Joe as his management because, as far as I was concerned, he did not really know where Joe was coming from. He’d been handling Tony Bennett. That was a very ethnic circuit - and they all came from Italy. I had tried to get Joe away. I went to Dee and I spelled it out to him one day. He said, 'Let me think about it.' Then, a few days later, he had me up to his office and there was a lot of poking of the finger on the chest, saying, "If you don’t want to end up in the Hudson River with cement shoes…" It was very weird and we were much younger then and slightly less worldly. It had its effect.
Joe Cocker : I signed a contract where I got something like 95% of the gross, which I thought was fantastic. I didn’t realise I had to pay for every expense imaginable. I still have a deficit for making it.
Denny Cordell : Immigration said he couldn’t just cancel his tour or they wouldn’t let him into the Musicians’ Union or something. And all the promoters threatened to sue, so it was a question of force.
Mar 13, 1970 : Leon Russell offers his services as keyboardist and bandmaster for Joe Cocker's upcoming Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour. By the end of the day he has already rounded up ten musicians.
Joe Cocker : That came about via Denny Cordell, who was a wonderful producer … there was a record by Delaney And Bonnie and Leon Russell was all over that record. I heard it and I was stunned by how brilliant he was. I was talking to Denny and I said, 'God, I’d love to work with that guy'. And Denny got in touch with him. I flew over to LA but Leon was always a bit distant, y’know…
Leon Russell : Mad Dogs And Englishmen came about because Joe had this tour of America already booked. And then the Grease Band split and he didn't have a band. He tried to cancel, but there were lots of complications, so he decided to fulfil his engagements with a new band. Mad Dogs is a 10-piece band with a 10-piece choir and some other people. It was up to about 45 people at one time, and now it's down a few.
(Source : interview in Record Mirror)
Leon Russell : Joe had just come back from London and he didn’t have the Grease Band any more. And they were going to try and cancel the tour because he wasn’t really feeling well and needed the rest.
I said, 'What the hell, we might as well put something together just for the hell of it.' That’s what happened.
Joe Cocker : Leon said, 'If you want this, I’ll only do it if you let me put the band together.' And I said, 'OK'. My original idea, I just wanted a small band. But Leon brought in Bobby Keys and Jim Price, the horn players who had been working with Delaney And Bonnie, and a whole bunch of other great musicians.
We really weren’t going for the big band that it turned out to be. It was my intention of just making it a small group. But Leon said the only way he would do it was if he could put the band together.
We only had about twenty days to put that tour together.
Joe Cocker : At Leon’s pad the scene was wall-to-wall women running around naked. Seemed like we were going to have some amazing times. They’d float in and out. Leon had his Tulsa connection, so he had a web of women on call. There were an awful lot of groupies.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist, Mad Dogs And Englishmen) : To me, Joe Cocker was just the greatest. He got pretty railroaded because he had just finished a tour in England with The Grease Band and they had broken up. He had come to the States thinking he was gonna be able to take a break and get some rest.
He was exhausted and when he got there the tour was starting. There was no band; nothing was done. Leon said, 'I will put together the band and I’ll do the arrangements and I’ll do everything but I have to be driving this bus. Nothing will go on unless I say so.’
Leon Russell : For one reason or other Joe had fired his band in England. They had fifty shows booked in the United States and he was going to cancel them because he didn’t feel like doin’ it for some reason. The Musicians’ Union told him they wouldn’t let him play in the United States again if he didn’t play those shows so, suddenly, he was over here without a band and had to do the shows on very short notice so he asked me to put the band together for him.
March 14, 1970 : Joe Cocker holds the first day of rehearsals for his Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour at the A + M Soundstage, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Leon Russell : When we went down to start the rehearsals at the A + M Soundstage, we were making potato salad in huge garbage cans because we didn’t know really how many people were going to be there. That lasted about four days, perhaps five, and each day it sorta grew exponentially.
Denny Cordell : We go down there and Leon has contacted every man jack he knows who can play good. There are three drummers, each with their own drumkit. There are three guitar players, horn players – Bobby Keys and Jim Price. We decided we needed three girl singers – at least a dozen show up. There are tambourine players … you name it.
Leon Russell : When I first went down there it was just all the people I had invited. The second day was twice that many, and probably twice as many again each day following. The last day there was four hundred people there probably.
Denny Cordell : The buzz had gone round that something extraordinary was happening on soundstage number one.
Rita Coolidge : Prior to the Joe Cocker tour, Leon had become a total recluse. He wasn’t seeing anybody in the old group. Then, one day, we were at A+M, before we went into rehearsals and he came strutting across the parking lot in what looked like an Uncle Sam suit with a top hat - these outrageous clothes. And I just went, 'I think I know whose tour this could be.' There was just no doubt about it - he came in and he was laughing and cracking jokes and being real aggressive and outgoing, which is not his nature. He’s really a grump.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist) : I was straight out of college, ended up in LA and had this in my lap to pull together a choir and do Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and the things that happened on that tour I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.
Joe Cocker : One thing that disappointed me was we didn’t have very much original material. We re-vamped a lot of stuff.
March 17, 1970 : On the fourth and last day of rehearsals for his upcoming Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour, Joe Cocker has the first of two recording sessions for the song Space Captain at A + M Studios, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Chris Stainton : I admire Leon Russell so much. He’s an exquisite piano player, especially in that Louisiana style. He was so hot then, at the top of his playing ability. When Leon played piano, I’d play organ, and then I’d switch to piano when Leon took over on guitar.
March 18, 1970 : With rehearsals for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour now finished in Los Angeles, California, USA, a decision is taken to make a filmed documentary of the tour.
Leon Russell : My theory was that it could be recorded and filmed and they’d use the income from the tour to make the movie, which would be a larger event than the tour, which is pretty much what happened. It was based on the Woodstock film, but it’s obvious that films have a much longer, far-reaching effect than a series of concerts.
What happened in this case was Joe asked me my thoughts on it and I ran it down in about ten minutes, what could be done, what type of film crews … I requested news crews, because it was documentary and it needed to be shot all the time and to have some guys that were ready to shoot whatever came up. A day or two later there was two news crews standing there and a plane was chartered and it was all set up. Somebody did all that stuff that I’d said.
Rita Coolidge : Then A+M came in, brought in the film crew and Joe watched all of this going on around him while having absolutely no control. So, from the get-go, most of the time, Joe felt powerless until he hit the stage - and then there was no doubt who we were there for.
March 19, 1970 : Joe Cocker, with an entourage of 43 crew members and musicians, flies on a Super Constellation from Los Angeles, California, USA, to Detroit, Michigan, where Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour is set to start the next day.
Linda Wolf (tour photographer) : I met Joe Cocker a week before we took off — all 45 people, three kids and a dog named Cannina, plus a five-man film crew, on a mad, fabulous crazy two month tour of the US, hopping from stage to plane to bus, to hotel, to bus to plane to another stage. Joe was loving and funny and soft and broken-hearted. He was a ball of energy, often in his own world but always willing to connect. I had a crush on him, which he knew but never took advantage of. I was the youngest member of the tour, besides the children, and I had never been on a rock and roll tour before.
March 20 + 21, 1970 : Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour plays its first gig, at Easton Theatre, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Rita Coolidge (backing vocalist) : I couldn't have imagined what was in front of me. The drugs, the alcohol and everything. It was chaotic.
What I got from the Joe Cocker tour was a degree from Rock and Roll University in two months.
Joe Cocker : When we had put it together, Leon’s idea was that it was all a big family. There was over forty of us on the road, counting the choir and the people associated with it. Before each show we’d all get in a big group in a big circle and shake hands and sing.
Jim Keltner (drummer) : The communal thing was real heavy at the beginning, everybody sticking together and doing everything together. It was 1970 and we were still in the Love period … flowers and love and free sex and all that. The whole Mad Dogs thing was definitely one big, wild party.
Denny Cordell : Leon was very gung-ho on the whole thing. He was very community-minded - his community - in which he was the major figure. There was Joe, Chris and Me. the rest of it was his crowd and he was very much the leader of the commune. They looked to him for everything.
Jerry Moss : From where I was sitting, it felt OK to me. I think they had such great respect for each other musically.
Joe Cocker : But egos got in the way as we travelled down the line. I felt a lot of pressure because I seemed to be handling all the press, I felt I’d got lumbered with a lot of this stuff I really didn’t want.
Rita Coolidge : In spite of the fact that Leon kind of made it his arena, when Joe hit the stage and started singing it didn’t matter what drugs he had ingested, he was the obvious and powerful voice and talent that drove that tour. Nobody was there for Leon; everybody was there for Joe.
Pierre Adidge (director, Mad Dogs documentary) : It was no ordinary tour. They brought together the finest musicians in Hollywood, who all went because they wanted to go, because they wanted to be a part of this whole giant effort. They wanted to be together through their music.
Jim Keltner (drummer) : The real decrepit things went on. Sharing girls. Screwing every chick in sight. Most were there for that purpose. The drugs were just as easy to get. I wasn't a stranger to them myself. Now I feel like I'm lucky to have survived them.
Joe Cocker : At first it was a family thing. We were all shacking up in cheap motels; we had a cheap bus and a cheap plane. I wanted a much smaller group, but Leon was very persuasive. I got the blame for breaking up Delaney And Bonnie, because we took half their band. I didn’t even know who they were, but that got nasty. Yet it was irresistible.
Mar 22, 1970 : Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, USA
Mar 26, 1970 : Cincinnati Gardens, Cincinnati, OH, USA
March 27 + 28 1970 : When Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour plays at The Fillmore East, New York City, USA, the show is taped by Eddie Kramer, with 27 microphones, and will appear as the LP of the tour.
Leon Russell : The logistics of it were pretty amazing. At one point we had 45 people on the road, which at that time was quite a lot of folks. Just to arrive, for example, at The George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, with 45 people and the elevators were out … we had rooms as far up as the 40th floor. It looked like Bangkok. We had to walk up carrying all of our bags. Those kinds of things, with people spilling out onto the streets of Manhattan, are pretty much news events on their own.
Jim Keltner : We all got into a big huddle ands there we were, swaying back and forth, getting ready to go on. Everybody was psyching themselves up. And somehow, somebody had slipped some angel dust into something and all I remember is that I came to on the floor, in the hallway, among all kinds of crap and garbage and cigarette butts. And somebody was tapping me on the shoulder, 'Jim, come on, we gotta play. Time to go on.'
Jerry Moss (co-founder, A+M Records) : The album almost didn't happen. The tour was so taxing, I didn't see Joe for a couple years, and he was nowhere to be found.
Joe Cocker : I’ve always had a weight problem and on that tour I didn’t eat a lot and got skinnier and skinnier, ended up weighing about 150lbs. I wasn’t feeling great. I just kinda lost control.
Joe Cocker : I was about 26 years old, and I kind of felt indestructible. By the early '70s, the drugs and the booze took their toll. ... It was a long road back. A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realise, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.
Joe Cocker : I overdid it for a year. You can forget about your music and start worrying about different things for so long. I just stepped out of it for too long. I think I almost forgot what rock’n’roll was all about.
Mar 29, 1970 : Winter’s End Festival, Miami, Florida, USA.
Apr 4, 1970 : A new music venue, The Depot, opens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, with a two set evening by Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen. The venue will find greater fame after a name-change to First Avenue on New Year's Eve of 1981.
Apr 7, 1970 : State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA.
Denny Cordell : He was doing a lot of dope and he was drinking. He probably drank more to take the edge off it when he’d got to go through it night after night. And then, somehow, some con of Dee Anthony’s - the tour got into debt and therefore more dates were added. It was supposed to be a smallish tour - something like thirty dates over six weeks - but it went on a lot longer than it should have done.
Apr 17, 1970 : Community Concourse Theatre, San Diego, CA, USA
Denny Cordell : He was now just the vocalist in this big runaway band. There was no finesse about it - and Joe is a man of great finesse. He had to go up there and roar his guts out every night with this huge egocentric, pulsating out-of-control big band behind him. He wasn’t doing what he wanted to do. Leon was enjoying it - because he was being the majordomo.
Joe Cocker : We fell out pretty badly … a big ego clash. I’d revered the man but he’d make it obvious on stage. I’d be singing and he’d go, 'Alright! Come on! Come on!' He’d make it look to the audience as if he was pulling the strings.
Joe Cocker : The reason that tour broke up was I fell out with Leon and we all ended up very unhappy.
Joe Cocker : He became difficult. He got a bit strange. I felt lumbered because the other guys were getting completely wrecked. I was too, but I was doing all the promotion. Leon said, ‘Oh, you get the pleasure of doing all that’. And I got involved in some crazy love affairs. Rita and Leon had a thing going on, and then she was sleeping with a couple of the drummers. Then I had a dalliance with her. This was just before she hooked up with Kris Kristofferson. It was mad.
He (Leon Russell) took over the whole show, became like a slave master.
April 18, 1970 : Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California. Allegedly 7/8th of the film soundtrack was recorded at this show on 16-track remote gear by a team from Wally Heider Recording. Only two songs, Delta Lady and Feeling Alright, originated at Fillmore East.
Jerry Moss : I saw the tour when they came to California - and in a way, Leon was upstaging him. But still Joe had a tremendous power and everybody felt that he could take it over any time he wanted to. He was sort of letting things happen.
There were a lot of drugs on that tour and Joe was starting to become very evasive and not very communicative. Joe was a guy that, especially during that tour, would never say 'No' to anybody - about anything. This was apparent during the filming - and we had to make a decision on whether we wanted to shoot a film that was documentarily very interesting but somewhat damaging to our artist. I guess you might say we ended up a bit on the boring side, but we just didn’t want to make him look bad.
Tuesday, April 21, 1970 : The Municipal Theatre, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
Dee Anthony : They also played Tulsa, Leon's home town! And Cocker lost $12,000 'cause we had to fly the planes from Seattle back to Tulsa for a picnic, and then back to San Francisco. At Joe's expense. We sent Joe a letter, before it happened, telling him it was a bad move. And we were threatened – Frank was threatened and I was threatened by them – that if we didn't play Tulsa, Leon would quit the tour.
Thursday, 23 April, 1970 : Fillmore West, San Francisco
Rita Coolidge : I felt so desperate to leave the tour because there was just a lot of shit going on. I was just so sad a lot of the time. I sat with Joe a lot on the plane, he and I were real close friends. I would sit there after the shows, flying into the next city, and I would try to explain to him why I couldn’t go on, why I had to go back home. And he would sorta turn round and look at me with that face sweeter than Jesus Christ and say, 'You can’t leave me. You cannot leave this tour. You’re the only friend I’ve got.' And I couldn’t leave. I’m telling you - his heart was the only thing that kept him going.
Friday 24 April, 1970 : Winterland, San Francisco
Saturday 25 April, 1970 : Winterland, San Francisco
Leon Russell : There were so many film men and other extraneous people walking around the stage that it was very difficult to concentrate on playing.
Sunday 26 April 1970 : Fillmore West, San Francisco
1 May 1970 : Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY, USA
2 + 3 May 1970 : State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY, USA
8 + 9 May, 1970 : Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USA
9 May 1970 : The Letter enters the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, where it will peak at No7, during nine weeks on the chart.
Jerry Moss (co-founder, A+M Records) : The Letter was the first hit for Joe (from this album), and provided a tremendous glimpse of his amazing musical force. The record went platinum, and sold well; it also showed this incredible menagerie of musicians, like Leon Russell. That whole group was incredible, and it was an amazing experience - what they did live and on record was magnificent. After that success, we were able to get Joe back in the studio to make more great records.
10 May 1970 : Keaney Gym, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
15 May 1970 : Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL, USA
17 May 1970 : After playing their last show together, in Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, California, Joe Cocker and his Mad Dogs And Englishmen go their separate ways.
Leon Russell : We did those fifty or so dates he had booked and most of them were sold out and it was quite a popular event.
Joe Cocker : Once it was over, Leon and the rest all left, probably the next day, and moved on to The Rolling Stones and Derek And The Dominos, and they kept on partying.
Rita Coolidge : Joe worked his butt off and was the driving force. He was the star - he was the one everyone came to see. Everything was around Joe. Leon agreed to be the musical director, the ringmaster, but he said, “I’ll only do it if I have all the control - the songs, the arrangements - everything is my decision.”
After the tour was over, he went to [A+M Records co-founder] Jerry Moss because he wanted to buy a guitar, and there was no money. He probably came off that tour in debt and he didn’t have a place to live - he was sleeping on Denny Cordell’s floor, pretty much in the foyer of the house.
Denny Cordell : There’s no doubt in my mind that at the end Joe was pretty despondent with the whole thing.
Joe Cocker : When we finished the tour I hung around L.A. for about three months. I just laid up at Denny's place. Occasionally I do fall out with the music scene. It gets sorta stagnant.
Rita Coolidge : Nobody was looking out for Joe. I would call and say, "Denny, where’s Joe? How’s he doing?" because I think there’s a nurturing side to every woman but, being a Cherokee woman, I think mine’s a little stronger than others. I recognize when someone’s in trouble, and Joe’s certainly someone that I cared about so much.
Denny Cordell : My main concern was to get Joe working and there was obviously some personality something-or-other that made it hard for Joe and Leon to form a band together. Joe was despondent and didn't want to do much.
Dee Anthony : I asked him, 'Are you happy with everything, Joe?' He said, 'Yeah.'
'Then what’s wrong?’
He’d always say, 'Nothing. I’m just gonna get my head together, relax a little.'
'Fine,' I said. 'OK, Joe, take a little time off.'
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Sources :
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen/
http://teamrock.com/feature/2013-01-30/joe-cocker-friends-dogs-drugs-booze-and-the-queen
http://www.inthestudio.net/online-only-interviews/leon-russell-joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen/
Joe Cocker, Authorised Biography by J.P. Bean, 1990
Rolling Stone interview with Joe Cocker, May 1972
https://www.relix.com/articles/detail/delta_spirit_rita_coolidge_reflects_on_delaney_bonnie_mad_dogs_englishmen_layla_and_more
https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2016/07/08/rita-coolidge-qa-interview-delta-lady-leon-russell-layla/
http://www.yamahaentertainmentgroup.com/all-access/item/444-chris-stainton-keys-for-clapton-cocke
https://lindawolf.wordpress.com/tag/chris-stainton/
Leon Russell’s Zigzag interview with Pete Frame, 1970
Denny Cordell - Phonograph magazine interview with Patrick Salvo 1972