That Time Gregg Rolie Slapped My Face
Famous people love flowers! When you are a florist, one of the perks is meeting famous people. Gregg Rolie of “Black Magic Woman,” Santana, Woodstock and Journey fame lived in Novato. “Novato Florist, may I help you?” I said, thousands of times during the 18 years I worked there.
Famous people love flowers! When you are a florist, one of the perks is meeting famous people. Gregg Rolie of “Black Magic Woman,” Santana, Woodstock and Journey fame lived in Novato. “Novato Florist, may I help you?” I said, thousands of times during the 18 years I worked there.
Our most famous customer was Howard Rolie, rock star Gregg’s dad. Which pissed Gregg off royally. See my mother, Frankie and my father Billy had become good friends with Howard Rolie, who was funny, charming and utterly unpretentious, unlike his long-haired, bare chested, leather fringe wearing, off spring.
One day Howard and Gregg entered the store and everyone was all, “Howard! Howard! Hellllooooo- Howard! How have you been? What you been up to?”
To which Greg in astonishment exclaimed, “Hey! I’m the famous one!” To which, my mother replied, “You have such a cute boy Howard,” and continued fawning over the elder Rolie.
One day we had a delivery for Gregg. I volunteered to take up the bouquet- See I had a secret plan. I had recently graduated from Sonoma State University. SSU was the smallest school in the California university system, known for hacky-sack, ultimate Frisbee, and nude swimming. Guess which one I excelled at?
I had graduated in Expressive Arts with an emphasis in poetry. My senior project was a series of poems, I had set to Avant-guard, electronic compositions. Working with choreographer Victoria Strowbridge we added dance. The final touch was Don Eggers’ laser-light projections. I was positive I could score a recording contract. This was going to be a huge hit! Inspired by Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” it was far-fetched, but not entirely insane.
My plan was to slip Gregg Rolie, my cassette demo tape, whereby he would hear my genius, call up his record company and implore them with, “I have a #1 poem with a rocket, you gotta sign this boy!”
I knocked and Gregg opened the front door to his redwood, hippie-ranch house, mansion, (clearly he had invested that Santana money wisely). I thrust the flower arrangement into his hands, slyly jamming my foot in the door way and said, “Flowers for Mr. Rolie and by the way I have demo cassette, chock-full of my electronic poem/songs in the style of Edgar Varèse, with a hint of Steve Reich.
To which he surprisingly replied, “Well, you literally have your foot in the door and Journey recorded some experimental music in Japan, so let’s take a listen to your cassette.” Who knew that even rock stars get lonely?
He brought me into his music room, which had a baby grand piano, his Hammond B3 organ, lots of guitars and a wall full of gold records. He popped the cassette in listened for a bit, then went and got his experimental music, reel-to-reel master of the Journey in Japan tape and as we listened, it was clear they were in a similar vein. He said, “I love this stuff, it’s so creative but it doesn’t sell.” There would be no call to the record company.
Not wanting to waste my good luck at hanging out with “Mr. Black Magic Woman,” I asked what he was up to? At this point he was out of both Santana and Journey and you could feel his pain as he talked about Carlos having called recently and talked about a possible project.
He said, “Hey wanna hear a song? Tell me is you think it is a hit.” He sat down at the piano and belted out a song. It was all rock star hair fluffing, preening and making bad sex, orgasm faces.
His song had even less chance of making the charts than my electronic/poetry/laser/dance concoction. How do you say that? So I said, “Wow! That’s super cool dude!”
At this point I had been there over an hour and the talk turned to harmonica. I told him how much I loved blues and played a few riffs for him on my harmonica. He said, “Me too! They only difference between me and you is I have hit records where I play harmonica and get royalties and I am a Hohner Harmonica endorsee. He went into a closet and pulled out a box of harmonicas and said “See, I get them free, they send them to me by the case.” I thought he might give me one, but he didn’t.
The story is close to the end, only one last thing to report. Gregg sat at the piano and handed me a guitar so we could jam. As I started to tune it, I reached down and hit and E note on the piano. He said, “Don’t ever touch my fucking piano,” and slapped me hard across the face.
I was shocked, having never been slapped by a member of the “Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.” My face red and burning, I recovered and we jammed a little. He was a beautiful man and truly talented musician and singer and so lonely it hurt. Then I excused myself, got back into the flower delivery truck, drove down the hill, more than ever determined to one day be a poet.