Okay, Jamie... Mom said you can be in the band. (Part 2)

There’s that P bass. 

The picture above is from our show in the parking lot of Cat’s Records on Nolensville Road. It was the summer of ‘84 and SIMMONZ was on a roll. 

There were probably 1000 people at that show. It was our biggest crowd yet.

Many of the pictures from that year feature Jamie’s red and white rockstar shirt and silver spandex pants. He had cool wristbands too! Very Judas Priest. 

Things really started to take off when we got Robert “Bobby” Eva to manage the band. My memory is kind of foggy, but I think Bobby pushed us to call the band SIMMONZ. He had been helping us toward the end of the Assault days and was a big proponent of Jamie coming into the band. Easlo used to joke that he wanted to call the band “EASLO,” but he was outvoted 3 to 1.

It made sense to call the band SIMMONZ, since it was three brothers on the instruments. Easlo was a good sport about it. 

As our heroes Van Halen said, we hit the ground runnin’.

It was an awesome time.... that almost never happened.

***

When I pulled up to mom’s house, Jamie was finishing up mowing the front yard. He didn’t look happy. 

Mom, Jay, Aunt Jacque, Paw Paw Bates, and Jamie had moved out to a big house in suburban Franklin Tennessee. Jamie had just finished 10th grade and got his drivers license. He didn’t have a car yet, so mom made him do chores as a trade to use her maroon Chevy station wagon on weekends.

Mom had no idea what we had been up to... until now.

He shut down the lawnmower and came walking toward me, looking over his shoulder. 

“She said no way, Mike. She’s not gonna let me!” He said, looking at me desperately.

I took a long draw on the last of my Marlboro, and tossed it.

“I didn’t think this through,” I said, contemplating the situation. “Damn it, Mus. What did she say?”

“She said ‘There’s no way I’m letting you run around in clubs with your brothers doing God knows what! I know they will be drinking and I don’t even want to know what else. You are not going to be around that!’ That about covers it. She also said something about it being illegal for me to be in clubs, I don’t know, she’s pissed, Mike. She wonders why you didn’t talk to her about it first.”

My boy was bummed.

“Does this mean I can’t be in the band?” 

“No, it does not mean that!” I said, doing my best to calm his fears. “Listen, I’m gonna go talk to her. It’ll be okay.”

I told him to finish mowing the yard, and then get ready for practice. I didn’t know how this was going to go down, but I just knew it couldn’t end like this.

Mom was sitting in her chair in the den when I came in the back door. 

“Hey mom! You are looking gorgeous today!” I said, in my sweetest, oldest son voice.

Pepper the dog jumped out of her lap and ran to greet me.

“Mmm hmm,” she said. “Don’t even try that.”

“Try what?” I asked, innocently.

She wasn’t smiling. “You know what. How in the world could you think I would let Jamie run around playing clubs with you boys? He’s 16 years old. He’s still in high school! This is not going to happen, Michael Andrew. And why would you get his hopes up like that?”

“Because he’s bad ass, mom!” It was all I could come up with. I didn’t expect her to come out swinging like that.

I quickly followed. “He’s really good, mom. Really good. He’s got it in his genes! He got it from you! I know he’s only 16, but he’s a great kid, you know that. You can trust him. You have taught him so well.”

She wasn’t buying it.

I kept going. “Look, I promise you, I won’t let anything happen. We won’t even play that many clubs,” I lied, “Most of our shows will be parties and outdoor gigs.”

“What kind of parties?” She asked, suspiciously.

“Birthday parties!” I said, smiling.

“Oh bullshit, Michael! You must think I’m stupid.”

“No, I’m serious! Our first gig is a birthday party for Lee Greenwood’s daughter.”

Actually, our first gig was booked at Cantrell’s, the local rock club, slash beer joint, two weeks from then. But, the birthday party was the next night.

She looked at me, stoically.

“Mom, listen. I’ll be totally responsible for him. I’ll make sure he never drinks or anything. I’ll make him leave right after the gigs so he’s home by midnight on the weekends, before the curfew. We will even load out his gear so he can leave early. We won’t practice late on weekdays, so he can get home by what? 10?” 

I detected a shift in her demeanor.

“Mom, I promise. It will be fine.” 

I had to go for the kill.

“It will make him so happy, mom. He’s always wanted to be in a band with his brothers. If you don’t let him, it’s going to crush him! He is so excited about this. He’s worked so hard!”

She loved her baby. 

“I don’t know, Michael.” She trailed off.

Yes.

I knew it was in the bag at that point. The rest was just agreeing to any rules she laid down and making a few more promises so she would feel okay about it. I fully intended on keeping them too, I knew we just dodged a bullet. Mom wasn’t going to take too much shit on this one, especially when school started back in the fall. 

The last thing she said was, “If anything happens, it’s gonna be your ass, Michael. I don’t care how old you are.” She went on, “From now on, when he is with you guys, he is your responsibility. If anything happens, I will shut this down.”

Fair enough.

I walked out, Jamie was putting the lawnmower away.

I fired up a cig, and gave him a big, happy smile.

“Okay, Jamie, mom said you can be in the band.”

“No shit?” He exclaimed. “NO SHIT?....Hell yeah!” 

He ran over and gave me a hug. 

“Get off me, ya queer!” I kissed his sweaty head.

“Thanks, Mike. Thanks for talking to her. I didn’t think she would go for it. I thought we were screwed!” He was happy. 

“Don’t thank me yet,” I laughed, “Let’s go in and talk to her. We gotta go over the rules.”

“Rules?” He asked, curiously.

Mom laid down the law for the next thirty minutes. We sat solemnly, nodded our heads, and said “Yes, mam,” about fifty times.

I’d like to say we never broke any of the rules.

I’d like to say that.

***

From the very first note of our first rehearsal, everything clicked. 

He was so bad ass. We were so blown away that we would just start laughing at the end of each song. 

Jamie didn’t know what to think at first. He asked if anything was wrong.

“Hell no! You are just kicking so much ass! You are killing us you skinny son of a bitch!”

There was a lot of laughter that night. 

He was in!

There was never a question.

From the very beginning, there was pure joy whenever we got together to play in SIMMONZ. It was like that from day one, and it all started when Jamie joined the band.

Jamming had been fun before, but it never felt like this. He brought something very special to the band not only with his playing, but with his gentle spirit, energy, and enthusiasm.

He was the missing link and everything gelled once he was in the band.

I took it for granted for a long time. I was really a kid, too. I had no way of seeing the effect he had back then, like I can now.

Our first show with Jamie was on a Thursday night at Cantrell’s in Nashville. 

Word got out that the Simmons brothers had a new band with Easlo on vocals and the youngest Simmons brother on bass. Our flier game was good back then, but I think most of the draw was word of mouth. We packed it on a Thursday. 

That was our last Thursday.

All I remember about that show was watching everyone in the crowd from that tiny stage. They started out all sitting calmly at their tables. By the end of the show, even more people had come in and were lining the walls. The place was going nuts! We had to play a few songs twice because we ran out of songs and the people kept wanting more. 

Jamie kicked ass that night. 

He was smiling from the time we loaded in, until we rushed him out to his car like the president after the set was over. School had just let out for summer so we had made a deal with mom for him to come home by midnight that Thursday. She didn’t know we played a club that night. 

She’s probably reading this. Mom, I swear, he didn’t drink any beer that night.

The next two shows were parties. 

I blew up my Marshall at Kelly Greenwood’s party out in the boondocks. Luckily it was at the end of one long, ass kicking set. 

We left them wanting more.

If I’m not mistaken, Kelly was Jamie’s friend from high school and he got us that gig. A lot of the people there were from his school. It was so great to see him rockstar his ass off around his peers. He had his own little fan club on his side of the stage, mostly girls going crazy,  ala Paul McCartney. 

The next night was a backyard keg party in Bell Meade. I had to use my backup amp and we built a makeshift stage. Jamie’s woodworking skills came in handy that night.

There were hundreds of people there and the cops came about 5 songs in, but we kept playing. This cop kept waving at me, trying to get me to stop playing. I kept waving back saying “Hi!” between dive bombs and burning leads from hell. 

They finally pulled the plug.

It didn’t matter, our first weekend out was a huge success.

There was a different energy around the band now that Jamie was there. You could feel it. 

A buzz started immediately around town about us. 

“A band with three brothers and a bad ass singer!”

“They sound like a cross between Van Halen and Ozzy!”

“You gotta see this band! The drummer is amazing! They are brothers and the bass player is only 16!”

You get the picture. 

We capitalized on it. Bobby started booking gigs for the rest of the summer. We played anywhere and everywhere. The crowds got bigger and the buzz got louder.

We played Cantrell’s 5 or 6 times. 

We played on a trailer out in the lawn of WKRN, local channel 2 on television.

We played Showdowns in Clarksville.

We played The Shelbyville Jam. (Below.)

Jamie stole the show that night. The concert was on a farm outside of Murfreesboro, TN. There were a bunch of bands, but they had never seen anything like us!

Jamie turned his bass upside down like Rudy Sarzo for the intro of “Feel the Knife,” and the crowd of hundreds went wild! He was all over the stage after that. He was a true showman. Paulie and I looked at each other a few times during the set and just cracked up.

Our little brother was showing us up!

We all stepped up our game after Jamie came onboard.

When we started out, Paulie and I were living in a house out in Hermitage with our girlfriends. We decided that the women were just going to hold us back, so we bailed on the house and the girls, and got a one bedroom apartment in Antioch.

I think Paulie won a coin toss, so he got the bedroom, and I got the living room. Jamie came over all the time and we were writing a ton of new songs.

"Metal Machine"
"The Road Warrior"
"Final Frontier"

Those are some very metal song titles.

We had been doing good keeping to the rules mom laid down. That won us some trust, and we took advantage of it. She started letting Jamie spend some nights and weekends with us.
He was loving his newfound freedom and getting to hang with his brothers. 

We had a few parties and I know Jamie saw some pretty wild stuff. I did my best to shield him from anything too crazy, but come on, he was 16. I know all you guys never did anything your mom didn’t want you to do when you were 16.

We rented a jam room off Nolensville Road close to Harrison Systems, where Easlo, Paulie, and myself worked soldering boards that went into recording consoles. We stored our gear there and rehearsed constantly. 

Jamie probably put 10,000 miles on the station wagon that summer. 

In August of ‘84, Paulie and I rented a big house in Antioch with Bobby Eva and Joey Hicks. It was immediately nicknamed the “Pomahouse,” thanks to Richard Pryor.

We set up SIMMONZ headquarters, and began planning our takeover of Nashville and the world.

We did a show at the Brass A in September that was to be broadcast live on local channel 39 television. It was cut with band interviews and stuff. It was a long stressful day that started with the club being locked for hours after we arrived to set up. The show went well, finally, but by the time we got back to the Pomahouse at 2am, everyone’s nerves were shot. 

Paulie and I had been bitching at each other about something, and by the time we were loading the drum riser in the house, we started fighting right there in the basement. I think there are still black marks from our leather jackets on that wall where we slammed each other around.

We never fought, so all the people helping us were stunned and freaked out, except for Jamie.

He jumped in the middle of it and pulled us apart, yelling, “Stop it you stupid mother%*#@$’s!” 

I remember thinking, damn, Jamie got strong!

After he pulled us apart, he started yelling at us reminding us how much we loved each other and how stupid we were being.

It ended with tears, apologies, and a group hug.

Looking back, I see how Jamie joining the band changed everything. He was no longer our “little” brother. We were a band. There’s nothing like being in a band... but being in a band with your brothers? That is a whole different level, especially when you love each other like we did. 

From that time on, not matter what was going on in our personal lives, we were always there for each other. 

We were on a mission.

We went through many things together in the years that followed... Many highs and many lows. 

The band broke up a few times and got back together.

We played together on different projects and with other bands.

But, whenever the three of us got together, it was like we were never apart.

Our bond only got stronger over time.

As I finish this story, it is late afternoon, March 25th.

One month since he left us. 

It still doesn’t feel real. 

His memories are real, though. They flood me all the time, and I’m grateful for it. 

I’m having to make notes, because I don’t know what I want to write next. 

The time I got my van stuck in the school yard, left it there, and Jamie ran home to warn me dad saw it?

The time I found him in the backyard building his mega city of hot wheels and army men with Ben the cat playing Godzilla?

The time he fell asleep on the beach when we were on tour and got so sunburned we called him “Sunny Redfoot?”

I’m not sure yet, but I will let you know soon.