1975-76 (5-8 shows).
At the time, Roosevelt Field was the largest shopping mall in the world. There was this one sort of large quasi-Italian eatery called The Beef Barn, and there was one smart restaurant owner that wanted to make some extra cash on the weekends so he’d book us there. What a mistake. He must have been making a lot of money at the door to keep having us back because I’ll tell ya…I had some bad ass friends.
We would turn this place upside down. Broken glass all over the floor, people dancing on the tables. One time, one of my friends rode his motorcycle into the kitchen, got a frozen steak out of the freezer and covered it with mustard, burnt the top in the oven (while the inside was still frozen) and ate it.
We always knew when things got pretty bad whenever we played because the place would start to smell like Fruit Loops cereal. That meant my friends had torn the bathroom apart and knocked the deodorant off the walls.
The energy was really exciting though. I loved playing under these circumstances but I would always get a little apprehensive whenever we went into “Born To Be Wild” because that’s when we’d see really how much everyone had to drink. To this day I have never really played to an audience quite like the ones we had with Rayge when all of our friends would come down to the show and, well…have a good time.