May 26, 2000 -- See you Raider... Much Raider

Toward the end of our second U.S. tour we played a club in Denver, Colorado. Our opening act was a stand-up comic named Benny Boulder who, several years later, would move to California and change his name to Sam Diego. I don't remember much of his act except that he would walk out on-stage and pretend (?) to sniff Sandy's drum seat. Anyway, this week's story isn't about him.

I had been in another one of the seemingly endless series of fights I had with Cherie on this particular tour. As usual, I can't remember what this fight was about, but a few days before we played in Denver, Cherie had put a cigarette out on my jacket. I could never be that confrontational in my fights with other band members, so the only revenge I could think of was to spit all over the handle of Cherie's make-up case while she wasn't looking. Mostly though, I just avoided Cherie when we were fighting and during our Denver shows, that meant that instead of hanging out in the dressing room, I spent most of my time out in the hall reading. So before our second set at one of our Denver shows, I'm sitting on the floor down the hall reading a book, when two guys come up to me with a poster of the band and ask for my autograph. As I take the poster and marker from them, they tell me that they are John Matusak and Fred Biletnikoff from the Oakland Raiders.


Fred Biletnikoff of The Oakland Raiders


I look up at the two guys claiming to be football players and while the guy who says he is John Matuzak is really big, the one purporting to be Fred Biletnikoff is pretty small and unimposing. Plus they're in Denver, and Oakland wasn't playing in Denver that I was aware of. So I figured these guys were full of shit and I said, "yeah, right," or something. They started protesting that they really were from the Raiders and that they were big fans. I was still convinced they were pulling my leg, so I took the poster from them and in HUGE letters wrote "The Rams are gonna kick your ass in the Super Bowl" and threw it back at them. They read it, kind of laughed and left.

A few months later I'm watching t.v., and on comes a commercial featuring John Matuzak, linebacker for the Oakland Raiders. And it's the guy who asked for my autograph. So I did a little checking and found out that Fred Biletnikoff, star receiver for the Raiders, was a small guy. They hadn't been pulling my leg at all. That was the least gracious I've probably ever been toward fans. John Matuzak died about 15 years ago so I'll never get to ask him what happened to that poster with my obnoxious scrawl or to apologize for my disbelief. But Fred... if you're out there -- sorry!!!