A Twist On The Rocks
K.T. Dirshing
Penguin Books, $17.99
Reviewed By M.S Holland.
At the present, roughly forty thousand books have been written about the lives of rockers. Authorized biographies, unauthorized biographies, autobiographies, picture books, comic books, pop-up books, on and on.
Most of the books are predictable. A young stud is bored with school, or hates it. He then discovers rock and roll, finds three or four friends that share his love for it, and they form a band. In fairly short order, money, fame, women, drugs, and booze get involved, and the group falls apart. Years later, they all come to terms with the past at a benefit concert, or wind up dead.
With this book, K.T. Dirshing tries to put a new spin on an old story. He was a bartender in Cleveland, New York, and (briefly) London between 1968 and 1980. Why he waited over twenty years to write about this is anyone’s guess, but according to Dirshing, “I thought the time was right. I thought people would enjoy reading about how the famous rock stars behaved in bars.”
Dirshing relates that his start came at a Holiday Inn in Cleveland. “I was a nervous young man,” he writes. “It was the Woodstock era, things were happening at a breathless pace all over the world, and I was ready to go.”
Ready to go for what? Bell Captain? The book jacket promises “tasty tales of rock stars letting their hair down.” Dirshing doesn’t get to the point fast enough. In the time it took me to force myself to read the lumbering first chapter, I grew a beard.
The first part of the book just gets worse as it moves along. “Sunday was inventory night,” Dirshing writes. “The manager had to count all of the liquor and other stuff, and he got in my way.” Imagine the horror.
The reason I picked up this book (besides the fact that my editor told me I had to) was the one in a hundred shot that I might read a story about Jimmy Page, or anyone, that I had never seen before. I was worried that a compelling tale about how to keep a nametag clean was soon to follow. At last, in the middle of the second chapter, but after a story about his dog, Herman, Dirshing gets to the rock stars.
The name dropping starts with Ricky Nelson, who apparently thought he was really in Toledo. “Nelson looked confused and a bit beat up. I remembered him from that television show. He wanted an Olympia beer. When I told him we didn’t have that brand, he hit me with a jar of maraschino cherries,” Dirshing writes.
I might do that to Dirshing, myself, if I ever get the chance. To his credit, Dirshing tries to pick up the pace of the book by throwing stories of all sorts of stars into the mix, like Dusty Springfield (“She told me I was incompetent and hit me with a Budweiser sign”) , Chubby Checker (“When I asked him what he had been doing the last ten years, he hit me with an ashtray”) , Bob Dylan (“I didn’t understand Bob’s order, and asked him to repeat himself. He hit me with a Woody Guthrie album”) , and Chuck Berry (“He just walked into the bar and hit me in the jaw, before I could say anything”)
One would have hoped that by the time Dirshing went to New York, it would bring him better luck, or at least inspire some better stories. Sadly, this isn’t the case, as Dirshing explains about his move to New York: “Keith Moon was mad that I didn’t pour scotch fast enough. He hit me over the head with a room service tray, which knocked me out. Then, he tied me up, threw me on a bellboy’s cart, and I went to New York in the baggage compartment of a tour bus.”
Instead of wising up and moving back to Ohio, which would have spared the world the tragedy of this book, Dirshing managed to get a job in New York, after a hospital stay that covers several years and about three chapters. Unfortunately, upon leaving the hospital, his stories don’t get any better. The rockers may have changed names, but Dirshing writes the same stories, more or less.
Regarding Deborah Harry, he writes: “I asked, ‘Do you need anything, Debbie?’ She yelled, ‘I need you to die!’ at which point she hit me with a jackhammer a construction guy had left outside the door.” Dirshing tries to save himself with a story of the Bee Gees, but it goes to the same place: “I told them their voices made me laugh, and then they threw me on the ground, repeatedly kicked me in the groin”.
Dirshing even wasted a chance with the quite strange appearance of Ace Frehley (of KISS), and the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious: “I don’t know how the two met, but they seemed to be buddies. They argued over the music of the Stones, but other than that, they got along well, and were attracting a crowd. I didn’t know who Ace was, of course, because he wasn’t wearing his makeup. At about this time, I had taken to calling all male customers ‘Ace’. So, I went to him and asked, ‘What can I get you, Ace?’ He screamed, ‘I was promised nobody would call me by name!’ He then stuck a pool cue in my ass, encouraging customers to spit on me. I was just shaking this off when Sid instructed a roadie to tie me to the back of a truck and drive to New Jersey.”
By this time, you would guess that there is little hope for this book, and you would be correct. I’ll not tell you about what got Dirshing to get to London and quickly come back, although I will say it involves Boy George, a shotgun, and some trained poodles. Scary stuff.
Towards the end, Dirshing tries to score some sympathy from the reader, and relates that after several years of physical therapy, he is doing well, although his boss at the data entry job seems to hit him a lot. It doesn’t work. By this time, you want to join in with the rock stars to beat on Dirshing’s head.
Apparently, this is a commonly held belief. During a recent appearance on NBC’s “Today” program, Katie Couric just stared at Dirshing for several minutes as he talked. She then threw a copy of the book in the air, calling it “nonsense”, before ramming his head repeatedly into seventy-five thousand dollars worth of video equipment.
Do yourself a favor. Skip “Twist On The Rocks” Instead, drink a quart of vodka and watch Oliver Stone’s “The Doors.” Believe it or not, it will be less painful.
