During the sixties and seventies, Gary Stromberg, a west coast public relations executive and one-time movie producer, toured the world with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Three Dog Night and others. And he shared their appetite for women and dope—mostly heroin, cocaine, pot, and alcohol.
Almost a decade ago, Gary came to Little Rock to promote his book, The Harder They Fall, telling the recovery stories of 20 celebrities he had interviewed. At the time, he himself had more than 20 years in recovery.
Gary and I hit it off, and I took him to a couple of 12 Step meetings. At one of them, he was the guest speaker. He ’s funny yet profound, and so are some of the nuggets he mines from his subjects.The book’s list of interviewees (some now deceased) includes Chuck Negron, lead singer of Three Dog Night; Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson starship; Paul Williams, lyricist and composer; Comedians Richard Pryor and Richard Lewis; jockey Pat Day, boxer Gerry Cooney and pitcher Dock Ellis; actors Mariette Hartley, Malcolm McDowell and Malachy McCourt and a few others.
In the front of Gary’s book, Lewis Lapham, noted author and former editor of Harper’s Magazine and Stephen Davis, a “best selling chronicler of musical luminaries” (like Jim Morrison) provides stylish and entertaining comment on the subject at hand—addiction—and its victims.
Referring to his late friend Terry Southern (a drinker himself and writer of the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove), Lapham said, apropos of addiction, “I remember him saying to the assembled company at a table at Elaine’s, ‘there is no power on earth that can loosen a man’s grip on his own throat.’”
Davis, for his part, spoke at length of the miraculous recovery and resurrection of the entire Aerosmith band, and his comment on the stories of the celebrities is heartening.
“Saw toothed, stripped down, exposed and gratefully alive,” he said, “these people and their stories combine into one of the oldest forms of literature: the quest saga. They have dedicated themselves to seeking new worlds—and to new ways of living in them. I hope these interviews will inspire you as they have moved and encouraged me.”
Stromberg, himself, tells a shortened version of his own story to establish his credentials as a reporter well qualified to cover the celebrity addiction beat.
Rumble in the Jungle
In 1974, for example, Stromberg handled the public relations for a music festival that preceded the historic Ali-George Foremen African “Rumble in the Jungle ” prizefight. As part of the gig, he traveled to Swaziland with Ali’s corner man, Drew “Bundini” Brown where the two stumbled on a Merck Corporation factory which was producing pharmaceutical cocaine.
“Talk about kids in a candy store,” Stromberg says.
Then there was his first movie. Fueled by two years of ever increasing cocaine use, he produced a surprisingly successful picture called “Car Wash” with Richard Pryor. The money poured in.
After that came a spectacular flop, and it finally brought him down. It was a movie called “The Fish that Saved Pittsburg.” which was, in his words, “conceived and written in one rollicking night of gluttonous coke snorting.”
Bankrupt in every way, he went home.
“Virtually broke,” he said, “I moved back into the house I was raised in. A forty year old failed big shot living with his parents.”
It took a few more years, but the end finally came with a 12-Step meeting.
His wild ride, Stromberg reflects, “…Started out as great fun. For someone shy like me, drugs made me bigger and bolder. Eventually drugs and alcohol got the best of me. The fun became depravity…I crashed and burned but the will to survive took over. I was given the greatest gift I’d ever received. Sobriety. And with it came a new life.”
When last we talked, Gary was running a small public relations firm on the west coast. He shares his experience, strength and hope in front of audiences like the Wolfe Street Center in Little Rock with the expectation that it will keep him clean and sober and change some lives. He’s well into recovery now, thanks, he says, to a “higher power” he chooses to call “God.”
But the book is mainly about his celebrity friends and their stories, and here is a sampling:
Remember lyricist, composer and actor Paul Williams?
A misplaced decade
Williams said, “You know you’re an alcoholic when you misplace a decade.” And he was one. Big time.
When you consider this Oscar—Grammy—and Golden Globe award winning songwriter turned out “We’ve Only Just begun,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” “Rainbow Connection,” and “Evergreen” during part of this time, you marvel.
Williams said, “The fast track to my bottom was cocaine. I was using it every day—an eight ball a day by the end of the eighties. A lot of money. But what it cost me was nothing compared to what it cost me.”
When he got sober, Williams began visiting prisons and serving on boards like the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
Grace Slick, who fronted the Jefferson Airplane band, now clean and sober, is matter of fact about her recovery. “What keeps me from drinking now,” she says, “is that drugs and alcohol don’t work anymore. Alcohol makes me a jerk, pot makes me paranoid, and I’m already wired to the tits, so I can’t use cocaine.”
Slick started going to 12-Step meetings in 1976 and loved them. “I thought they were fabulous,” she says, “because all the religions I’d been aware of had guys with funny outfits on, and you had to pay them a lot of money. And one person was holier than everybody else…this (AA) reminds me of early Christianity.”
Then there’s Richard Pryor. Pryor was too sick for taping near the end of his life, and Stromberg pulled together material from other sources and from his own recollections of their long friendship and sent it to him for his approval.
The result is far more profane and less satisfying than the 20 other pieces, but the last paragraph (editor’s “bleeps” provided) offers a wistful message.
“I get scared when I’m out on stage sometimes. I want to run. If I had some drugs I wouldn’t give a bleep. But then I come off stage, and I still wouldn’t give a bleep. Then by the time you’re fifty, you’ve had a lot of don’t give a bleeps. You miss a big part of your life that way.”
Leave a Reply