Crash!
A dark and Stormy Night Leads Weary Musicians Down a Near Tragic Path.. Article written by Dave Salwitz Back to Cover
It was late on a cool night in the ________
Pacific Northwest. I found myself on a dark, long and winding road (don’t say it!). The rain was coming down hard and pelted the windshield with big drops that sounded like bacon frying in a very hot pan—lots of popping. I strained to keep my eyes open as the wipers strained against the oncoming rain and wind. I kept the conversation going with Roger not just to keep me awake; but to keep him awake as well. In these situations, it’s not good _
for the person riding shotgun to fall asleep.
Everything had gone well at the gig. I remember that we were all pretty happy with our performance and the crowd response. Packing and loading up was a happy task that night. It’s easier to ignore fatigue when you’ve had a good night.
I had been using my dad’s small Toyota truck to move my gear around _______
between rehearsals, home, and gigs. It had an aluminum canopy that did a good job of keeping the water off the gear. Overall, the truck was in very good shape and I felt privileged to use it.
My dad was a pretty cool guy. He was the only one in the family who really understood my passion for music. I loved him for that. He also understood that being in a band was very cool and playing gigs was even cooler. Most adults figured that musicians were crazy, stoned, and going nowhere in life. After all, what could come from it? You certainly couldn’t make a living at it but my dad understood me and instinctively knew that wasn’t the point.
OK. They were right about the being stoned part.
Being the cool guy that he was, it was easy for me to talk my dad into loaning me his truck to move my gear around for rehearsals and gigs. He would later come to realize that this might not have been such a good idea after all. __
Neither of us knew it at the time; but there was a Gig from Hell looming just around the corner.
The year was 1977. I was getting ready to turn twenty and was playing bass and guitar for my third band; a great old Pacific Northwest Band called Mantis. This was the first really unique band I was in that was in terms of talent and musical tastes. I was privileged to play with two of the finest musicians around, the amazing lead guitarist David Bartley and keyboard player extraordinaire, Roger Halvorson (more about these guys in just a moment).
I was young and had been bitten by the dream. If I wasn’t practicing, rehearsing, or performing, I was driving in between. When I wasn’t wearing my bass, I visualized what it would be like to be on tour, playing music for thousands of people. I felt immortal.
Mantis played the high school and college circuit, as most local bands did back then. Just like today, local rock __
bands of the 1970s wanted to play the best venues in town. Many Seattle Eastsiders will remember the famous Lake Hills Roller Rink in Bellevue, WA which hosted the best all-city dances around. If you were playing at Lake Hills, you had pretty much made it as far as we were concerned.
The coolness factor of the roller rink, however, wasn’t just an acquired reputation as THE place to go see bands on the Eastside. There was a more important reason why local musicians wanted to play there. The roller rink had earned a well deserved reputation in the 1960s and early 1970s by hosting the best of Seattle’s local bands and by hosting some of the best known national and international bands of their time.
Over the years, Lake Hills Roller Rink featured such well known acts as Norman Greenbaum (Spirit In The Sky), Jerry Lee Lewis, The Kingsmen, Merilee Rush and the Turnabouts, Moby Grape, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Sam The Sham and ___
the Pharaohs, Sugarloaf (Green Eyed Lady), Tower of Power, The Turtles (Happy Together), and evenThe Who.
In the 1970s, Lake Hills Roller Rink hosted a who’s who of Pacific Northwest bands including Blue Mountain Eagle, Child (Tim Turner, Guitar; Mike Derosier, Drums), Chinook (Gary Shelton, Bass) Heart, Mantis (Dave Bartley, Guitar); Rail and Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Robert Puff, Woodwinds/Guitar; Larry Tuttle, Bass). Many Seattle musicians who have been around a long time will likely recognize some of the names noted here as representing some of the best musicians the Northwest has ever seen. That’s why local Seattle 1970s bands wanted to play at Lake Hills Roller Rink. That—and the girls, of course.
Boy, those were the days!
But, here’s the thing. If you wanted to play all-city dances at venues like Lake Hills Roller Rink, you had to pay your dues playing high-school dances _
at venues like Lake Hills Roller Rink, you had to pay your dues playing high-school dances in small Washington towns like Forks, Raymond, Concrete, Burlington, Roosevelt, Marysville, and of course, Sequim (go look at a map!).
Traveling an hour or two to small-town high schools wasn’t that bad really. The audiences were always appreciative to have a Seattle band come to town. The shows where you had to take a ferry to far-away towns where the cafés were filled by drunk loggers who hated “long-hairs” and weren’t afraid to tell you—those were the tough shows.
The Barn (as it was called) was a somewhat well-known venue to local musicians in the seventies. Located about 65 miles northwest of Seattle, The Barn was the place in town where intoxicated-under-age-men-with-automobiles—their collective name—could go see a rock band play their favorite radio hits. As one might expect on a Friday night, intoxicated-under-age-men-with-automobiles often found themselves surrounded by
soon-to-be-intoxicated-underage-women-without-automobiles. It is of little surprise of course that the drunker subset of these women had a greater reputation; locally known as intoxicated-under-age-women-soon-to-find-themselves-naked-in-the-back-seat-of-a-Camaro.
I remember that the crowd at The Barn enjoyed our eclectic combination of rock hits. We were the only Top 40 cover band around that covered songs by Led Zeppelin, The Who, Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Heart, Styx, Yes, and Genesis back-to-back in the same set! We often wondered if this was going to be the night we would get booed out of town for not playing Cat Scratch Fever. Fortunately, this never happened.
This is about the extent of what I remember about the performance itself.
The drive home on the other hand is still crystal clear in my mind. This was the night that I nearly died; and nearly took with me one of my closest friends
of all time, Mantis keyboard player, Roger Halvorson. As I think back on that fateful night, images of James Dean, Buddy Holly, and Lynyrd Skynyrd pop into my head. That and broken glass everywhere; and equipment in the drink...oh, and the screaming. But I digress...
The problem with playing at The Barn wasn’t really that you had to take a ferry. The problem with playing at The Barn was its proximity to the ferry dock; just under an hour away in good weather.
The show ended at midnight and the last ferry back to town was at 1:55 AM. After that, there were no ferries running until about 6:20 on Saturday morning. As usual, no one was looking forward to sitting in a cold car for three hours trying to sleep so we rushed to tear down, pack up, and make the hour drive to catch the last ferry of the night.
Now, as all veteran Weekend Musicians know, it takes about an hour to pack up a band, load everything up _
(including the PA and lights), and get back on the road. Hmm…let’s do the math. If the show ends at midnight, it takes an hour to pack up, and the last ferry leaves at 1:55... Well, it doesn’t take a math wizard to know that the timing is going to be tight. Of course, being immortal, we just took this as a challenge. Certainly, I never expected to be waiting all night at the ferry dock with a broken rib and a very large hematoma on my left shin.
By 12:45, fatigue was beginning to set in as we packed up. None of us were moving with great speed. There were nervous glances at the clock as we tried to hurry. I remember a short discussion about whether or not we could really make it. I’m not sure, but it may have been me that suggested we should just go for it. If so, boy was I stupid!
I packed a bunch of gear into my dad’s small Toyota truck. My gear included an Ampeg classic SVT stack, my Gibson Ripper bass, and my prized Moog Taurus Bass Pedals. Packed in with my gear was Dave’s early 1960s
vintage Gibson ES 335 and his Ampeg VT-22 amp. That’s a lot of stuff for a small Toyota truck with an aluminum canopy! It was 1:05 AM and we decided to go for it. We would all be home in our warm beds by 3:30. So we thought.
It had been raining all night and the shoulders of the road were covered in a thick mud that had a sticky quick sand sort of quality. It was the kind of mud that could suck the shoe right off your foot on the first step in your attempt to light-foot it across; resulting of course in a cold wet sock full of mud that you would never actually consider putting back in your shoe.
Dave’s parents’ camper van was out in front. Roger and I were following second in my dad’s truck. The rest of the band and roadies (oh, yes we had roadies!) were in a couple of other cars bringing up the rear.
My last recollections before climbing out of the wrecked truck: I was talking to Roger. We were going about 45 MPH (As it turns out, this is way too ___
fast for a loaded down Toyota pickup driving next to a muddy shoulder!). Though the rain had let up for the most part, there was still a lot of water on the road and mist continued to cover the windshield giving the intermittent wipers a good workout.
Just as I was thinking that it might be a good idea to slow down, I hit one of those little grooves in the road that get worn into the pavement by larger and wider vehicles. The groove had a small pool of water in it and the hydroplane effect was immediate. I noticed that I was on the edge of the muddy shoulder. At this point, it was all over but the going-out-of-control-and-crashing part.
I felt the rear of the truck fishtail slightly. I remember turning slightly into the skid. For a fleeting moment, I thought I had regained control, but it was already too late. The truck continued to fishtail from one side to the other. Visually, everything went into slow motion (yeah, that really does happen). Just then, I thought I had seen another car’s headlights in __
the oncoming lane. Fortunately, the other car was quickly gone and we avoided the head-on accident.
As the truck spun out of control, I could see that we had crossed over into the oncoming lane and were heading to the other shoulder. As we slid off the other side of the road, I remember Roger and I uttering the same word in unison: Sh_ _!
The truck stopped spinning when it hit the gravel on the other side of the road and began to slide sideways down a short embankment. We rolled only once. I’m positive that if the embankment had been any deeper, we would have been killed; our heads and necks crushed as the truck mashed us into the muck.
As the rolling slowed, the truck slammed down slowly onto its wheels—right-side-up. I remember asking Roger, “Are you OK?”
“I think so.”
I could feel the open air on my face. The next thing I remember is climbing __
out of the truck unable to see. My sight had been temporarily knocked out of me. I had this sense that the exit was up and out. I didn’t even try opening the door.
In the mean time, Dave, seeing this event unfold in his rear-view mirror, turned around and came back. Dick (our drummer) told Dave, who had quite routinely gotten out of his van, that I had crashed. As he and several others ran to see how bad the crash was, Dick looked back in astonishment. Dave slowly closed the door on the van. After it was closed, he calmly put the key into the lock and proceeded to lock the door—presumably for security purposes--before he turned and walked slowly across the street.
By this time, my sight was coming back. It had only been a few seconds since the truck had righted itself. As Roger and I climbed out of the truck, I realized that there was broken windshield everywhere. I was dazed and in shock; quite unaware of the injuries I had received. By the time we
got out, our friends were all around us asking us if we were alright and helping us move clear of the crash. As Dick helped me back up the embankment, I was still dazed. At the top, he told me to turn around. What I saw still haunts me to this day.
I said I was OK and began asking about the equipment. It turns out that we had landed in a drainage ditch with a couple feet of water in it. We were completely soaked. By the time the guys fished the equipment out of the drink, we realized that nearly everything had gotten wet. The real casualties were Dave’s guitar amp, my bass, the SVT cabinet, and my bass pedals; all of which were pretty soaked from the water line down. Fortunately, Dave’s guitar (currently worth a small fortune) was fine.
I made it to the van and sat down on the seat. However, noting the swollen cut above my left eye, folks were still asking me if I was OK. Do you feel dizzy or anything? Over the next few minutes, I realized I was having trouble breathing, but I didn’t feel in any real ___
danger. It felt like my back was out; something with which I already had plenty of experience. I found out later that I had cracked one of my ribs. Fortunately, Roger only had bruised knee and a cut finger.
As I struggled to get comfortable in the seat, I bumped my left leg and nearly hit the ceiling in pain. My left shin hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I pulled the leg of my jeans up and saw something I had never seen before. I later became acquainted with the word, hematoma. Essentially, it was a huge blood-filled bruise under my skin that stood about an inch high and spanned the width and length of my shin. Apparently, my left leg got slammed up against the steering column and this was the result. This was going to take awhile to heal.
It didn’t take long to realize that the cut above my eye occurred when my head banged against the forward-left support post for the roof—just a brief moment before the roof was sheared off. That’s what I had seen minutes before as I climbed up the ___________
embankment. This is when I realized that Roger and I were very lucky to be alive.
My dad was NOT going to be happy. His truck was totaled. But we were still alive.
The police came, questions were asked and an accident report was filled out. I had this sense that the officer had seen the truck and was trying to figure out why there weren’t dead people lying around. I think he felt sorry for me, because I never got a ticket for the accident. I guess he figured I was about to pay dearly anyway. What was the point of giving me a ticket?
The tow truck pulled my dad’s truck out of the ditch and the paramedics cleared me to travel. I remember apologizing to Roger several times. I was just happy that he wasn’t seriously hurt.
It was a long trip home. After all that, we had to wait for the early morning ferry anyway.
I had of course been in shock, which gradually gave way to waves of pain. I don’t remember much between waiting for the ferry and being delivered to emergency room. I only remember the doctor telling me that I had a cracked rib, a massive hematoma on my left shin, and a comparatively minor cut above my left eye. Other than that, I was good.
I also remember my dad looking white as a sheet when he picked me up from the hospital. He was understandably freaked out. I assured Dad that I was going to be OK and apologized for totaling his truck. Amazingly, he was again able to trust me borrowing his truck, but it was years later.
Now, you’d think the story would be over here….almost, but not quite.
A few days later, a wrecking truck showed up with the totaled Toyota truck on its back. As I watched my dad nearly pass out from what he saw, it all came back to me. Now I understood how I climbed out of the truck. The roof was gone; essentially _
torn upward and sticking straight up into the air. The windshield had of course shattered. The truck’s cab looked as if it had been opened by a can opener. It scared the crap out of us.
It took several weeks to recover enough to strap on my bass again. To this day, I have very little feeling in my left shin—unless I bump it against something. Then it hurts like a...well, you know.
We left the soaked equipment in a garage to dry out. It took a few days to get brave enough to plug the amps back in and fire them up. Amazingly, everything still worked. Incredible.
Thirty years later, most of us are still playing music and the members of Mantis manage to stays in touch. Roger is still one of my best friends. I’m really glad that I didn’t kill him.
Amazingly, it still took a while longer for my youthful feeling of immortality to wear off.
Oh, by the way, I lied about the screaming part.
Dave Salwitz
MEET THE WRITER -DAVE SALWITZ
Dave is a long time Seattle resident. Playing since 1974, Dave has performed in bands ranging from progressive rock, classic rock, hard rock, 80's alternative, to some folk rock and blues. Dave currently plays with ARNY in ABOUT FACE and has been a member of Indigo Soul (Oct 2004 - Mar 2006) Influences include Tony Levin, Paul McCartney, Chris Squire, Mike Rutherford, and John Entwistle.
