Knight Moves: The K J Knight Story

© Copyright 2011 K J Knight.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4269-5637-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-5638-6 (e)

Trafford rev. 02/08/2011

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North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

phone: 250 383 6864 fax: 812 355 4082

This book is dedicated to the people of Detroit,

past, present, and future.

Detroit people: My kind of people.

I am the author of myself.

—William Shakespeare—

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One: Getting Started

Chapter Two: Early Knightriders

Chapter Three: Criminal Mischief

Chapter Four: The Infamous Knightriders

Chapter Five: Mentors

Chapter Six: Freak Flags

Chapter Seven: The Case of E T Hooley

Chapter Eight: Day and Night

Chapter Nine: The Big Time and The Amboy Dukes

Chapter Ten: Survival Of The Fittest

Chapter Eleven: Nuge Redux

Chapter Twelve: The Descent of The Fallen Angels

Chapter Thirteen: Lost in the Struggle

Chapter Fourteen: New Beginnings

Chapter Fifteen: Back Home Again

Chapter Sixteen: The Pelicans

Chapter Seventeen: The Bad Boys

Chapter Eighteen: Trouble

Chapter Nineteen: The Murder of Rusty Day

Chapter Twenty: Don’s Demise

Chapter Twenty One: Fast Forward

Extra Special Thanks To:

In Memoriam

Bernard Pivot’s Questionnaire…as seen on Bravo’s

Inside The Actors Studio.

Acknowledgements

A special loving thank you to my wife, Connie, for

supporting me in writing this book and balancing my life.

Thanks to my sons, Kenny and Michael. I am so proud of both of you.

Much thanks to my mother, Eleanor Mills, for her unconditional love.

I’m forever grateful to my longtime pal and gambling buddy John Coury. Thank you for your invaluable and insightful editorial assistance with this manuscript.

I also wish to extend a heartfelt thanks to Steve Ethridge for his suggestions, feedback, and editing skills. His fingerprints can be found all over this book.

Further thanks go to my old and dear friends, Sonny Cingolani, Garry Red Pie Reese, and Mike Nardone for their input and contributions to this work.

I want to give a special thanks to Marc Schwartz for encouraging me to take on this book project in the first place.

In addition, my deep gratitude goes to Ted Nugent. Thanks for giving me my fifteen minutes of fame.

Introduction

1970, Montreal Forum: The place was packed; more than 17,000 strong. To wind up a blistering set of high energy Detroit-style rock and roll, Ted Nugent, clad in a skintight white fringe jumpsuit and a studded leather belt, leaned back against his towering stack of Fender amps and his Byrdland guitar let loose with a series of sustained high-pitched screams. From behind my drums I moved toward Ted, picked up his microphone stand, and falling to one knee, held the microphone about six inches from his face, and then he roared:

Now, our ears are one; our ears are married; may they melt together to the ends of the eeeeeaaaaarth.

Following the choreographed moment, I returned to my seat behind the drums. Nugent began his search for the ultimate note, and when he found it the ear piercing squeal produced was like that of a siren sounding a warning signal. We hit our lengthy closing chord and a wall of sound came at the audience with the force of a 300 mph F5 Tornado.

As we thrashed through our finale, I grabbed my hi-hat stand with cymbals attached and started twirling it around over my head like a baton. In a frenzy, I got too close to our bass player, Greg Arama, and smacked him right in the forehead with the spinning hi-hat stand, cymbals and all. Blood was streaming down Greg’s face; nonetheless, undeterred, he kept right on playing. I didn’t skip a beat either and hurled my hi-hat out into the crowd, cymbals rotating wildly like flaming sabers. Then I turned my crash cymbal and stand upside down, stepped onto the cymbal, and started hopping on it like a pogo stick.

Simultaneously, Ted set his guitar down against his amps and with the feedback blaring; he took a running head first dive off the ten-foot high stage and disappeared into a foreign universe of French Canadian stoners. Following suit, I flipped my crash cymbal out into the crowd as if it was a Frisbee. The house lights had been turned on and as I looked up and across the stunned masses I reared back and mightily spear-chucked my cymbal stand into the throng.

Suddenly without warning, Dave Leggett, a backstage roadie, decided to get into the act. He came bolting out on to the stage, picked-up my bass drum with sharp metal spurs and two mounted toms attached, and tossed it out into the crowd. Almost as if part of the show, the entire bass drum apparatus landed on several cowering fans.

Greg Arama and our keyboard player, Andy Solomon, had since left the stage, and all that remained was me, standing alone on a barren drum riser, arms raised like a victorious warlord.

Our part of the concert had come to an end, and as I was making my way backstage, I noticed that the Grand Funk Railroad, who were scheduled to go on next and who had been watching our show, were huddled tightly together with arms frantically flailing in a panic. As I passed, one of them took a step toward me and said, That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen! Unaffected by this, I just smiled, said Good luck, and kept walking. I knew they just didn’t want to follow us.

When I got back to our dressing room, our road manager, Phil Nicholson, informed me that several people in the audience had been injured and, as a precaution, three of them had been taken by ambulance to the hospital for treatment. He added that Arama was also going to the hospital because he needed stitches for the gash in his face, and that I should go with him. Phil mentioned too that the promoter of the concert was holding back payment for our performance because he was concerned that injured concertgoers might file lawsuits against him.

I went to the hospital with Arama and while I was sitting there in the waiting room, I was approached by a young fan that had been at the concert and recognized me. He had a gauze bandage wrapped around the top of his head and was holding a bent cymbal stand in one hand and a felt pen in the other. He said to me That was the greatest show I’ve ever seen, and asked me to autograph the stand.

One day earlier, before leaving for Montreal, Nugent, as an act of appreciation for my dedication and hard work, had bought me a new set of custom made mahogany wood Ludwig drums, which were ordered through Al Nalli Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and due to arrive over the next few days. Ted and I decided that at the end of our performance at the Forum, to add to the excitement of our show, I’d dismantle my soon-to-be-replaced set of drums, a la Keith Moon, and toss pieces of the set into the crowd for souvenirs. It never occurred to us that anyone would get hurt.

Despite the fact that a few who attended our performance that night suffered bumps, cuts, and bruises, no one was seriously injured and no lawsuits were ever filed against us or the promoter of the concert.

Three months later, we returned to Montreal, and found that rock fans who had attended our concert at the Forum were still abuzz about our onstage antics. Following a sound check at the venue where we were performing that evening, the backers of the event presented us with a large concert poster. On the poster, under the name, The Amboy Dukes, was a picture of me, standing onstage at the Forum with a cymbal stand clenched in my fist. I must say that I was totally blown away by this gesture of recognition and felt extremely honored.

Chapter One: Getting Started

I was fourteen years old when I saw The Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on our RCA black and white console TV set. From then on, all I wanted to do was to play an instrument and be in a band. My family was upper middle class and lived in Westland, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. My father, Donald William Mills (who I often referred to as Don) was a musician who played drums. When he was in the service during WWII, he played in the Navy band where he was stationed. He could read music and was extremely adept at playing drum rudiments and Latin beats. He was also good with brushes. He owned two sets of Ludwig drums and kept one set in our basement. I asked my dad if he would teach me how to play the drums and he pretty much blew me off. But I was determined and I kept badgering him about lessons, until one day he finally broke down and bought me a rubber practice pad and a heavy pair of sticks and attempted to show me some drum fundamentals. I tried but couldn’t comprehend what he was saying or doing, and after about ten minutes he lost his patience with me and gave up.

So I taught myself how to play. The first thing I did was throw that damn practice pad in the trash. Then I simply sat down at the drum set and played along with my portable transistor radio, eventually learning how to play by ear. Once I got the hang of it, and was able to master a few basic beats and a fill or two, I got together with some other young musician wannabes around my age in the local area and we formed a band.

My first group was The Stingers, and in addition to me, the band consisted of two young neighborhood friends, Lee Huntley and Al Zsenyuk. Lee sang lead vocals and played guitar (some lead but mainly rhythm), and Al sang backup vocals and played bass. We also had Jack McCarthy, a classmate, who answered to the nickname of Toad, on lead guitar. We mostly played Beatles songs and were reputed to look adorable in our matching blue velour sweaters. We played at a couple of after-school functions at Whittier Junior High School in Livonia and at a few Friday afternoon parties at frat houses on campus at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. None of us were old enough to have a driver’s license and so our mothers drove us and our equipment to and from the places where we played.

My mother, Eleanor Simmers Mills, was an attractive woman who bore a striking resemblance to Jacqueline Kennedy. She was a stay-at-home housewife with no formal employment skills, but she did possess a natural talent for sewing and knitting. She was shy and reserved yet very supportive of me and my endeavors. To be honest, I really don’t remember much else about my mom during my early years. Throughout my childhood my dad was the center of my world.

I was an only child. My father was an only child, and his father was an only child. Don was self-employed and worked out of our residence. He had made a niche for himself in the collection business by conducting Asset Investigations and Skiptrace Investigations for Insurance Companies and Law Firms. He made a good living at it and our family lived well. He was also the leader of a small dance band and played on the weekends at weddings, parties, and local nightclubs. His group was named the Don Mills Trio and featured his friend Joe Oddo. Joe played stand-up bass and sang lead vocals. In the early sixties they cut a 45-rpm demo record on the Viscount label. On the A side was an original song entitled Sick, Sick, Sick, Cha, Cha, Cha, and on the flip side they covered the old standard Chicago.

Don was a portly man, who was sensitive about his oversized physique—so much so that in an attempt to deflect disparaging remarks, he was quick to make fun of himself before anyone else could take a shot at him. He often referred to himself as L. A. (Lard Ass) or Willie the Whale.

My old man had more than his share of faults, and among other things, was a con artist and a compulsive gambler. He would bet on most anything because he loved the action, but he believed that to beat the odds he needed an edge, or in other words, he needed to cheat. He used to have his uncles, Jimmy, Orville, and Reds, over for Friday night poker parties, and scam them by playing with marked decks of cards. When I turned twelve he let me join in on the action. Together, my old man and I swindled the relatives out of hundreds of dollars. I guess you could say that it was one of our first bonding experiences.

We lived close by the Hawthorne Valley golf course and bowling alley, and Pops liked to go there and bowl for money, but I’m talking big money, like a hundred dollars a game. He bowled with a twenty-pound

ball that he had specially made up for him (the legal weight limit was, and still is, sixteen pounds). Sometimes he would team up with an unseen accomplice who would hide at the end of the alley off to the side behind the pins with a black hanger in hand. When my dad would loft his ball down the alley and make contact with the head pin, at that exact same moment, his accomplice would use the hanger to tip over either the seven pin or ten pin, greatly increasing my father’s chances of getting a strike. Don used to bowl with some pretty shady characters, and if they had ever caught him running this con, they surely would have exacted their pound of flesh.

Occasionally, my father took me with him to the lanes, and let me bowl for money against his gambling cronies. I had about a 145 average, and Don would get his friends to spot me 50 pins and have me bowl them for twenty-five bucks a game.

My old man loved playing the horses, and he spent a lot of time at DRC (Detroit Race Course). Many people have pleasant memories of the first time their mom or dad ever took them to a professional baseball game, but for me, my fondest memory is the first time my dad took me with him to the track. It was a very bright, sunny day, and as my father and I sat high up in the grandstands, amid a collection of racetrack oddballs, I was giddy with anticipation, dizzy with the scent of cherry pipe tobacco lingering in the air. I was just thirteen years old and found that I was fascinated by the speed and sound of the thoroughbred horses thundering down the track, mounted by miniature men wearing colorful silks. It was a thing of beauty.

For the