A long gig in 1976

In 1976 I played at the Top of The Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, at that time one of the most prestigious hotels in South Africa.
I'll never forget walking through the foyer and approaching the lifts and before your finger was even near the button you would receive the most painful static electric shock! So much for expensive hotel carpets.
And this was before you were to start playing the piano - with shocked fingers. After this had happened a few times I would hang around the elevator until someone else pressed the button and they could get zapped.
Amazingly I was never late for the gig even if it meant waiting a while for some poor unsuspecting guest. I sometimes wandered what the receptionists thought of this long haired musician lurking around the foyer.
In those days my hair was half way down to my waist and of course being the Carlton, they wanted the "correct image" and told me to cut my hair - wrong thing to "tell" a 20 year old up and coming Rock Star what to do with his hair. I needed the money and the work so I cut it a little bit.
Not enough! boomed the General Manager and also the Band Leader who was so far up the G.M.'s you know what, that he never saw daylight.
So I agreed to wear my hair in a ponytail, with a velvet band to tie it up in.
Post 1990, lawyers etc. wore their hair in ponytails, but in 1976 if you wore your hair in a ponytail there would be a few raised eyebrows and you were regarded as having questionable sexual preferences.
Apart from having the most cheesy repertoire one could imagine, the band also backed cabaret.
Now as in all fields of the arts there is good and there is bad. With the cabaret artists that came over from England and the U.S. there were also two categories - bad and absolute rubbish.
These were the acts that were working the B circuit overseas, coming out here, earning big money and thinking they were Sinatra or Bassey!
One of the first acts that I encountered was this woman who had a voice that could stop an army at five thousand paces. Her finale number was a piece called Jerusalem - not the Emerson, Lake and Palmer version needless to say.
She presents everyone with the music, I look at the chart and the introduction chords are the most complicated I'd ever seen. I didn't know you could fit that many dots on a page.

I can read music, but this was something else. There are players who'll take one look and play the piece straight away. Not me - I was more interested in learning the intro to Jon Lord's Lazy.
So I took my pencil and started to write guidelines next to the chords so I could figure out what they were. 
This voice, that would make fingernails on a chalk board desirable says, what do you think you're doing?
I'm just putting some guidelines in, I say.
You are defacing my music she screams, and demands that the General Manager is called immediately.
Giving the word humility a different meaning, I am told by the G.M., the Band Leader and this Sow, that my Hammond Organ playing is good, but my Piano playing needs a lot of practice.

I hated it and stuck it out for 8 months.
New Year's Eve 1976 and we are backstage and Anton, my dear friend and also the Bass Player (with longer hair than mine) says, it's New Year's Eve, why don't you scrap the ponytail and "let your hair down"?
So I did.
I get on stage and the Band Leader (how I detest that expression) says, where's your ponytail?
I say, come on it's New Year's Eve.
He says, either you put your hair in a pony tail right now or else you can F... Off out of my band!
I say, are you serious?
He says, either you put your hair in a pony tail right now or else you can F... Off out of my band!

I switch off the Hammond, pack up my Violin etc. and left, with threats of 'you'll never work in this city again' echoing in my ears.
Down in the foyer the cabaret artist had just arrived (one of the better ones).
A: Hello Gordon, where are you going?
Me: I've just been fired!
A: What about my act?
Me: Speak to the Band Leader!
Took a taxi back to my flat in Hillbrow and spent a very quiet New Year's Eve.

To be continued ...