Road Cage

When Rex arrived in Marin mid to late 60’s, he was led over to Mickey Hart’s ranch in Novato. Mickey had this one horse with an attitude, most saw it as very dangerous, virtually un-ridable, loco…When one made the sightest attempt to approach this horse, it just went ballistic. Jackson heard about it and said, “Show me the horse.” Not well known outside of Pendleton was the fact that Rex possessed the rare quality of being a true horse whisperer. They don’t advertise.

Within minutes, he had that pony nuzzling up to him. Strange, mysterious to us but true.

THEN, we went overseas for the GD’s Europe 72 tour to open for them. The culmination was 4 days at the Lyceum theater in London. Everybody was having a ball, a celebration of our time together, sort of a milestone at that - conquering a foreign crowd and all. Backstage, there were some problems: seems like some irate Brit kids, four or five tough guys were creating a ruckus in the alley behind the stage. At certain loading docks, there are these sliding doors, they were hung on thick wire cables, steel rollers on these immense, steel doors. There were fashioned to slide sideways. Balanced, sort of… These doors were about 4 feet wide, impregnable but when banged on, they made a helluva noise! These street fucks were protesting their banishment by beating on them while the Dead were in the middle of their performance.

I was sitting on a stairway just to the left of the stage and was privy to the disturbance. Jackson jumped right into the problem, yelling through the door that if they didn’t ‘quit it’, there would be trouble. Well - so what, they must have thought - one crew guy, four of them and these HUGE fucking doors!!

Jackson stretched out his arms as if to measure the possibility of accessing these punks. His wingspan was just about the right size. He bent slightly at the knees, gripped the edges of the door and heaved! Up, and off the tracks, came that monster door. He carried the piece of steel sideways about two feet!!

The punks outside were frozen, watching this superhuman display from the other side of the door - they were speechless. Apoplexy? It might have occurred to one or two of them that given this incredible thing had just happened and now, there was nothing separating (protecting) them from the Beast who lifted this massive piece of metal! Duh…

Rex took stock of their hopeless position, stepped out into the alley and beat the living shit out of 3 of ‘em. The rest of the Lyceum security jumped into the slaughter and finished off these peckerwoods. Jackson just turned back around to the stage, sort of brushing his hands together as one would when a chore has been completed. Unforgettable…

I think I remember him almost cracking a smile.

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