DUDEK PT.2
Jim: It's my understanding you were only with Steppenwolf for a couple of weeks. I heard you disappeared after a gig in Las Vegas, I also heard you walked on the tour bus with two bottles of whiskey and that pissed John Kay off. Les, the fans really would like to hear your side of the story.
Les: As I said before, I was with Wolf a little over a month. Yeah, the last gig I did with Wolf was in Las Vegas. Keep in mind, the whole week leading up to the Vegas gig, Kay was trying to cancel the gig the next night after in Aspen Co.. Kay felt it wasn't possible to drive from Vegas to Aspen in that time period. Well, the Aspen people wouldn't hear of it, they were holding Kay to his contract.
Meanwhile, after the show in Vegas I ran into an old friend from LA who wanted to hang out and do some catching up. We ended up going back to his house to hang with his wife and kids. Afterward, my friend didn't want to drive, so he called me a cab to take me back to my hotel. Everything was fine until I noticed that the cab driver was running me around, trying to jack up my cab fare. He kept circling my hotel, but he wouldn't take me there. When he finally did, I simply asked him what he's gonna do about adjusting my bill, for all the unnecessary driving around. Well, he lost it, he wanted to fight me right there in front of the hotel, he knew I busted him. I never told him I wasn't gonna pay him. I just wanted him to know he wasn't fooling me. Right at that time, a bunch of hotel guards grab us both and took us in a back room at my hotel. That's right, this is at my hotel, where I have a room. Next thing I know, I'm being interrogated by a Las Vegas Police Officer. After about an hour of this, the Cop wasn't buying my true story about this cab driver scamming me. So finally the Officer says to me, if you pay the cab driver, we can all forget the whole thing and go home. As I said, I never said I wasn't gonna pay him, well not only did I pay the cab driver his partly scammed cab fare, I also gave him a ten dollar tip. I figured it was worth the show, I learned my lesson never to get in a Vegas cab ever again.
Here's where it really got funky.........After I paid the taxi driver, he took his money, wallet, keys and things and left. Now it's just me and the Cop, so I reached down to the table to collect my property, my wallet, pocket knife, keys etc...The Cop stops me and says, oh, your gonna need to go downtown to the Police Station to collect your property. Then I said to him, you just told me, if I pay the cab driver, we can all go home, (and I'm already in my hotel) and forget this whole thing. So now am I to assume, you want me to get back into a cab and go to the Police Station to collect my property, that is sitting right here in front of me on this table. He responded yes! Well in my mind, I felt like this was a bad call on his part, or he was setting me up for one of those desert ass whippings, that we've all read about. I'm thinking, he's got to be friends with this cab driver. After that, all I said to him was, since your making me get back into a cab to go to the Police Station to collect my property, I'm gonna need your name and your badge number. Which by law, if a citizen asks any law enforcement personnel for their name and badge number, they are required to surrender it to you....I figured if he's gonna make me go downtown to pick up my property, I was gonna have a word with his Sergent or Supervisor about his conduct. Well, he figured I was gonna report him too. He knew he was in the wrong. The next thing I know, he's bending my nose back telling me, I'm high on cocaine and he's arresting me for control substance abuse. I said what the hell are you talking about. It was unbelievable. He put me in handcuffs and busted me for nothing to keep himself out of trouble. Later when I went to court, ALL CHARGES WERE UNFOUNDED AND DROPPED AGAINST ME. The city of Vegas didn't even apologize to me. I lost $30,000 that I would have made with Wolf for the rest of that tour and Stevie Nicks also called me later, wanting me to come out on the road with her, I couldn't do that either cause when she called, was when I had to go to court over the Vegas incident. So I lost over $60,000.00 over a charge that was thrown out of court.
Back to the Wolf thing. So now I'm sitting in jail. They have no evidence against me. I find out, that my bail is $1000.00, all I need to do is get someone to post 10% to get me out, that equates to $100.00. So with my one and only phone call, I call John Kay back at the hotel to tell him what happen to me, and all I need is for someone to come down and pay $100.00 to get me out. Then we can go to Aspen. I figured I'll deal with Vegas later. Well guess what? Not only did John Kay refuse to bail me out of jail, he used the whole ordeal to cancel the Aspen gig. He used me as his patsy. He fired me and told all his buyers he's gonna need two weeks off to work in another guitar player.
There's more but what's the point. For someone who required me to be 100% loyal to him, he didn't do a thing for me when I needed his help. I mean come on John, you could have got me out of jail and taken the $100.00 out of my pay and we wouldn't have even skipped a beat. We could have made that Aspen gig.......... After the way that asshole treated me, he can kiss mine.
Also, to answer your question, I never brought any booze on his bus. I did pull a big poster down, (of a real pretty girl in a bikini), off the wall in one of our dressing rooms and I hung it up in the bus. Everybody but him enjoyed the visual, I heard later that it really offended him. All I can say to that is, I'm sorry Johnny, I didn't know pictures of pretty girls in bikinis offended you. Don't know, guess maybe he doesn't like girls too.
Jim: In your brief stint with Steppenwolf are there any memorable shows that you really enjoyed? I saw you perform with the wolf and you looked like you were really getting into playing "The Pusher."
Les: Boy, you sure are a wolf head. Hope I didn't burst your bubble about the Wolf, on second thought, hope I did. Hopefully, someday we'll do another interview and you'll ask me things about my stuff.
OK, you want to know if I had any memorable shows that I actually enjoyed with Wolf...... Well there were a few but, only one really stands out for two different reasons.... It was in Houston, TX, we played an out door gig with Dave Mason. It was the last time I saw Jim Krueger alive. Jim was back playing guitar with Mason. I didn't even recognize him at first, he had ballooned up so much from the booze, God bless his soul. I remember when the Wolf took the stage, Jim was watching me from the side of the stage with a big shit eaten grin on his face. It felt like he was thinking a thousand thoughts, stuff like, well, it's good to see that your playing again Les and, man we sure had fun with DFK, didn't we. I could just read it all over his face. That's my last memory of my friend and music comrade Jim Krueger, at a friggin' Wolf gig of all places. Jim died in 1993.
Now I told you there were two reasons I liked that gig in Houston with Wolf the best. The second reason has an irony to it. Remember the experience I just told you about in Las Vegas, you know, the run in I had with a Vegas Police Officer. Well, this was like the other side of the coin........At the end of our show in Houston, a Houston Police Officer approached me and started telling me about what a major Wolf fan he's been all his life, I told him I was sorry to hear that. He wanted to know if he could please hang out with me tonight, if I'm planning on going out later in Houston to take in some night life. Well, how could I refuse such a gracious offer from one of Houston's finest. Of course, I told him there is one condition, he said name it. I said, can we take the squad car. He said hell yeah. I said, can I work the siren and the blue lights, he said hell yeah. I said, let's hit it.
Now I don't know if any of you have ever had this opportunity, but I can testify, you haven't lived, until you go titty bar hopping, in a real Police car, with a real Police Officer. Man, we were stopping traffic at intersections so I could jump out in all my leather cloths and wave the tour bus through. People must have thought I was under cover or under the influence, one of the two. I found, you get a lot of attention pulling up to a titty bar with the siren a blaring and the blue lights a flashing. The chicks dig it. Hope that Cop still has his gig, man, we had a blast. And ya know what? Nobody gave us any crap the whole night. Never mind being above the law, I learned, when your with the law, you can pretty much do what ever you want. It's a hell of a free feeling.
Jim: For about the last 20 years there has been no bass player in Steppenwolf, there was no bass player when you were in the band. Was (keyboardist) Michael Wilk that good at filling the void, how did he go about it, how much of their live show was actually pre-programmed (if any), was it hard for you to play with a band that didn't have a bass player?
Les: Well, I already answered most of this question, but I'll be more precise so all your readers can see just what a big rip off a Steppin' Wolf concert really is. Just remember, you asked, so I'll give you the true poop how it was when I played with Wolf.
OK, all the bass guitar parts, all the background vocals, all the keyboard chord pad parts, and all the bass drum and snare drum parts, are all sampled and sequenced. Most of what your hearing is a sampled recording that is linked to a click track, so if your playing or singing along with it, you can stay in time with the recording. At the time I was in Wolf, you couldn't sequence a guitar, otherwise, I'm sure Kay would have hung a guitar on a mannequin to save himself some money on a guitar player.
As for Michael Wilk as a keyboard player, he's an OK player.......... When I was rehearsing with Wolf, getting ready for the road learning all the stuff, I asked Michael, so what happens if all these computers take a dump on a show, what then? Cause I'm the only one who's really playing each song from beginning to the end, I got my parts, what about the rest of you? Michael says, oh, we wing it, he said, I'll play all the bass parts with my left hand and all the chords with my right. I said OK, but what about the drums and all the background vocals. Oh he said, just sing along it will be fine. Well, guess what? We were doing a show in Northern California out in the Red Woods for about 70,000 bikers and you guessed it. His computers took a dump. I just looked back at Mike and said, OK there bud, count it off...... Well, I'm here to testify, we sounded like donkey do do................Well, That's about it, I must admit, it was a real pleasure telling your readers about my experiences with the Wolf and what a bunch of nimrods they truly are.
In closing I'd like to say, to this day, it's been seventeen years now, John Kay and all his clones, never once attempted to apologize to me, for leaving me in jail like a dog. For that, they can all kiss my ass.
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