Thursday, March 26, 2020

I Brought The Great JIMMY MILLER, Traffic/Stones Producer to Medford, Massachusetts in the 1980s

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Good old Jimmy knew how to wind me up.

I loaned him my American Express card so he could secretly go to New York to see his girlfriend ...well, truth be told, one of his girlfriends.   This will all be in the book on "Mr. Jimmy" from "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and what I wanted was my Amex card back.

So I knock on the door at those condo units behind Mayor Lungo-Koehn's office in Wellington and the son, Michael (named after Mick Jagger, truly!) opened the door.  I walk straight into the bedroom where Jimmy and his wife Gere were.

"How dare you walk into a husband and wife's bedroom" Gere said to me.

"Can it, Gere" I replied. "You haven't had sex with him in a decade. I want my Amex card back" (Don't leave homo without it!) 

So Gere was just being Gere and picked up a butcher knife (not like we haven't heard THAT one before) and starts coming at me.  With credit card safely in hand I high-tailed it out of their condo and down the hall.  She started chasing me with knife in hand JUST LIKE NORMAN BATES, my hand on the Bible, she had her hand raised, the knife aimed at me, and starts chasing me down the hall yelling "FAG"...so as I'm running I yell "WHORE" though the sexless Gereldine was hardly a whore it was good copy..."FAG" she raises her voice ..."WHORE" I yell as I get to the elevator..and thank God the elevator was still there from when I took it up to their floor...I get in...the door is closing - her scary face and that knife were raised and she yelled "FAG" and the door was almost shut so I got the final "WHORE" in and --- out of breath, got to the first floor and RAN to my car and got the hell out of Dodge.
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Now Jimmy Miller's mom's birthday was the same day as my mom's birthday, a cosmic connection, and God rest their souls, Jimmy's mom and nana were my pals on the telephone.   So my late girlfriend Jo Jo and I were on the phone when we heard that Gere had passed on or about Dec 19, 1992 ...we did a three way call with Jimmy's mom "Is it true?" (we certainly were not going to ask Jimmy as he knew how we both felt about Gere, Gereldine broke into my home in the summer of 1988 when I was managing the studio of the New Kids on the Block before they were famous.  Gere stabbed Jo Jo in the breast with a screwdriver ...stabbed her ...while in bed with her 3 year old son sleeping...)  So while talking to Jimmy's mom we asked if it was true and Jo Jo starts humming "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead" - which Jimmy's mom didn't mind as she hated her too.  

Jimmy told me "Gere had surgery, somewhere near the stomach area...and we came home with groceries, and she antagonized my mother (now before I get to the punchline, Jimmy's mom was a sweet, kind older woman. It would take a LOT to get her upset in this fashion...just note that, we're talking about Gereldine Miller who stabbed her husband, stabbed her son, stabbed Jo Jo (got a 2 1/2 year sentence for that one, suspended) and tried to stab me.    So Gere obviously upset Jimmy's mom who, as Jimmy related to me grabbed a can of peas from the shopping bag, hurled it at her daughter in law and hit her where her stitches were.  Gereldine purportedly buckled over and, allegedly, Jimmy's mom, quite pleased with herself  yelled "It's True! Ya Gotta Hit Them Where It Hurts!" (Now this is a gentle elder woman...but - obviously - she had had enough with the crazed Gere having stabbed her son and grandchild too.)

GERE ROCK was her real name, she used to date crooner Vic Damone, allegedly drove comedian Lenny Bruce so crazy when she dated him that Bruce jumped out a second story window and allegedly broke both his legs, and she had a sister reportedly just as psycho or MORE psycho!

Jimmy, always trying to wind me up said "The sister is crazier than her, and ONE OF THEM is "certified."   Leaving it hanging in the air that it was possibly Gere who was a certified loon.
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Jimmy's dad was the great Bill Miller, now deceased, whom I only met one time at Jimmy's wake in 1994.    

Bill owned Bill Miller's Riviera  on the cliffs in Jersey overlooking New York if memory serves, where Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis performed, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows as well as Bill's most memorable achievement, bringing Elvis back to Vegas.   Bill Miller saw my work and said to Jimmy "You have a hell of a publicist," very impressed with the press releases.  A great honor for me, to this day.



I Want You Sexually
Produced by Rolling Stones Producer
The Great Jimmy Miller
https://soundcloud.com/joe-viglione/i-want-you-sexually

I WANT YOU SEXUALLY
The song was played on WXKS Kiss-108 (Thanks DJ Ed McMann) in Boston the night before I opened for Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor at the Paradise Theater in Boston.

There are multiple stories here, one is the song itself which is about a threesome that almost but didn't happen. 

I was in a club with a boyfriend at the time and a married guy that he tricked with once was eyeing him. So I went over to the dude and he put his hand on my backside and was interrogating me about my relationship to my b/f/ I then asked him if he wanted a threesome and he said yes. My boyfriend flipped out that I would have the audacity to ask the dude without asking him first and we didn't talk for weeks after that. Ha Ha...and the married guy ran, he didn't walk, he ran! HA HA...then a roommate of mine saw the dude at a bar in Maine - The Front Porch in Ogunquit or Old Orchard Beach or something, I was there of course, and my roommate cruised him and asked if he knew me and he said "He writes dirty songs about me" HA HA...so you know he heard this song. 

THE PRODUCTION 

The second story is about how Jimmy Miller met Phil Greene through me while we were at Bunratty's. Phil gave me free recording time so we practiced two songs for a few months, my original "I Love That Feeling" and a Rolling Stones outtake recently released on the expanded Exile On Main Street, Blood Red Wine. While Phil Greene and drummer Joe Pet were trading samples, and Jimmy Miller suggested we let them have their fun, I wrote this song in the back of the studio (in the band area of the recording studio.) Miller loved it, and he worked his magic with the Boney Maroni riff and neo doo wop girl vocals in the background and he helped me immensely with my Lou Reedy-vocal styling. Amazing production by Jimmy and now I really know how he made those Rolling Stones masterpieces. (C)2018 Joe Viglione ASCAP / Var Music Publishing BMI