December 7, 1982
unknown venue
Rome, New York, U.S.A.

I saw two other gigs [after November 27, 1982] that winter in Rome and Rochester, New York. My friends and I were calling ourselves "Fingerheads" and Tom & Bob picked up on this. Mike was a little on the curt side but answered all of my questions (such as why Pete Ham sang "It Had To Be" on No Dice -"I preferred his voice"). He kept pretty close to the road manager and apart from Tom and Bob Jackson.

Tom was quiet and soft-spoken and, though a fair amount of drinking was going on; he certainly never revealed any negative aspects of his personality. He scrawled a ribald message on the cover of my Iveys Maybe Tomorrow album, signed an Apple cassette of Straight Up, and revisited the songbooks, blackening the teeth and an eye on a full-page photo of himself and writing "Wish He Was Here" on Pete Ham's picture.

At one of the New York gigs, I asked him whether he thought Joey would rejoin the band. He said he didn't think so, but mentioned that Joey had"visited them" the night before (this must have been the episode where Reed's and Donnie's guitars were doused with beer). I had heard this anecdote from someone else. The way I heard it is that Reed said "Those are vintage guitars!" with Joey responding "Well, if they're vintage, then they've already had a lot of beer spilled on them."

Bob Jackson could not have been nicer. I recognized his name from a Trouser Press article, so I knew that he had joined the original band for the final tour and had played on the unreleased Warner Brothers album [Head First]. After reading the book, I can't believe the kind of stress the band was under at that time. While some of the shows on the tour may have had lapses in professionalism, the three I saw were great.

Marty Cocca

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