'My Mentor, My Teacher'

I met Jerry Wexler in New York City on Dec. 11, 1967, the day after Otis Redding had died. A self-described "vehement Jewish atheist," he might have called our encounter a mitzvah. For me, plunged into despair and confusion, after being in the studio with Otis all the previous week, at Stax Records in Memphis, Tenn., as he recorded "Dock of the Bay," it was nothing short of a miracle.  Indeed, our meeting saved my life, as Jerry was to do, over and over, in the 40-plus years of our friendship.

Yet on introduction, I had no idea who he was, though I certainly knew of his partners at Atlantic Records, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun. I had been listening to the company's artists since I was 12, thus I also knew its catalog—almost by heart.

That day in the studio in New York, Ahmet, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, leaned over the console with a man dressed in a casual blue jacket, as Vanilla Fudge's plaint "And you don't really love me, you just keep me hangin' on" filled the air. "I like that record a lot," I said, gladder than I could express to have something else to think about. "It's got that heavy bass sound, but it's a cute little pop number." Noticing for the first time that I was in the room, the man in the blue jacket turned to me and then said to Ahmet, "Hey. He understands." That was Jerry. The next thing I knew, we were talking about Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, two of my literary heroes. He understood.

We got to know each other quickly and well. He seemed— though he would have scoffed at the notion—sent from God to be my guide through dark times; my mentor, my teacher, my rebbe.

In 1969, during a deranged Thanksgiving weekend in New York City, while I was on tour with the Rolling Stones—a tour that would end with the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter, at the hands of the Hell's Angels at The Altamont Festival, less than two weeks later—Jerry invited me to his house in East Hampton for their holiday dinner. His wife, Shirley, served an elegantly cooked goose. His mother and his children, Lisa, Paul and Anita, were there. Horribly sleep-deprived and underfed—and only slightly stoned—I feasted, and fell in love with his family. Magritte paintings floated on the walls. By dessert, I thought I was in heaven.

Hell followed, and continued, long after Altamont. Under contract to write a biography of the Stones, I worked with painful slowness back home in Memphis, and then got the idea that I could work better in Miami, where Jerry had a second house. On the verge of a break with Atlantic Records, he had moved there to set up Criteria Studios, thinking he could create a more leisurely existence; one that combined making records with playing golf. It was a disaster. The house band, the Dixie Flyers—mostly transplanted Memphians—was at one point reduced to digging up Sam the Sham's backyard by car headlights, trying to figure out where they had hidden their drugs. Jerry eventually threw up his hands, as if hearing Bob Dylan's "I'm goin' back to New York City, I do believe I have had enough" running through his head. I retreated back to Memphis.

In the summer of 1972, Jerry and I went to the Newport-New York Jazz Festival, where we heard Duke Ellington, Roland Kirk and other great players. It was a high point of our friendship. Then we joined the Stones, who were by this time signed with Atlantic, on tour, taking an ounce of cocaine along for the ride. Which was, considering the delay in writing my book, and my other problems, way too much. I fled.

1975 was better. Jerry introduced me to Etta James. Shortly thereafter, he broke with Atlantic for good, and began a career as an independent producer with the likes of Dire Straits, George Michael, Carlos Santana, Linda Ronstadt, and most famously, Dylan. As many have pointed out, when Dylan received his first Grammy for best male rock performance in 1979, he thanked God, then Jerry, in that order.