Last time I was at Heathrow . . .

The last time I flew to England was in January, 1975. I was 24, full of myself, and I was playing baritone in the Stan Kenton Orchestra. It was so long ago that we flew on Pan American out of JFK. The morning was frigid, we played a gig the night before, and I discovered Stan's way of dealing with the stress of transatlantic airplane travel: Get drunk and stay drunk. He'd been drinking all night and we needed to fetch a wheelchair when the bus pulled up to the curb at the airport.

That being said, I had my own windmills to tilt at, because we were traveling on January 29--my 24th birthday. Stan and the road manager, Jack, settled into first class and as we sat down in the crowded Economy cabin, the first round was bought for the celebration of my birth by my bandmates. It would not be the last.

By the time we got to Heathrow, we'd escalated from beer to bloody marys. Eventually I was unable to move. Looking back, I can hardly believe that it was me that needed a wheelchair when we got there. We met Jack, our Cockney bus driver, and Tony, the laughing though menacing when crossed Jamaican who would be our road manager, and headed off into the night to our rooms at the Mayfair Hotel.

Stan's band did 4 weeks in Britain. I never drank another drop until I got off that band.