Nothing salacious or scandalous to report from the Al tours, it's pretty much all business out there for us. But one incident in 1987 sticks out, partly because it happened to me, but mostly because it spawned something in the show that stuck with us for many years.
On tour opening for the Monkees, we were using video quite heavily to fill time during costume changes. No Jumbotron for us, it was a projector on a white screen. We were mostly in theaters, and had a contingency for outdoor shows where it was still light out (during the summer) and we couldn't use the video. In those few instances, we would use a bad/stupid drum solo while Al & the rest of the band changed, then we'd transition into "Living With A Hernia (parody of James Brown "Living In America".) But as of the first few dates of the tour, we didn't have the opportunity to try it out, which was fine with me - I can only be stupid for so long.
Well, the night of July 4, the bass player and I were messing around batting a balloon back & forth at close range. I hit his hand with my left hand, pretty hard, and hurt my hand pretty good. In fact, I went to a clinic the next day and they determined I had sprained my thumb and possibly two fingers.
Well, wouldn't ya know it, the very next show was outdoors at Red Rocks near Denver, and I would have to do a solo at the prescribed time in the set. Playing was hard enough, but I wasn't about to needless abuse my hand with extra fireworks. After, it was supposed to be a deliberately stupid solo, not just bad because I was injured (there's a difference!)
So, in order to enable the costume change, Al decided to write out a James Brown style intro for me to read, so that I wouldn't injure my hand beyond the abuse it was already going to be taking. It was one of those "Ladies and gentleman, would you please welcome... the godfather of soul!" and the band would do a stab. "The man who puts more strut in your stuff" STAB! "More glide in your stride" STAB! etc etc.
Anyway, the bit got such a great response and was infinitely more appropriate that a drum solo, so we kept it... for like 20 years! It was eventually used to occasionally introduce "Fat" (hey, Michael Jackson... James Brown... same idea.) One of those happy accidents, except that it happened to me!
BTW, about 6 weeks after the tour, my hand finally healed.
Bermuda