DEAD BETTY: The Untold Story

preface:

As you may or may not have noticed most tribute shows incorporate the logos, icons, and images of their subjects. When we started this project we did not want to be just another tribute act. Aping the original artist and their shows and trademarks have been done to boredom. We wanted to be something different and we wanted our own brand and thus, DEAD BETTY was born. She is a variation on the Meatloaf theme of the biker riding out of Hell.

 

 

We wanted the show to revolve around the Meatloaf and Jim Steinman themes of Bikes, Chicks, Rock and Roll etc. I wanted to incorporate the early 60’s Girl Band into the show, as well --The Shanrgi La’s, The Crystals, etc,  so we came up with a Biker Chick From Hell theme. I thought that we should incorporate the “Dead” aspect into the name Betty because the show is called “THE DEAD RINGER FROM HELL” and hence Dead Betty.. I hope I explained that well.

 

 

THE LEGEND OF DEAD BETTY

Now the story is Betty --before she was dead-- came from a town in Texas called Hell. No one really remembers when she was born or remembers much about her parents, Betty just kind of showed up in peoples memories.

 

Betty was stunningly beautiful, but she never seemed to have a boyfriend. She was certainly lusted after but never approached by the ordinary guys from Hell, which were mostly drunks, day labourers, and down on their luck dreamers. However, that didn’t stop these boys and others from miles around from piling into Betty’s Road House every Friday night to hear her sing and play her guitar. She was a great singer alright, but her guitar playing was something special. No one had ever heard anyone, much less a woman, play the guitar like Betty. Onstage she was a thunderclap that made your hair stand on end. No one could take their eyes off of her. She could make you laugh, cry, stand on your feet and punch the air all in the same song with just her guitar. Her band, four long haired musician types with dead eyes and a wardrobe that spanned the entire colour range of black, were tighter than a frog’s ass in a vinegar bath, but if you asked anyone back then what her band was called or what they looked like no one would really be able to give you more than I have. Hell, to be completely honest it wouldn’t have mattered if they were naked up there with tassels hanging from their dangly bits; everyone came to see Betty.

 

Legend has it that while riding her big assed Harley on a foggy night Betty got herself lost and accidently found her way to the Crossroads where she came upon Robert Johnson, Randy Rhodes and the Devil on the mouth organ jammin’ under a bus shelter. The Devil told Betty that for the price of her soul she could join in. Betty didn’t hesitate and jammed with those boys until just before dawn. Those boys were so impressed by her playing that the Devil refused to take her soul and Robert Johnson and Randy Rhodes gave her their collective abilities. The trouble with most legends is that they are mostly bull droppings written by every era’s equivalent of oily Madison Avenue types trying to turn a nothing into a something, but in the case of Betty her legend was pretty much as it was.

 

One Friday night this English guy who was famous for making stars and being rude came to town and caught Betty’s show at the Roadhouse.  He must have liked what he saw because he offered Betty a recording contract on the spot and moved her and the band to Los Angeles to record an album. She was being hailed as the next big thing and that her album would be the greatest musical work ever. We were really excited for her, but that excitement was nothing compared to what we felt when we heard that she was coming back to Hell to premiere her new single to the world.

 

Betty’s return was like a circus in our dusty little town. T.V cameras, paparazzi, reporters, you name it and they were there to see Betty. The crowd held its breath when they heard the low roar of her Harley coming down the road and when she entered the town everyone went crazy.  The way the crowd was carrying on you’d have thought that the Beatles, Elvis, and the Dalai Lama had all come to town to open up a diner together.

 

That night at the Roadhouse you were lucky to get a place to stand in the parking lot much less inside. No one could wait to hear Betty’s new single.

 

After the song was finished even the crickets were quiet. No one except for the English guy and his underlings were clapping. After a very awkward silence a lone voice piped up, “Was that Betty? Damn, didn’t sound nothin like her.” I looked over at Betty just in time to see her throw a bottle of Lone Star at that English guy and it was a good thing for him that she was too angry to aim properly because that bottle hit one of his underlings square in the temple putting him out for the night.

 

Betty started screaming obscenities and other stuff at the English guy over the din of the crowd. “THAT IS NOT MY SONG!” THAT’S NOT WHAT I RECORDED!” The English guy remained really calm and told Betty that he needed to make changes to make it marketable to the under 25’s. Betty told the English guy that she wouldn’t make any more records and that she would record under another name with another company, but one of the English Guy’s underlings who must have been a lawyer told Betty in no uncertain terms that she was the property of the English guy lock stock and barrel. And then almost as if he could anticipate her reply, the lawyer told her that she could not even play in public without the English Guy’s consent. Betty knew that she was beaten and got up from her table and made her way to the door.

 

 

After the disaster at the Roadhouse no one saw Betty for days and just as people started to make suggestions to each other about going over and checking on her, Betty emerged from her garage. She was on her big assed Harley and her guitar was slung across her back. People stopped dead in their tracks to watch her while some cheered her on as she passed by. She stopped at the edge of town and looked over her shoulder at the crowd of people who gathered there with her. No one said a word and after a few moments Betty raised her arm and gave the crowd a quick wave goodbye and roared away disappearing into in the haze rising up from the road out of town. That was the last time anyone in Hell saw Betty.

 

No body or guitar was found after the police discovered Betty’s bike twisted up in a ditch 20 miles from town. The newspapers were calling it a disappearance and the police gave up looking after a year. There’s a load of conspiracy theories about what happened to Betty, but it was the drunk tractor driver who claimed that a beautiful ghost woman riding a big Harley with a Gold Guitar slung across her back ran him off the road just before the highway to Hell that got all of our attention. He told the cops that except for the skeleton face she looked like that girl that played the guitar, she looked like a “DEAD BETTY.” From then on the name stuck. So, when someone says they saw the ghost woman on a bike we all just say “Ah, that’s just DEAD BETTY.”

 

 

Before she left town Betty signed the Roadhouse over to ENGLISH KATE, a friend of hers from Los Angeles. One night after too many drinks past closing time English Kate told me and my friends that Betty called her that night to say that she was leaving town, gonna make her way back to the Crossroads where no one could stop her from playing her guitar. She told Kate about the band under the bus shelter and she also told her that the Devil isn’t as much into pain and suffering as some might think, what he really loves, she explained, was irony.

 

The Devil never took Betty’s soul that night, not because he did not want it, but because he knew that he didn’t have to. To be fair he did warn her that someday she would happily sell her soul to a devil worse than he was, a Lawyer. In the end the Devil knew that all he needed to keep Betty was a band at the Bus Shelter where she could play her guitar and until the dawn remember what it was like to have a soul.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Betty how she looked in her original colours. She was first used onstage for a production of Jesus Christ Superstar in which yours truly played the part of Judas.

 

We took a trip to Greece on the bike and the Italian Autostrada was ruinous to Betty’s Paint job and her exhaust. At the end of the trip a piece of exhaust pipe a bit bigger than a 50p piece fell off the bike in a near perfect circle. I have never seen anything like it.

This is Betty how she looks today. That’s me with my smoking jacket --Yea, I know I look like a dingus.

 

I had B+H Harley do a complete paint makeover. I wanted it done in colours from a 1930’s colour scheme. I also had the handle bars changed to wider ones that are more comfortable, but sometimes remind me of riding a big lawn mower. I plan on getting a wider back tire and getting a pair of AVON gangster whitewalls.

This is Mojo’s bike, Rose. We use Rose when we can’t get Betty onstage, or if there is room for more than one bike onstage.

Rose used to be a Sportster but Mojo had her chopped and gussied up like an Old School Chopper. I don’t like Sporty’s as a rule, but I love Rose. She is an awesome ride, she sits nice, and she sounds amazing. Bumps are a bit jarring, but it’s all part of the experience.