It didn’t take me long to understand what he meant by “battle fatigue.” For a week or two, it may seem like an adventure to go from city to city playing a concert every night, but after a month every place starts looking the same, and after two months utter psychosis sets in. Frank was far from robust physically, and endless touring was probably the worst punishment he could have inflicted on himself. He may have expressed an aversion to drugs, but that didn’t stop him from chain smoking three or four packs a day, guzzling gallons of coffee, and adopting a devil-may-care approach to diet. One of the guys in the band was on a macrobiotic kick, and he carried a rice cooker with him so he could always have brown rice and tamari. Frank thought this was very quaint, almost religious. His own culinary theology revolved around the mantra: “Whatever it is, fry it first and ask questions later”. He constantly suffered with stomach troubles and bouts of diarrhea, and was forced to consume gallons of Kaopectate and Maalox.
