Before the band left San Francisco, we decided to play a prank on John Courage, who had been ushering us around America like a herd of dazed cattle for the past three months. The prank came on Colonel Courage's birthday and was entirely John McVie's idea. We bribed a bellboy at the St. James Hotel to look the other way while a barnyard scene was lovingly recreated in Courage's room.
When he returned to the hotel that night, he opened his door to find fifty hens and roosters had turned his room into an immense chicken coop. The whole suite had been filled with fresh hay. and the chickens were everywhere all over the bed, stutled in drawers, and one hen had even laid an egg in the smashed TV set. There was chicken sh-t all over his clothes. All the hay made it a fire hazard, and when I walked in, there was Dennis Wilson Iying drunk in the bathtub, smoking two cigarettes at the same time. It was actually Mite scary, but the colonel took it in good humor. In the end we rounded up the poultry, shoved them in the elevator, and pushed "Lobby."
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