Chapter 24 - Helter Skelter Summer Swelter

ALL THE CHARTS were written, and the date was set. We were headed back to BurbankStudios, a place where Billy Goldenberg liked to record because of the enormous tracking room. It was like deja vu all over again, as the great Yogi Berra used to say, now being back at the same studio where we did our demos with BJ Taylor. We had two days to record and mix four songs, Piggies, Long, Long, Long, Helter Skelter and Revolution by the Beatles. It was Ric Green on drums, Michael Kennedy on lead guitar and middle eight vocals on Piggies, Stephen Gries on bass, guitar, synthesizer and vocals, Blair Aaronson on piano and B-3 organ and synthesizer, Joey Hamilton on vocals and me on acoustic guitars, bass and vocals. 

          On the title song, Helter Skelter, I was playing a Fender Bass through an Ampeg B-15 amp. It was also recorded direct. On my left was Michael playing his 51 Broadcaster through a Vox AC30 with some kind of tape delay patched through it. I think Blair was on the B-3 organ in the back of the room and Stephen was in the booth with his Martin D-28. Joey was in another booth singing the work vocal. The red light was on and Doc Siegel, the engineer was calling the slate, Helter Skelter take one. It was crunch time. All the hours rehearsing, all the time scuffling on the street, all the marbles were on the table now as the tape began to roll. It all came down to this moment.

        Through the plate glass window in the control room, I could see a few pretty female faces. Some of the girls from the movie had come down off the set and were watching us. After a few takes we took a break and listened to the playback and decided we needed a little more energy infused into the music. Nancy Wolfe, one of the actresses who played the part of Sexy Sadie came out into the large wooden tracking room and started dancing and shaking her thick black hair to the beat. I was jumping up and down in rhythm with her, well as much rhythm as a Jewish kid could have, and that was the take we kept. Joey sang his ass off and I overdubbed a harmony vocal a sixth below. it's too bad Ric and Joey missed all the sexy shaking and carrying on in the room being imprisoned in their isolation booths.

        On Long, Long, Long, Stephen sang a soft lilting vocal in a semi-falsetto. Blair played a string synthesizer made by Hohner. I do remember it sounding very high and haunting adding to the mystical madness that permeated the general feeling of the movie. Joey added a high part and Michael played bass. I added the acoustic, my J-200 guitar capoed up on the third fret. This is all very technical, but I'm sure some of you will understand and appreciate it. Ric was solid and soft on the skins.

         At two in the afternoon, it was time for a lunch break. We didn't have Miguel around this time with his Jeep to go out exploring the back sets of Burbank Studios, a place where many a hit movie was filmed. No, we had to behave ourselves, being on a short leash after the Record Plant fiasco. I knew we couldn't get into much trouble at the commissary on the lot, but we did manage to flag down a couple of starlets and invite them back to the recording studio, especially for the next track— Revolution. This was the song where I got to scream my head off and do my best John Lennon. I wasn't interested in impersonating him, quite the opposite. I was more interested in having the same type of intensity if I could manage to conjure it up. The instrumentation was almost identical to that of Helter Skelter, except I was playing my acoustic guitar and just giving a tracking vocal at low volume planning on overdubbing it later. I wanted to concentrate fully on the vocals, so the best thing was to do them separately.

         The track came together quickly, and my vocal was manic and crazy enough to be good, at least I thought so and there seemed to be agreement among those present. The last track was Piggies with Stephen back on lead vocals except for the middle eight which was promised to Michael. Blair was playing a harpsichord part on the keys. When we were running it down Blair was playing this very Baroque part with a tinkly little trill. He stopped playing in a bit of confusion and spoke into the microphone to the booth. “Hey Billy, do you still want me to play the trill?” Billy Goldenberg pressed the talk back button and answered back, “No, the trill is gone” We all broke out laughing uncontrollably because B.B. King's recent hit song was called The Thrill Is Gone. The trill might have been gone but the thrill certainly wasn't.

All the overdubs and mixing were done on the second day and that was it. We did the best job we could and felt that nothing was left on the table. A few weeks later Blair, Stephen and I were bussed down to the Paramount Ranch in Agoura as actors in the movie. We all played the parts of Manson family members, Stephen was Steve Grogan, Blair was Clem, and I was some no-name without a movie credit.  On the first day of shooting the scene, it had to be over a hundred degrees, and I was dressed up in thick jeans with a lined jean jacket. I am usually not one for the heat as a rule, but this was almost unbearable. Ah yes, the things we suffer through for our art and for show business. The most intense moment was seeing Steve Railsback, the actor who played Charles Manson, being pulled out of a dingy basement by the police. The insane stare captured by his close up still sends shivers up and down my spine. We were all proud to be a part of the most watched made for television movie ever filmed but had no idea that within six months Tom Gries would drop dead of a heart attack while playing tennis. Soon after that Mal Evans would be shot and killed by the LAPD and a year after that Keith Moon would overdose on taking too much Antabuse, a drug given to prohibit the desire to drink alcohol. But for now, it seemed we were on top of the world.