Chapter 40 - Magic Rudy

THERE WAS ANOTHER party in the Hollywood Hills where Blair couldn’t help but notice this Sicilian guy wearing nothing but cowboy boots, a white child’s cowboy hat on his head and a double leather bandolier holster like Pancho Villa wore when he raided the New Mexican territories. As he came closer, Blair, who was slightly taken aback by this swarthy man in his late thirties or early forties sweating like overcooked bacon in a frying pan, heard him say, “Hey man, what’s your name? You look exactly like my best friend.”

        “Blair Aaronson. Who’s this guy you think I look like?” The naked man said, “Bobby Bloom, you know the guy who wrote Montego Bay. Hey, what’s your birthday? ‘Blair said, “June 16,” while still trying to get over the shock and amazement he felt by this naked man striking up a conversation with him.

        “That’s the same day as mine,” the naked man said. “By the way, I’m Rudy. Hey man, give me your number.” Obviously, he didn’t have a pen on him unless there was one in the bullet slots of his bandolier. They went inside and swapped information and he introduced him to June Fairchild who was the girl in the Cheech and Chong movie Up in Smoke, the same woman that snorted all that Ajax. Rudy was the Svengali, the Maharishi who wanted to control all the women that entered his domain; he was the conductor of his own symphony, the orchestrator of earthy pleasures like Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication, the patron saint of excess and

debauchery. Whenever beautiful women would come over to his house on Formosa Drive he would politely asked them to take off their clothes and put on kimonos, and he had fifty or more of them that were purchased at Aardvark’s vintage clothing store on Melrose, and they would willingly comply. Rudy had some movie connections with a talent agency so there were always gobs of women around. The interesting thing was, he never slept with one single girl. He was married to Mary Jane, who somehow put up with all this craziness. I never spent too much time at Rudy’s because I was still with Robin Stewart and tried my best to avoid the temptations, women and drugs. Robin S., as most of the other women who encountered Rudy thought he was a perfect gentleman and a lot of fun to be around. He was basically a nice guy that would give you the shirt off his back, at least he did for Blair, but there was something very disturbing going on behind that façade of nicety and friendliness.

There always seemed to be at least three or four young girls cooking and cleaning, wearing next to nothing prancing around the place. He did try to get Blair’s career off the ground as well as helping the band that seemed to be scattering in four different directions at once– anyway which way the wind would blow. There was an audition once where we set up four barstools in Rudy’s living room and he had invited some big-wig producer over. It was Stephen, Joey, Jon Marr and I, singing our originals. There was this one called The World Inside My Eyes, which was so Beatlesque it was scary. There was this EST inspired song I had written entitled Be With Me Now, that Jon sang lead vocals on, but Joey couldn’t follow the harmony Jon had taught him. Jon always came up with these bizarre parts that were so complicated only a trained musician would be able to follow, and Joey was used to singing a natural harmony, nothing fancy mind you. We didn’t pass the audition.

Stephen had a Rickenbacker guitar that was given to him by Michael Kennedy as a token gift for all the money he was given via Bruce Golden. Jon Gries, Stephen's brother begged and pleaded with Stephen to let him hold onto it, knowing the value it would someday have, after all, as I said before, it did belong to John Lennon. John had given it to Nicky Hopkins and then Nicky presented it to Michael as a gift for his guitar contributions on the Hopkins album, No More Changes. Jon had seen so many of Stephen's guitars end up trashed, lost or stolen. He had seen his brother's Ovation twelve-string stepped on and subsequently destroyed by Mary, a drugged-out friend of a friend on Palm Plaza a year earlier. Stephen declined Jon's offer to keep the guitar for him and one day he took it over to Rudy's. I have no idea why he left it there under the bed in the guest room for over a week, but when he came back to claim it, Rudy had informed him that it was gone, probably traded for a couple of grams of coke or an ounce of weed. That guitar today, even in this stumbling economy, would probably be worth over a million dollars. Oh well, I guess there is no sense in crying over spilled guitars - nevertheless, it does bring a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

       I often wondered what ever happened to Rudy, if he survived his Kafkaesque escapades in West Hollywood that spilled out and over everyone he met; I found out he passed away in New York just before the millennium. I think about all the wasted time and money, the sex, drugs, and rock and roll - the mainstay of his existence. I don’t think that Silverspoon had anything to do with his demise but sometimes I wonder if that band wasn’t jinxed in some way because of all the people that went by the wayside. So many people that lived by the sword died by the sword, but the pen (or the typewriter/computer) are always mightier. At least that’s what I believe and I’m sticking to that credo.