Chapter 50 - Alias Jim Phillips and the Notorious Paine Boys

BEFORE THE GIG at the Whiskey with The Knack and before I joined that band, things were starting to go sour for Robin and me in that apartment on Clark Street. We were still doing all right in our relationship, but it was getting too crazy in the city. Crime was rampant and it was too damned noisy in that apartment. There was a guy who lived next door named Danny who was a real pain in the ass. Often in the wee hours of the morning there would be some drugged out groupie banging on his door yelling “Danny, Danny…” that would keep us awake. He must have been a musician of sorts because we would hear a lot of raucous sounds wafting in from that apartment. Although he was a nuisance, he did inspire us to write a song about it called Danny Did It about the escapades of a Hollywood musician who had a fleet of groupies banging on his door in the middle of the night. That song and others that Robin and I had written together started a relationship with Warner’s Publishing; our key man there was a guy named Greg Penny who would later go on to be a well-known music producer at the helm of artists like k.d. lang. Although we never did secure a publishing deal with Warner’s, we did have access to their little studio on Sunset and came out with some decent demos.

This was also the time that the Hillside Strangler was loose in the area and Robin was a little paranoid about living in West Hollywood. We figured the valley would be a much safer place to live plus we knew some other musicians who lived out there, Chuck Fiore, Beau Segal and Jimmy Eingher that were playing in the band Billy and the Beaters with Billy Vera. I still had a subscription to Homefinders, so Robin and I scoured the pages for rentals in the San Fernando Valley. We found a cute one-bedroom bungalow on Woodbridge Street not far from CBS Studio Center –near Radford. It was a beautiful place with wooden floors and big rooms, perfect for playing and writing music and we moved there on New Years Eve of 1977/ 1978. We had to be out of the apartment on Clark by New Years Day, so Doug and Judy helped us move all our stuff in the pouring rain that night. When we got to the bungalow on Woodbridge the landlord had forgotten to unlock the doors, so we had to break in through the big window in the front. The locks were such that you couldn’t unlock them without a key, even though we were inside the place, so we moved all of our belongings through that window—not an auspicious beginning.

The wooden floors were unfinished, and a bit too bleached out looking for my taste. One day while Robin was out working one of her temp jobs, I decided to stain the floors in a dark walnut. Stephen said he would help me out and I rented a floor sander and bought a gallon of stain. Stephen also said he was experienced at floor staining and suggested that instead of applying the stain and then immediately wiping it off that we should leave it on for a few hours. We did exactly that then and went out to get lunch at the local Subway (the first of its kind in LA) and then walked around the sets of CBS Studios. When we came back the floors were so dark it looked like they were painted dark, mahogany brown if not black. It looked terrible. I was so upset at Stephen, who still thought the floors looked great, but they were a disaster. I had to rent the floor sander again and remove all that walnut stain and I was cursing him for every plank sanded. I finally re-stained the floor the proper way and I must admit I did look great, and I forgave Stephen after a while too.

Even though I had to commute to West Hollywood to rehearse with The Knack, it was much better and more peaceful than living in the heart of the “pit”. I was in between jobs now and money was short, so I decided to look for work. I found another phone sales job in the valley selling copy machine supplies—mostly toner. The company had one of those generic names so they could appear to be on the level—but I knew deep in my heart that it was a rip-off. They went by the handle “National Advertising”. It was another one of those jobs where I had to get up at five in the morning and be ready to start dialing for dollars by six. There were some extremely colorful characters working there, one was this black lady by the name of Mrs. Perkins, but everyone called her Perky. She had this pitch that was hard to deny and came off like a holy roller selling toner for Jesus. She made a fortune there. Another character was this guy, who was also a musician by the name of Bobby Paine, and we became friends. After the eleven o’clock bell rang we would sometimes go over to his motel room in Van Nuys and play music. He had some great country songs, one in particular that I loved called Honky-tonk Hell about a bar in hell where the devil was buying ‘til the end of time and never was going to say, “last call”.

Just before meeting Bobby and his younger brother (the same age I am), Larson Paine, who was also a songwriter, I had done a few sessions at a studio in Hollywood called Pranava Studios. I had re-cut my anthem, You Hurt Me So with Richie Moore behind the console and Robin, Doug Fieger, Mikel Japp sang background vocals. It was a classic mixture of vocal blending, and I really thought it was great. We also re-cut “Be My Baby in Between” with these farty saxophone parts a la Savoy Truffle. Chas was recruited to play one of his trademark tapping solos that we had gotten on tape while he was just running it down. I knew he was always at his best when it was still fresh in his mind, and we ended up keeping that take. I still have those masters somewhere and I am thinking about baking (a process where you heat the tapes up in an oven at low temperature to remove any of the sticky deposits) the tapes and re-mixing them.

Anyway, back to those notorious Paine boys, I was playing the tapes from Pranava to them, and Larson thought that You Hurt Me So, as he put it, was a real contender. It made me think of Rocky Graciano in his hay day—that image still burns brightly in my mind. Bobby and Larson had booked a session, and they were going to cut Honky-tonk Hell and another song. I was hired to play Hammond B-3 organ and was even paid for the session. I lost contact with Bobby after a while, but I always knew someday our paths would cross again. I was right. Thirty years later, now living near Nashville, Tennessee I had a friend, Bruce, who was a waiter at a fancy restaurant, Mario’s near Music Row. Bruce had told me about this character who was flashing hundred-dollar bills around and had this much younger doll hanging on his arm. Bruce said this guy was a musician and when he described him I knew it was Bobby. I told Bruce the next time he came in to give him my number. He did, and sure enough it was him although he goes by another name now, Sunset Slim. Slim and I are great friends now and we play music and golf together at least once a week. I never knew he played golf back then, but he is good. In fact, he was a great golf instructor—always pointing out flaws in my swing and he was right ninety percent of the time. Got to love it! Sorry to say that Slim passed away in November of 2018 from bladder cancer. Another great one gone!

Selling toner was somewhat profitable for me back then but I thought there must be a better and more honest way to make a living. I had a pseudonym on the phone—it was Jim Phillips. I always hated being called Jim (my father would only call me that when he was angry with me) and I thought if I went by that name I could become a completely different person—one that could lie, cheat or steal without guilt. It worked, for a while anyway. But with a little money, ego and power in my veins—bad things were going to happen soon—some good things, too.