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.

Chapter - 39 - The Red House

THE COLOR RED can symbolize many things. It can represent love, anger, warning and even death. It is the color of blood and the color of the heart—the color that is most associated with sex (she was a red-hot mama, or daddy or whatever your preference is). There is a term code red, meaning high alert and when someone sees red they are ready to boil over with anger. It is also the color of power and prestige, when we "roll out the red carpet" for someone of great importance or royalty.

The first time I walked into the "Red House" on Fountain Avenue I was nauseated, sick to my ever-loving stomach. This is the place where Christa Helm and Patty Collins had rented to work on their music to get ready for their recording at Larrabee Studios with Blair and Stephen. They had hired Richie Moore to do the engineering and practiced for hours by singing karaoke style into their two-track tape recorder they had lovingly nick-named Gort. If you want, you can google Christa Helm and find out about her story, but it really has no relevance to the Silverspoon story other than playing a small part in driving a wedge between the band members that was already happening with its own momentum and it was picking up speed.

As I said before, Blair had met Christa on Halloween of 1975 at a party that Bonnie Yardum was hosting at The Daisy. He ran into her again with Rudy Mazzella in the summer of 1976. Another female back-up singer from Texas was brought onto the project and she immediately clicked with Christa. It was believed that Patty and Christa were a lock and had their vocal parts secured but Christa still felt they needed another female harmony. That's when they hired, let's call her Darla, and there was a lot of jealousy in that house of ill repute. It was another bitch-fest. I can't remember the name of the disco song they were working on at the time, but I hated it. I couldn't believe that Stephen and Blair would stoop so low in their musical endeavors, but Disco was hot and so were the girls. Fortunately, I was involved with my Robin and we both thought the "Red House" was bad news. I had a sick feeling that something terrible was going to happen there.

On February 12th of that year, actor Sal Mineo was stabbed to death in the parking garage of his suite on Holloway drive near La Cienega. This case is still unsolved. A year to the day later, Stephen's brother, Jon Gries, was living at his mother's house on Lloyd place in West Hollywood. It was in the wee hours of the morning; Jon was restless and found it hard to sleep. At around three am he got out of bed and a few minutes later he heard something that sounded like a cross between a cat getting skinned, a baby crying and gurgling noises. He went outside to see what was going on but didn't venture far enough to see anything unusual. Later that morning, a West Hollywood Sheriff came by Jon's place asking him if he had heard anything unusual late the night before. He was still groggy from a lack of sleep but remembered that, yes, he had heard those terrifying screams. The sheriff then told him that a young woman was stabbed over 30 times and bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, she bled to death under a parked car just a few hundred yards from his mom's house. It was Christa. As of now, like the Mineo murder, the case remains unsolved. 

        Christa may have gotten a bad rap from people at the time, saying was a social climber and unscrupulous, but according to Blair, she was a sweetheart who was totally focused on making a hit disco record and she provided a loving environment for him to live and work. Stephen's recollection is a bit dubious at best. As for me, I was glad to be as far as humanly possible from that scene.

Chapter - 38 - Another Robin in The Nest

BLAIR WAS NOW living in one of the apartments at the Record Plant in LA and was working for Gary Kellgren at his home studio in the Hollywood Hills. There were three rooms in the back of the Plant. One was called the Dungeon Room, another was the Sissy Room, and the third was the Boat Room. I think Blair stayed at the former and sometimes the latter when the room was needed by a client. I am sure he did a lot of shuffling around to make way for the rock stars inhabiting those rooms. The Dungeon Room was exactly that, furnished with racks and other torture equipment while the Sissy room was decorated with white wicker furniture with pink and white bedding and curtains with a white gazebo in the middle of the room. The Boat Room, for the lack of a better description, looked like a boat.

          Chas had returned from Europe and had brought with him a Welsh singer, Mike Japp, who had replaced lead singer Hugh Nicolson in the band, Marmalade. Mikel had an amazing voice that was very reminiscent of Paul Rogers from the bands Free and Bad Company. Chas had contacted Bob Merritt (the engineer we had worked with at The Record Plant) to finish up some tracks they had cut in England. After hearing the tracks Bob had especially liked the song, Piece of the Action, but thought that it would be better to re-cut it from scratch. at first they had used ex-Spoon drummer Marshall Battjes, but it seemed like he just wasn't making the grade. Chas was and is very particular and demanding about his choice in drummers and replaced Marshall with some other dude with a more simpatico style. Also on the recording was Matthew Fisher who played Hammond organ on the 1967 Procul Harum song, A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

          There was a new studio D out back by the apartments and shop that Chris Stone said was not especially useful. Bob asked if he could experiment with the room and was then allowed to have free reign over it. Chas and Mikel's band. Waterfall had lucked out and were recording in that studio free of charge, just like Silverspoon had done a couple of year before. They played so loud that the walls were vibrating in studio C next door and the band in that studio couldn't take it anymore. The whole band including the producer went over and banged on the control room door. Bob finally answered the knock when the music stopped and let them in. “We have been subjected to this barrage of sound and can't get this tune out of our heads”, the lead singer said in his high-pitched English accent. After they were invited in, Mikel recognized the producer from England by the name of Ron Nevison. The tension in the room eased. The lead singer was John Waite, and his band was called The Baby's. It's funny how things happen like that but because the song was so infectious the band ended up recording the song and it appeared as the final track on their second record Broken Hearts. 

    In the meantime, Silverspoon was desperately trying to re-invent itself. Joey was put on suspension for his love of substance proved to be more important than his commitment to music. Who did we know that could sing that high and blend with Stephen and myself now that Jon Marr was back in school at Marymount College and could not make himself available? The answer was right in front of our noses. Mikel Japp was a prime candidate even though he was working with Chas. Not only did Mikel have one of the best and purest voices we had ever heard he could also play a mean guitar. There was one major drawback though - he was the worst, or best drunks I had ever had the pleasure or misfortune of knowing. Sure, Stephen and I would have a drink and Blair was no tea toddler, but Mikel took the door prize in that contest.

          We had booked a room at Studio Instrument and rehearsals were going well until he started showing up late and then not showing up at all. We found out later that Mikel had fallen in love with Ciri, a young woman who was a clothing designer for Donna Summer and they had moved into an apartment right across the street from Palm Plaza. A few week later he told us that he had married her. It looked like we were back to square one again.

         Mikel and Blair were in my mom’s Mercedes with me at the wheel when we saw this cute red head waiting for a bus on Sunset. We pulled over and tried to sweet talk her into the car and she tried her best to resist but our innocent charms were undeniable, and she eventually got in. I was attracted to her and told her she reminded me of a cross between Ann-Margaret and Inger Stevens. We told her there was a party at Stuart Collins house on Larrabee and we all cruised over. Stuart, another Englishman born within the sound of the Beau Bells, had a Rolls Royce and we all got in and the party moved across the street to Paul Downing’s house. Paul is a left-handed guitarist from Yorkshire that used to play with John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas with Don Adey (the gent that worked at SIR and got us free time there). They had a band a few years earlier called The Jamme which was also very Beatle influenced. There was another member of the band, Terry Ray, who would be hired as a replacement drummer in Silverspoon, but that only lasted a few weeks because we were so untogether and scatter-brained at the time (what else is new). There was a Florida room in Paul’s house with a waterbed where the red head, Robin Stewart and I filled that whole afternoon a kissing and a hugging. We spent the next two years together and she proved to be a great distraction for me in my quest to escape the madness of Silverspoon.

          It was about a week before the bicentennial when I moved into her one room apartment on Ozeta Terrace just up the road from the Whiskey. She had just finished her gig with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue as a back-up singer and dancer and was designing her own costumes. That place was so small, and stacks of clothing were piled up everywhere. Now I’m not the neatest person in the world but this place was a mess, even by my standards. I knew that I had to get a job so we could make plans to get out of that prison of a place. 

          I was pouring through the want ads and found and eventually found a job in a phone room run by some Hungarians selling industrial light bulbs on commission. The hours were early in the morning, around six am until eleven, which took a little getting used to. The room was stacked with telephone books from every city and state in the US. I picked out some of my favorite areas on the east coast and started dialing for dollars. Because there was a three-hour time difference, when it was six in California it was nine in New York or Boston. I was getting discouraged after not making a sale for three days and I was thinking of quitting when by sheer determination or luck I finally made my first sale. The manager of the boiler room directed me into the boss’ office of the mad Hungarian. He had long stringy hair that was greased back into a ponytail with long fingers and fingernails that would make Dracula envious. He patted me on the back and took out some white powder from his desk and inserted his pinky fingernail into the vile. “You did good kid” he said as he stuck his finger in front of my nose. I knew it was cocaine and I reluctantly snorted it. I was disgusted but I didn’t want to offend him. That job didn’t last too long but it was my introduction into the wild and wacky world of telephone sales.

Meanwhile Stephen was having problems with the Robin of his own. As I mentioned before she was a gorgeous Playboy model at seventeen and was being hit on by every guy that came within arm’s length of her, and he found it too hard to deal with. She would go out for a pack of cigarettes or something and come home five days later, but he was in love with her and was trying to make things work. They were still living together at Palm Plaza when he came home one day and found her passed out on the floor after ingesting a handful of valium and he was terrified that she was going to die. These were the days before 911 so he called the police when she began to stir and stagger over to him. He was panicked but was thankful that she was alive. When she tried to grab the phone away from him he tried to shush her up, but she wouldn’t relent. Out of frustration, or just being plain old freaked out he gave her a tap on the head with the butt end of the telephone receiver. She passed out again as he hung up the phone. Eventually after bringing her tea and water and trying everything he could to keep her from dying he realized that she was breathing normally and around four in the morning he fell asleep while sitting up on the easy chair.

          When he woke up a couple of hours later she was gone. He called everyone he knew asking if they had seen her. He even went down to the places she used to hang out in the neighborhood without any luck. Later that day there was a knock on the door. He opened it and there was Robin and this guy, who was Jim Croce’s brother who said, “Hey man you can’t go around hitting women. Robin is now staying with me and were here to pick up her things.” Stephen was at a loss for words but thought, who the hell is this guy walking in here like her knight in shining armor when he doesn't even know what had transpired. He tried to explain himself, but they wouldn’t hear it. He was guilty without a trial or jury or anything. She was gone again but it wouldn't be for the last time.

            

Chapter 37 - Models, Playmates and Actresses

 

 

IT WAS A beautiful June day in LA and I, dressed in my finest duds with my ubiquitous polaroid bag with the cassette recorder stuffed inside, headed out in my mom's Mercedes with Stephen to the Playboy Mansion. Jerry Brown, the current governor of California was running for president with Linda Rondstadt by his side. There was going to be a fund-raising party there at the almost 22,000 square foot edifice, and we were going. I can't tell you how we were invited, but things like that were happening all the time. You would be hanging out at a friend’s place and the next thing you knew you would be whisked away to some crazy party.

The musical theme was Taking It To The Streets by the Doobie Brothers. Even though the Mercedes was still in decent shape, we parked on the street at the end of Charring Cross Road and happily walked the quarter mile up to the mansion. The high green hedges were perfectly trimmed as we rushed ahead toward the palace that loomed larger than life in the distance. At the front gate there were gobs of security, and I was surprised nobody checked my bag strapped around my shoulder. Today you couldn't get near any public venue wearing anything like the sort of stuff I was carrying; but our names somehow were on the guest list, and we got in. 

          The first thing we came to was the pool with the waterfall and we saw a flock of flamingoes strutting around the path that winded its way through the grounds. It was only around one o'clock in the afternoon and already the place was packed with all sorts of politicians, movie stars, people that tried to look like movie stars, bunnies and bunny wannabes, rock star types, and a couple of real rock stars; in other words, all the glitz and glamour mixed in with power and wealth. What in the world were we doing there? Were we hanging out like guitarists at the C. F Martin factory in Nazareth, PA, or baseball players visiting Yankee Stadium for the first time? After rambling our way through the thicket of bamboo trees and other foliage we couldn't even name, we edged our way into the house itself moving ever so slowly past all the blonde, brunette and red-headed fantasy girls. Finally, we saw him sitting cross-legged on a striped plum-colored couch smoking a pipe surrounded by the most beautiful women we had ever seen—Hef himself.

I couldn't see then that this was another distraction from my true purpose, and to quote Roshi Phillip Kapleau, in his book, Awakening To Zen, I was “subject to whim and caprice, like a weathervane blown in different direction by every kind of emotional wind.” I could say the same thing for Stephen who was especially intrigued by what society was calling the ultimate in female anatomy, playmates and models and actresses. Like autumn leaves in a zephyr, we were being tossed and turned by our senses and desires and would willingly go wherever they would take us.

This reminds me of a story a few years earlier in early 1972 when I was still driving my Karman Ghia, the one Susan had bequeathed to me a year or so earlier. With Stephen in the passenger seat heading east down Fountain near La Cienega, we spied a beautiful young lady at the wheel of a British Racing Green MGB-GT a few cars ahead of us. Fountain is a two-lane black-top, (one lane in each direction) nevertheless, I was determined to catch up to this dark-haired beauty while Stephen was edging me on. We weaved our way past the next vehicle barely avoiding the parked cars on the right as we were approaching Sweetzer. I was hoping the light would change to red so I could pull up next to her, but it didn't. She was two cars ahead now as we came up to Crescent Heights; that light stayed green as well. I floored it and was able to circumvent the VW in front of me. We were only one car behind now. Traveling at fifty-five mph now we barely made it through the yellow light at Fairfax and we were able to pull up beside her. We both smiled at her, and she tried to ignore us, but the sting of Cupid's arrow would not let us give up that easily.

        She eventually, either out of fear or curiosity, made eye contact with us and she couldn't help but smile. We were that charming in a silly sort of way, I guess, and convinced her to pull over at the Mobil station on the corner of La Brea and Fountain. We got out of the car and approached her in the friendliest of manners we could muster. She rolled down her window and we told her she was gorgeous and blah blah blah, and after a few minutes with my heart pounding in my chest so loudly that I thought she could hear it, we had her phone number. 

She told us her name was Renee and was just barely eighteen, still living in an apartment with her mother. She also said she was a model who had a contract with the Ford Modeling Agency, one of the top agencies in the city. We watched her disappear into the bustling traffic as she headed north on the 101 back to Burbank. Well as it usually goes, we both started calling her. If the phone was busy for prolonged periods of time I knew she was on the phone with Stephen and visa-versa whenever he got a busy signal. This went on for what seemed like weeks, but was probably only a week, when I asked myself how much time and energy I wanted to spend on this girl, especially when Stephen told me how hopelessly in love he thought he was with her. I said, “Go for it, man; she's all yours.” This was the beginning of a courtship that lasted almost ten years. Unfortunately, or fortunately for him, the timing was off (as we all know, timing is everything); it turned out to be a completely platonic relationship he had with that angelic beauty by the name of Renee Russo.

Chapter 36 - Out Of Aptos

IT WAS NOW Sunday, June 5, 1976 (my sister’s birthday). Stephen and I got right down to business and our singing was starting to improve. We played music all day while waiting for Steve to show up and we had also composed a song list for this makeshift band to perform. By seven o'clock that evening the rest of the so-called band showed up with a new keyboardist who had brought up a Fender Rhodes and rehearsal began a half an hour later.

The phone rang in the kitchen, and it was Blair calling from Sausalito saying that Kathy, Yadi and Richie had gone back to LA because Richie couldn't find a place to stay in San Francisco, his hometown. Blair had remained there with Bambi and was staying with a friend who lived in Marin County in a place with a 360-degree view. He could see the fog rising over the bay revealing the top of the bronze beauty, the Golden Gate Bridge. He had visited the Record Plant up there and ran into Bill Halverson and Gary Kellgren (co-owner of the studio). He described the studio in detail saying that they had it built where you could play right in the control room, a design that would be used in future studios. Kellgren was ahead of his time. He had the singers performing on raised podiums and the piano was hung from wires that hovered ten feet off the ground. Blair said it looked insane but sounded great. Dubbed The Pit, it was a 140-square-foot acoustically dead room that had the engineer's controls sunk ten feet into the foundation of the building surrounded by a ground level area intended for the musicians. Its appearance was futuristic, with bright maroon plush carpet on the floors, walls, ceiling, and stairs. Psychedelic murals and embroidery added to the visual atmosphere. There were no windows between the control room and the main studio area, previously considered a fundamental method of sound separation; instead, there was a partial cowling circling the control pit, also carpeted.

The quirkiness of the studio extended in many directions; for transporting musicians, Stone owned a limousine with the custom license plate DEDUCT, while Kellgren kept a purple Rolls-Royce displaying GREED on the license plate. This was the same Rolls that Jon Gries drove to Tower Records to purchase the Beach Boys record Don't Worry Baby in 1974. As in Los Angeles, the studio contained a jacuzzi, but Sausalito's conference room had a waterbed for a floor. For the musicians' meals, there were chefs ready to cook organic food, and for their sleeping quarters there were two guesthouses next to each other, five minutes away in Mill Valley. In the back there was a basketball hoop, and in the nearby harbor a speedboat was kept ready. The studio obtained industrial-grade nitrous—oxide pure, not mixed with oxygen as it is for dental anesthesia—from a local chemical supply company under the pretext that the gas was critical to the recording process, and fresh tanks were delivered weekly. Gas masks hung from the ceiling for those who wished to get intoxicated on “laughing gas”. Al Kooper wrote that during the few days that he was helping Nils Lofgren lay down tracks for the album Cry Tough he was so taken with the novel drug experience that he wheeled one of the tanks around and kept it next to him for refreshment between takes. He breathed in so much of it that acid collected in his stomach, aggravating his ulcers, and for a few days he was too sick to work. Kooper said that the studio's fun with nitrous oxide was stopped forever when a friend of Kellgren's was found dead from asphyxia under one of the tanks, the tube still in his mouth.

          Gary said he was building a replica of the Sausalito studio in his house in the Hollywood Hills, and he had invited Blair to help build it. In return he was promised to get studio work as a keyboardist and would also try to get Richie a job as an engineer. Blair was back in the hustle and bustle of LA again while Stephen, Ric and I remained in Aptos trying to get this new band together. 

 I found out that Carl Faust was an ex-con who was given the opportunity to run this halfway house as a condition of his parole. he told us of how he had fatally stabbed this guy who was sleeping with his old lady while he was high on LSD. Another resident of the mansion was this guy named Don, who told me he had murdered two people and had once shared a cell with Charlie Manson. That night I slept on one arm of the L shaped couch while Don slept on the other arm. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night and I came down with a mother of a cold. 

Things were getting bleak. Now the phone had been turned off as well as all the power was at the mansion. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge, or Aptos as the case may be. We wanted to get back to LA because there was going to be a rebroadcast of Helter Skelter on TV and we wanted to be there so we could promote the band not to mention the probability of getting laid after bragging about our successes in the parking lot of the Rainbow Bar and Grille at 2 am. Stephen and Ric were in agreement, the only trouble was we only had about ten dollars in cash between the three of us. At this time, Steve and his entourage had left the place and we had to find a way to get money to fill up the gas-guzzling Continental. I wasn't going to sell my guitar or anything like that but while rummaging through the desk in Carl's office I found a roll of stamps.

          I took the roll of stamps to a local bank in Aptos where they gave me face value which was a whopping thirteen dollars (stamps in 1976 were 13 cents). It was enough to fill the tank of that beastly Lincoln as gas prices then were about sixty cents a gallon. I was feeling a lot better when we headed out of town to visit Stephen's father. We stayed there for a few hours, but I was getting anxious to get back to LA. Chick gave us another twenty dollars and we thought it would be just enough to make it back home. While coasting down the perilous hill at the grapevine on Highway 5, the needle was on empty. We finally got to Oakhurst Drive on mere fumes then I went in the house and borrowed another twenty from my mom and gave it to Ric for gas. Sanctuary at last.

Chapter 35 - Doppleganger

IT SEEMED THAT West Hollywood had followed us up to Santa Cruz. Kathy V. and Yadi, Stuart Collins' wife, arrived in Aptos with Jon Marr around ten that morning and there were immediate tensions between the visiting city-dwellers and the residents of the halfway house, but feelings began to escalate when Kathy V. mistakenly walked into Carl and his wife's (whose name was also Cathy) bedroom. We all heard yelling and screaming coming from one of the seven rooms upstairs and I knew things had gotten off on the wrong foot. 

I grabbed my guitar and went outside to the deep forested area in the back of the mansion with Stephen to work on some new song ideas, but Yadi had followed us out there. She kept asking me to play a new song I had written called Everything's Gonna Be Fine not once, not twice but at least three times. I was beginning to hate that song. The whole point was to have Stephen practice his vocal and guitar parts, not Yadi. At that point I had given up on getting anything accomplished musically, so I ventured out deeper into the woods, sat down on a sunny patch of grass and began to meditate. Stephen and Jon Marr had convinced me to come back to the fold and before too long we were sitting in the forest playing acoustic guitars and singing Buffalo Springfield and Byrds songs when it started.

Jon had decided to hitch back to LA by himself while Kathy and Yadi were going to drive up to San Francisco. Bambi Byrens, who had driven her Mercedes up to Aptos the night before, was leaving for Sausalito and Blair decided to tag along with her. As usual it all seemed funny to me and I was making a mockery of the situation by singing some cynical and apropos song, I’m A One-man Band by The Who, playing that old J-200 with a tambourine around my neck. Stephen was bitching at Blair, saying he would never talk to him again if he abandoned us in the half-way house. I really don't blame Blair for leaving because the piano was so god-awfully out of tune it was unbearable to listen to. Before he left, Blair made me promise to try and get Stephen to play music. It was my mission, should I decide to accept, to get him to focus on the songs. It could be like it was before, just the two of us. That's really how the whole Spoon thing started out in the first place. Pat (remember her) had also left for San Francisco a few minutes later after complaining that Ric was putting the moves on her. So, all in all, seven people had evacuated the mansion in less than an hour.

          There was a knock at the door the being the closest one to it, I answered it. It was that friend of Ric's, Steve with a guitar in his hand. He came inside, sat down by the fire, and opened his guitar case. I was taken aback when he pulled out a blonde Gibson J-200, almost an exact mate of the one I had sitting in the corner of the now much less populated living room. Steve came off as this aggressive type with the clipped tones of a western drawl. I listened while he played a few of his songs, I think I even picked up my guitar and jammed along as Ric tapped on the coffee table with his sticks. Stephen, now feeling a bit more optimistic, suggested we all go into the music room where the drums were set up. That was fine with me, since my mission was to get his head back into the music, any music. 

          Steve, when he sang sounded a lot like a red-neck Jose Feliciano mixed in with The Ohio Players. Soul and Gunk meets funk, skunk. After the jam we went back by the fire and started talking. Because I was into astrology and numerology and all that jazz, I asked him when he was born. He said it was November the second, nineteen hundred and fifty-two, the same as mine. Was this guy my doppelganger? We didn't really look alike but maybe there was a similar determination in the eyes. Three Scorpios in the room with a Leo (Ric), anything could happen.

 

 

Chapter 34 - Aptos

Aptos

WHILE SRIVING UP the 101 Fly Robin Fly by Silver Convention was blasting on the radio; it was apropos since Stephen's Robin had flown the proverbial coupe again. He was depressed and devastated by her habitual departures but this time he was almost comatose. I knew it was going to take some doing to get him back on the same page as the rest of us. In fact, I can't remember any time since the days at the Record Plant any of us were on that same page. Maybe, I hoped, things would be different now.

We pulled into Santa Cruz around eight am after not sleeping at all, no one did, and we all were a bit cranky. Driving through the mountainous terrain and finally up the winding dirt driveway we saw the Mangels' mansion looming in the distance. The house was built in 1888 by Claus Mangles, brother-in-law to Claus Spreckels (the sugar magnate). The house is virtually a copy of the Spreckels mansion. it is now a bed and breakfast, but then, I found out later, it was being used as a half-way house for recovering criminals and drug addicts. The head of the household was a man named Carl Faust, a bearded mountaineer about the size of a barn. The owner of the mansion was a man named Carl Marks, namesake for the Russian revolutionary that made a pact with the devil. I felt that we had finally arrived at the loony bin. Maybe this is where we belonged?

There were at least nine bedrooms but only two bathrooms with showers only. In the living room was a beautiful wood-carved fireplace where the residents would congregate since there was no central heating. Thank God it was June, but it was still quite nippy. Ric had failed to mention we would be sharing the house with other people who were trying to find their way back to society at large. All Stephen, Blair and I wanted to do was practice and play or music and make another last-ditch attempt to get this crazy band back together in its next incarnation, whatever that was going to be.

Blair was not happy and complained about the living conditions, Richie slept most of the time trying to detox from his addictions, Stephen was confused, Ric was Ric, and I, as usual, was trying to make the best out of another strange situation. The next morning Stephen got a ride from Ric in the Continental to go visit his father in Carmel. Chick Adamick still had that studio apartment two blocks from the beach behind the art gallery. He called it The Adamick Hilton. When Ric got back he said I could use the car to go to a yoga retreat in the mountains that one of the residents of the mansion, Arleta, had told me about. She would be staying up there overnight, but I had no designs on her or thoughts of spending another night out in the cold. I got to the retreat about two-thirty in the afternoon and immediately thrust myself into the activities. The first thing I did was a combination of Hatha Yoga and something else called Astang Yoga. The exercises were helping my breath control, I thought, and soon I was sitting among two hundred people or more chanting, singing and playing all sorts of strange musical instruments. There were beautiful girls dancing in their diaphanous clothing and I hated to leave but I knew I had to get back in case somebody needed the car. 

          By the time I got back to the mansion everyone was pissed at me for being away so long, besides, I had all their clothes in that behemoth of a trunk. There was a big party going on to raise money for the childcare center where Kathy, Carl Faust's fifth wife, was working. I played a few songs on my Gibson J-200 with Ric and some bass player who shall remain nameless simply because I can't remember his name. The party went on past midnight and eventually Blair and Richie came back from The Catalyst after seeing the band Pablo Cruz.

Blair started into his old routine about me wasting his time by being away all day and because of it he wasn't going to rehearse the next day. I think he was planning his getaway from the Mangles House and was using his covert way of shifting the blame to me so he could use it as an excuse to leave. It is amazing the things we used to do to promote our own agendas. I guess in a way we still do it. I was preparing myself for the next day's craziness, but I don't think Stephen was prepared for what was to happen next.

Chapter 33 - Escape Into The Desert

MAY OF 1976 was quickly waning, and the joys and pleasures of late spring and early summer were in the air. I was going stir-crazy and needed to get out of the sometimes friendly, other times restricting confines of Oakhurst Drive. I was almost twenty-four and felt I should have my own place again even though my parents’ house had been a necessary time-out from the daily dramas of Silverspoon.

The weather was magnificent so one morning bright and early before Helyn and Johnny were awake I compulsively decided to hitchhike to Palm Springs with about ten dollars in my wallet. After leaving a note on the kitchen table, I ventured out with both wrists still wrapped in ace bandages. I got my first ride on Olympic heading east. It took more than ten different rides to get to Pomona in Riverside County where I saw a freight train meandering down the track that seemed to be headed east. Just like in a Woody Guthrie song I hopped the train taking me past San Bernardino, maybe fifteen or twenty miles closer to my destination. I felt like I was living in a Jack Kerouac novel. 

After climbing up out of a ravine past the train depot, I found myself walking on the north side of the freeway when I looked down and saw a dirty brown wallet hiding among the rocks and other debris laying along the roadside. When I dusted it off up and opened it, I saw that it had, according to the learner’s permit, belonged to some Asian kid, Viet Nam, I thought. Then, of course, I checked the money compartment and found a hundred and ten dollars stuffed inside. I remember feeling guilty about taking the money, but I was broke and desperate it would come in handy, especially if I needed to take a bus to get back home. It seemed like providence, fate, at least that was my rationale. I did leave the wallet on top of a post on the side of the freeway so it could be easily recovered without the money of course. I knew that in time I would pay back this loan in some cosmic way the universe would dish out—as it always does.

Hitch-hiking was getting tiresome, and I found firsthand it was not all it’s cracked up to be as depicted in On The Road. I finally made it to Palm Springs by about one o'clock in the afternoon and man it was blazing hot, over a hundred degrees for sure. I then headed over to the nicest part of the Coachella Valley, Taquitz Canyon, where I remembered from past journeys there was a river and a waterfall at the end of the trail. Part of the 1937 Frank Capra movie Lost Horizon was filmed there. Originally it was named Pal Hani Kalet by a leader of the Fox Tribe who first settled here over 2000 years ago. This is a place of power. Legend told that when you entered tired and weak, you left rejuvenated and energized. I was hoping it would be true.

It was a lot longer walk than I recalled and by the time I made it into the canyon the sun was beginning to hide behind the boulders in the west. I could hear the waterfall going strong from the snow that had recently melted from Mount San Jacinto. Burrowing my way through the rocks and Joshua trees, I finally came to the waterfall, and it was well worth the strenuous hike. It was getting cold, and I was shivering in that poor excuse for a blue-jean jacket I was wearing. I did have enough money to get a cheap motel, but I decided to tough it out and sleep in one of the caves if I could find one unoccupied or not too scary. There could be any sort of desert creature more than willing to interrupt my evening with a sting, bite, or claw. 

 I ended up cozying next to a big rock surrounded by bushes, but the ground was hard and lumpy, and I couldn't get comfortable. I think I only slept about one or two hours that night, most of the time I spent pacing back and forth trying not to freeze to death. I felt the hair on my arms starting to ice up and my nose was running like a fire hose. Every bone in my body felt tense and brittle and I thought I was going to die out there in the middle of nowhere. As soon as the first glimpse of light hit the sky in the east, I scurried out of the canyon and took the five-mile trek back to civilization.

It was now almost nine in the morning and the glorious sun felt warm and soothing. I was standing on North Palm Canyon with my face half-peeled off with a bottle of Boone's Farm wine in my hand ready to thumb a ride out of Palm Springs. I called the house back on Oakhurst for some reason to check in and my mom told me Blair was on the other line. I gave my mom the number of the phone booth where I was and told her to have him call me back. So, I waited around for about ten minutes and finished off the rest of my wine. I knew that something was in the works. In an act of true synchronicity, the phone rang the exact time I was thinking that thought. It was Blair. “Jimmy we all have decided to go to Santa Cruz and get the band back together. We're heading up there in Ric Green's Lincoln Continental later today.” I said I would take the Greyhound bus and they could pick me up on their way out of town. I was only a three-hour bus trip from Palm Springs to the downtown Los Angeles bus terminal that cost only five dollars and sixty cents.

Arriving at the LA bus terminal at mid-afternoon, I waited an hour or so for Ric’s Lincoln carrying my old band mates, but they never showed up. After calling Blair and Stephen with no answer, I took the RTD bus to Hollywood. I figured by the time I got there I would reach somebody on the phone when I arrived. On the bus I met a girl, Pat, around twenty with red hair and freckles, who asked me if I knew the city well. I said I had lived here almost eleven years, so she attached herself to me like a barnacle on a sunken ship and we rode bus number 4 to the corner of San Vincente and Melrose together. She was lost and I was burned out and tired beyond my limits—not a great combination. All she wanted was get to, or near San Francisco, and I told her I would be heading up to Santa Cruz, about a hundred miles south of there if I could ever catch up to my ride. I told her that if there was room it would probably be alright for her to tag along.

At the Sun-Bee market on Sunset and Larrabee (hence the name) we ran into Traveling Travis, a fellow wandering minstrel who told us he had been living in a cave in Laurel Canyon for the past three years. Travis pulled out a joint and some liverwurst and crackers and we smoked behind the old Licorice Pizza record store on Sunset and Larrabee (the joint not the liverwurst). This is the same record store I would meet Doug Fieger of The Knack fame behind the counter two years later. Sitting behind a dumpster, me with my sunburned face and Polaroid bag stuffed with my belongings, Pat with her Sacks Fifth avenue shopping bag and Travis with his joint, crackers, and guitar, we sang some old Hank Williams songs about traveling and destitute women and it was soon time for us to move on. 

          Finding the hitch-hiking down Doheny next to impossible, Pat and I decided to flag a taxi back home, which cost a whopping 2 dollars and seventy cents. We finally connected with my lost band of gypsies and Ric, Richie Moore, Stephen, Blair, Pat and I left Oakhurst Drive around one thirty the next morning for regions unknown, at least unknown to me. Pat hardly said more than two words to any of the other five passenger in the car and gave me nothing more than a mere whisper or soft grumble all the way there. It was late and we were tired, so I gave her a break. The important thing was we were getting out of the rat-race of LA, and we were going to play music again. Things were looking up, but little did I know that I would be heading out of the frying pan into the fires of insanity again in Aptos, California.

Chapter 32 The Test Of EST

I COULD ALWAYS talk to mom about anything, and she would listen without judgement to all the crazy things I was going through, and I hoped I hadn’t worried her too much. Now I felt it was my turn to listen to her. She was the best!

There was a general sadness and malaise around Oakhurst Drive. My brother had just turned twenty and was going to school at UC Irvine and living on campus and my sister was hard at work as usual slaving away for David Sheehan, who was the first movie/television show reviewer/interviewer on a daily local newscast. They would drop by occasionally and Susan called every day, Robbie every other day. Dad was moping around the house trying to put on a brave face, trying not to look worried. It wasn't working. I was walking on eggshells hoping not to get in his way. 

One day after mom had been talking to a friend, probably Tina, she had convinced all of us to go through EST together. This is not Eastern Standard time, but Erhard Seminar Training founded by Werner Erhard in 1971. If not for the fact that Helyn was so insistent, thinking it would be a fantastic way to deal with her upcoming surgery and all the fears she had about cancer, we would never have been talked into it, especially not all three of us at once. 

EST was one of the more successful entrants into the human potential movement. Erhard and EST were known for training people to get “I”, a concept taken from author, teacher and expert communicator, Alan Watts. At the time Erhard arrived in the Bay Area, Watts was teaching his version of Zen to small groups on his houseboat in Sausalito. Erhard, like Watts, would teach people to "Get It." Watts, however, did most of his teaching through books. His seminars were small. Erhard and his trainers would not teach through books, but in large hotel ballrooms and auditoriums to hundreds at a time. 

I'm not sure what I got other than learning a little bit about how I go about things - the hard way. There was a process in the training showing what it was like to be a salmon swimming upstream. It is better to go with the current, especially for us humans. It pointed out in very graphic ways what it was like to go through life against the grain and how it "works" when you go with the current. I guess back then I was some salmon, I still can be at times.

Another process they included was the one where you lie down on your back and imagine your body being filled up with a warm orange fluid. Then as the fluid reaches its capacity you picture all your body parts releasing the fluid through little valves. You can start at the head and work your way down to your feet. It is really based on Zen and meditation to relax and quiet the body and the mind. But hey, it works.

          Bernie Glassman says in one of his books, row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. I can see that now, but it is hard to apply it to daily life with all the stuff that happens. It does take practice and a lot of discipline. It is funny how life can get in the way of itself, and we forget our purpose - our core self. I used to get mad at myself for forgetting these things but now I am a little easier on old me. Don't get me wrong, I still have major blow ups and the rage monster finds its way into my psyche, the only difference is now it doesn't last as long when I remember and use the tools of the trade.

 I look back at that time now with mixed emotions. Sure, I was upset and depressed about my own life, with problems that seemed insurmountable at the time. My mom and dad both had cancer, I was experiencing my first death of a friend and coworker, and the death of a would-be love, my band had broken up and I was feeling alone and abandoned. The important thing to remember— I was with my parents at a crucial time in our lives, and I hope I contributed in a positive way to our relationships. I hope they knew what they meant to me and what they meant to all that were close to me, and my undying love for them. Being a father now of three wonderful and amazing boys, I can see now how they must have felt about me. I am so fortunate we had that time to really connect as adults, as friends, as parent to son and son to parent. Time is a fleeting thing but love that remains strong and true can outlast the test of it. If there was anything to GET I think that was IT.

Chapter 31 - The Homecoming

 

IT WAS THE year of our bicentennial in America. The top movie of the year was Taxi-Driver and the number one song on Billboard's top 100 was Silly Love Songs by the yet to be knighted Sir James Paul McCartney, the one Beatle I never got to meet. Maybe someday? Back then meeting one's idols meant a lot more to me than it does now. I've never met Dylan and I am a bit hesitant about it knowing full well he could never live up to my expectations; it might be a letdown. Nevertheless, back then I felt like a descendant, even though a very distant one, from the long and winding tribe of the Grand Beatlessence. When I think about the interconnectedness of all things in the universe, I still do.

Now our direct link to that connection, the behemoth man-child, Mal, was gone. I would go over to Blair’s new apartment on Crescent Heights and Fountain to get away from the going's on at Oakhurst. It was a typical Blair place, with modern but simple decor furnished by the apartment complex company. It felt normal again to be jamming with him on clavinette, the one left over from the Bruce Golden years. Bruce was continuing to finance the band I assumed, but I decided after leaving the Courtney Manor apartments and the departure of Michael Kennedy, I was not taking another penny - so I never mentioned him, especially to Stephen. I felt like enough was enough and the band was generally defunct, although I knew Stephen would always keep a candle burning in the window of hope. Blair was beginning to realize it was time to move on as well, or maybe it was our time to continue the band without Stephen. Now I can see that things were just happening so quickly all the time; you just went with it. You may end up in some strange studio in the middle of the night when the red button is pressed. There was no time to stop the machine we were all caught up in. I felt like I needed a break from that machine after staying for two or three weeks on Blair’s couch in West Hollywood. It was time to go back to the sanctuary.

Not only had my father been diagnosed with breast cancer and had the tumor removed two years earlier, but now my mom had been diagnosed with the terrible disease too. I was fortunate to be back home and have the chance to be there for her - for them. I sat up at night in my old room and wondered. I worried about my mom. I wondered what was going to happen when Helter Skelter was released in April. I wondered what my old friend and band-mate Chas was up to in Europe, but mostly I wondered about my mom.