Chapter 56 - Avon Street

 

I HAD RE-CONNECTED with Beau Segal and Chuck Fiore, who had heard some of my demos and had agreed to produce a couple of tracks in Electra Records studio in the Valley. Electra had the right of first refusal, meaning that they had the first option to sign me as an artist on their label. It was now January 27, 1979 (I remember because it is my brother, Robbie’s birthday) and we all decided to take a break in recording. Chuck had heard of this fantastic BBQ place not too far from the studio and he was going to meet his girlfriend there. We sat at a long red and white checkered table in the back with Chuck, Beau, Jimmy Eingher and Josh Leo (who played lead guitar on the tracks). She walked in and sat down next to her boyfriend, Chuck, and across from me. I tried my best but couldn't take my eyes off of her and I would catch her sneaking looks at me. She was beautiful—looked a lot like Kate Jackson from the show Charlie’s Angels. I knew it was wrong to be interested in her since she was Chuck’s lady, but I couldn't help it— we knew it was bigger than both of us. We became friends and I would go over to her house on Avon Drive in Burbank, or she would visit me on Gould in Laurel Canyon. At this point our relationship was purely platonic, but Chuck felt uncomfortable and so did I. I knew things were changing with me and this lovely brunette and soon I would have to make a choice between career and love. I chose love. Her name was, and still is, Marly Wexler—my only Jewish girlfriend, ever. The deal with Electra fell through after that as I knew it would. Chuck and Marly broke up and I’m sure he blamed me for that break-up. If I had to do it all over again I would probably do the same thing. “Love is all there is and cannot be denied,” as Bob Dylan said on his Nashville Skyline record, and it certainly wasn't denied. Thanks, Bob.

We loved to smoke pot on her white flowered couch with the navy-blue background and watch Kung Fu with David Carradine in the role of Kwai Chang Caine. We were fine—as long as we never left the apartment. Marly, a quite opinionated, mostly on the subject of health of body, and mind, department, was a runner. She wore those yellow Nike shoes and had long, chestnut hair down past her waist. I had a lot of fun with that hair—I wasn't sure about the shoes. Running was okay with me, but I found it hard to keep up with her. It was good for my competitive spirit to try and, eventually I did keep up. I wasn't long before I started getting those pains in the knees, runner’s knee, I think it’s called. That was it for me with running. She still went on her afternoon runs with her old black dog with the white muzzle she called Marou. I was very romantically in love with her, I thought, but that jealousy was too hard to bear. Hey, I was a little jealous of her when she got a job at Bizarre Bazaar on Ventura Blvd. selling exotic jerkins and robes from the Middle East and India. She had met a game show personality by the name of Geoff Edwards there and had made plans with him to go to San Francisco with him on a day trip. I was not living with Marly yet, but I felt that we were getting to be close to a relationship—a monogamous one. I guess my feelings were a bit premature.

There was a signing party at Capitol Records for The Knack, and I took her there with me—a big mistake. She thought all the people there were insincere posers and took every one of them apart with criticism. I was only trying to promote my career and be seen at what I thought was an important function. We left after an hour and went back to her apartment on Avon, most likely to watch another episode of Kung Fu.

Marly was getting involved with an organization called Lifespring and had gone through the initial seminar training program. I followed suit, like with the running; I didn't want to be left behind. Lifespring was another off shoot of the EST movement. They would probably be insulted to be put in this category, but I can’t help but say it was very similar to EST without the harshness— a little dash of love thrown in for good measure.  There was a young woman sitting across the room from me by the name of Toolie (a nickname for O’Toole) with ash blonde hair and soft lovely features—I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was better than sitting there listening to a bunch of new age holy rollers speak about whatever it was they were speaking about. She was furious with me over this. Hey, I was only looking, which I felt was a man’s God given right. I wasn’t making any plans to go to bed with her or anything, only indulging an innocent fantasy. Marly said I should forget about her and go ask Toolie out on a date and marry her—she said I was destined to be with a blonde, not a dark-haired woman like herself. I laughed, even though she ended up being right. I did end up marrying a strawberry-blonde Scottish woman ten years after (not the band)—I’ll get to that a bit later.

Marly, after completing the initial training, was slated to become a trainer in Lifespring. It is required for a trainee to attend an advanced course which would last over a period of one month, five days a week. She was going for it all the way, and I went along for the ride. Knowing that I really wasn't too interested in becoming a trainer myself, I only wanted to share the experience and be able to spend more time with her. This was a mistake. One of the requirements of the training was to go out and talk to people about the benefits of Lifespring and get them signed up—the more the merrier. I had a resistance to this. I felt that if, in conversation, someone would ask me if there was any organization that would help a person to get in touch with their inner feelings and such, I would be more than happy to introduce them to Lifespring, but to try and sell a complete stranger on the seminar was way beyond my comfort zone. I didn't sign anybody…nada. At the next trainer meeting, they more than intimated they were not happy with my performance, all this was acted out in the room with over fifty other Lifespringers, I was voted out for the sole reason of not making people aware of, or what I thought was, proselytizing the benefits of their organization. Marly was furious at this personal attack on me, her boyfriend, and with resolve, strode up to the podium where she read the group of people the riot act. It was one of the best things I ever saw her do. She actually quit Lifespring after that. It was back to a joint on the couch and Kung Fu at last.

There was another party in Burbank at Ernie’s house. Ernie was a good friend of Rick Springfield before his monster smash album, the one with Jessie’s Girl on it. Before this party Rick would come over to the apartment on Avon to visit Marly even though by now I had moved in. I had a sneaking suspicion that they were having an affair, but I didn't pursue it any further. Maybe she was the girl in Jessie’s Girl, and I was Jessie? One day I needed a lift to Hollywood to hook up with Chas or Doug Fieger, and I asked Rick if he would give me a ride there. He had an old VW bug with a funky cassette player. On the way to Hollywood, he played me the basic tracks to his new album (the one with Jessie’s Girl) and asked me what I thought of it. I told him it was really good and commercial sounding and that it should do really well. I was right—it did. Anyway, back at the party, it was a nice little get together with some of the Lifespring folks and a few other musician and actor types—maybe fifty people in all. There was a big table set up with all sorts of delicacies and I had a plate of spaghetti marinara. I was standing up while eating my spaghetti and looking around the room at some of the beauties when, from out of nowhere, Marly had reached from under my paper plate of pasta and pushed it into my white, high collared shirt. I was mortified. The shirt, which was once white, was now red with marinara sauce. It was a food fight, like the kind you might see in a movie, but we were the only participants. I then took the remainder of my plate and smushed it into her hair. She threw a salad on my head. It was out of control now and I wasn't going to let her get away with that, so I upped the ante and retaliated at a higher (or lower) level. I did something that was horrible and still feel bad about. I took a sip of my Chivas Regal scotch and shot a thin stream of the whiskey at her and it found its way to her left eye—she was in dire pain. I took her into the bathroom and tried to wash out the alcohol, but she seemed incapacitated. After a few minutes, the pain in her eye had subsided and we left the party with our tails between our legs. I was reminded later that Rick had told Marly at the party to leave me and be with him. He also asked her if she was wearing underwear, hoping she wasn't. Marly thought that comment was extremely inappropriate, but she told me anyway. I guess that's why I wanted to leave. The more I think about it, the more I really believe that I was Jessie. I should contact him now and ask for a piece of the action.

Three times we tried to make it to Magic Mountain but never succeeded. The first time, her Volvo had overheated on the Interstate 5, and we had to call triple A. The second time, we had a fight in the car, probably over Toolie or some other jealousy and we turned around and went back home. I know I am getting a little ahead of myself in the story, but the third time was on July 16, 1980, her thirtieth birthday. I said, “Why don’t we try to make it out to Magic Mountain again?” She agreed and we drove out there in her navy-blue Volvo 144. I was staring at the clear multi-faceted crystal that hung from her rear-view mirror, not really thinking about anything in particular. We had stopped at a gas station not far from Avon to fill up when somehow another fight was in the works. I had enough. I was fuming and got out of the car, and I guess I slammed the passenger door a little bit too hard—the glass in the passenger window had shattered and pieces had fallen into the interior of the car. I told her to enjoy the rest of her birthday without me and I would walk back to the apartment and proceed to move out—back to Oakhurst again. I walked up the stairs to the second floor flat, and once inside a found a few paper grocery bags, since I had no luggage there, and packed my things. I called my mom to come pick me up in her Mercedes, which she did. 

An hour later she had arrived in Burbank, and I saw that my brother Robbie was in the back seat. By now it was about dinner time and Robbie said, “Hey Jimmy, let’s go down to that great Chinese restaurant on Fairfax you always went with Marly, the one across the street from Cantor’s Deli.” I said, “Sure, why not.” But I wasn’t really hungry—I had a sick feeling in my stomach. We parked the car on the street, and I followed behind Mom and Robbie into the restaurant. I heard a familiar voice. “Hello James.” It was Marly who had gone to “our” restaurant with her friend Debbie Bombe to celebrate what remained of her birthday. Interestingly enough, before Marly, I was always Jimmy, but she insisted on calling me James. So, if you knew me as Jimmy, you knew me before January 27, 1979, after that you most likely knew me as James. Anyway, after recognizing her voice at the table in the front, I went over to her and apologized for my outburst. I knew it was over between us but, after seeing her only hours after out last fight, I figured we were destined to be friends. It’s better off that way. Maybe it was fate that brought us together since the instant I looked into those familiar deep brown eyes—like looking into another version of my own eyes, I knew we were connected but our timing was wrong; we were not too great as lovers, and she never really considered me as marriage potential. God as my witness I asked her to marry me seven times and she refused me each one. She said I wasn't ready or some other thing of that nature, but it was the green-eyed monster of jealousy that has a chokehold on her, and she couldn't let the beast go.

Chapter - 55 - Mammoth Avenue

IT WAS 1980 and the television sets of America were inundated with ads for Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter for president. Blair had moved into a house on Mammoth St. in Van Nuys with Jeffrey Hamilton, who was making a name for himself as a make-up artist in LA. Blair got involved with a The Palmer Drug Abuse Program or PDAP after being introduced to it by Jeffrey. They both had a desire now to be sober; Blair because he felt that he would like to experience life without being high, which he hadn’t done since he was fourteen, and Jeffrey because he was over the top with substance abuse and was suffering with hepatitis. PDAP is a twelve-step program located in Houston and joining is relatively easy. There are no forms to fill out; there weren’t any interviews or registration process to complete, and families are not required to pay anything. This was perfect for Blair since, at the time, he didn’t have two dimes to rub together.

In Houston, Blair and Jeffrey met the Paschal brothers, Mark and Mike and they had come back to Van Nuys to hang out in the house on Mammoth. Another Robin, this time it was Blair who would have dibs on her, also followed the merry gang of PDAP alumni and before too long there was a whole host of people living at the three-bedroom house in Van Nuys. Mark had a girlfriend by the name of Hilary, who was absolutely beautiful, reminding of a French Julie Christie, with big brown eyes and dark blonde hair and too cute to be a minute over seventeen as described in the Chuck Berry song, Little Queenie. I had a bit of a crush on her—so did everyone. I think I was the only one who didn’t sleep with her after she arrived at the legal age in California.

Mike’s girlfriend was a New Jersey girl by the name of Martine—also a member of the tribe that Blair and I belonged to. She had short dark hair and big brown eyes, and I liked her a bit. I was single and fancy free and just because she had a boyfriend, it wasn’t really a big deal if I flirted a bit—nothing serious, mind you. I remember Martine giving me the best back rub after I had been up all night with Blair recording. I think it felt so good I had non-clamantly asked her to marry me. I had later asked Marly to marry me and was rejected seven times. I didn’t ask anyone to marry me after that until right after my father died. It was Thanksgiving of 1988, and I finally asked the right woman, Donna Smollett— she said yes. I’m proud and happy to say we are still married with three sons and live in an old farmhouse thirty miles south of Nashville.

After a relatively short while, Blair and his Robin broke up. A few week later, he was standing in line smoking a Marlboro (these were the days when you could smoke in public places) when a darling, freckle-faced, red-head recognized him from behind. She knew it had to be Blair by the way he smoked his cigarette, with an aggressive manner of holding it tightly between index and middle finger and the thumb, flicking ashes on the floor while his thoughts were focused on where, what or who was happening that night. Her name was Patricia, and she was his old girlfriend from Baltimore from almost ten years earlier. She used to come down to his rehearsals in Pikesville, Maryland, and listen attentively to his soaring Hammond B-3 organ, the one he had to carry to the basement inching his way down a narrow suburban staircase, in his first band, Lucifer’s Mother. They would hang out together listening to Cat Stevens. It was Patricia who had turned Blair on the song Father and Sons which had greatly influenced him in, not only his music but his entire life. I don’t know if it was on a sudden impulse or if it had been discussed at great detail, but Patricia went back to Baltimore and made plans to move out to LA to live with Blair and Jeffrey at Mammoth Avenue. The rest of the gang had moved on at this point. Mark and Mike went back to Houston. Hilary had run off and married some French dude, had a baby, and was nowhere to be found and Martine had gotten her own place in the valley near Coldwater and Magnolia.

Patricia was an enigma and I really thought she was amazing. She was totally in love with Blair and would do anything in the world for him. She was a first-class chef and made some of the best dinners (when I was invited to dinner, which was usually most of the time) I had ever tasted. She got a job as a barmaid at Roger’s on Beverly Drive and when Blair and I came in to visit her she would always have a glass of Frangelico waiting for us at the bar. She was a walking contradiction—the type of girl who would get high on coke and then do yoga— but she was as lovable as the day was long. Her father, Huck, owned a music store back in Towson, Maryland by the Baltimore docks, and when Blair and I formed a duo later in 1981 called Two Guys from Van Nuys, she would have her father mail her guitar strings and harmonicas, which she would be more than happy to dole out for the cause. I think I have one or two of those harmonicas laying around my studio still here in Tennessee. Blair, Patsy (a name he had called her, but I always called her Patricia) and I were constantly together. She would come with us to all of our gigs at places like The Natural Fudge in Hollywood and the Bla Bla Café in Studio City, where we had a regular gig once a month on Wednesday nights. She was there when we recorded our first demos at Creative Space, a studio where you paid ten dollars an hour and they would throw you into a room with a four-track cassette recorder and leave you to your own devices. It was really a great idea and ahead of its time, since now everyone and his mother can do home studio recordings, which is what Creative Space, in fact, really was. I think that Patricia even paid for those sessions. She was the best!

 Soon things would take a turn for the worse between her and Blair, and she got a little bit insane. She would bang her head against the wall trying to make Larry react or respond to her cries of love, but he couldn’t deal with it, or her. It was too hard watching her disintegrate before his very eyes. She was sent to a mental ward and, much to Blair’s displeasure, took great joys in weaving baskets. He got her out of there after a week or so, but they eventually broke up and it would lead, or at least contribute, to her total demise. After a while, the Two Guys from Van Nuys had decided to call it quits and Blair was playing music now with Jon Lowery, who had a cover band, and they had a gig in some dive on Western Ave. near Third Street. Patricia had moved into an apartment in West Hollywood with a roommate, an actor and stunt man by the name of John, and they were completely platonic. I started visiting her there and our friendship was turning into something more—we started falling in love. I wasn’t sure if she really loved me, or if it was because I was Blair’s musical partner and friend, as if just being with someone so close to Blair would be like having a piece of him there with her.

When I drove up to John’s and her apartment complex on La Jolla I would park my car on the street and instead of ringing her doorbell, I would stand outside her balcony and play the intro to Thunder Road on my harmonica and beckon her to come out. It was very romantic, reminding me of a modern West Hollywood version of Romeo and Juliet. I can still see her in my mind wearing those Flashdance leg warmers over black leotards, low cut t shirt that exposed one of her shoulders nicely and her hair tied back in a fiery ponytail. Her face was a constellation of freckles interspersed over milky white skin; her top lip pointed sharply upwards making a pronounced V as it lay a perfect distance from the bottom of her nose. Patricia was classically beautiful in a French way. I could almost see her beneath a parasol drifting in a boat upon the Seine in a Matisse or a Monet painting as she stood on the balcony indicating that she would be right down to meet me.

 I was in two minds about our relationship and felt guilty that I was involved with Blair’s old love even though they had officially broken up. I went down to the dive on Third Street where Blair was playing keyboards for Jon Lowery and was determined to tell him I was now seeing his old girlfriend. I didn’t know how he was going to take it, but I had to tell him. If it were me, I would have been devastated, but not Blair. He was not only happy about it; he was relieved that someone he knew and trusted would be looking out for her. I had built up all these scenarios in my head for nothing.

I’m going to skip ahead in to late 1982. I had an apartment on Highland Avenue not far from the Hollywood Bowl. It was an older house that was dived into three separate apartments and mine was on the northern part of the house. The apartment was taller than it was wide; I think the ceiling was fifteen feet high. It had a living room, bathroom and a small kitchenette. I had asked Patricia to move in with me and she tentatively agreed. That night when we went to sleep, we were awoken by scratching noise coming from the wall. As soon as we turned on the lights to investigate, the noises stopped. This went on for an hour or two and we eventually saw the cause of all that scratching and clawing—it was a rat that had chewed a hole in the wall and was staring at us from the foot of the bed. She freaked out and decided not to move in and we thought we should remain friends instead of lovers. She found a place on Wilcox in Hollywood with— yes it is true, a self-proclaimed warlock named Robin (yes, another Robin—but this time it was a male) as a roommate. He was a quiet and calculating young man who dabbled in the black arts and Patricia ended up marrying him at a witch’s coven on Ivar just south of Hollywood Blvd.—it was a white wedding and I, of course, didn’t go. She had shaved her head except for a red tail that protruded from the back of her shiny cranium. She claimed it was freeing up the highest chakra so she could be closer to God. I would still visit her, bald head and all, and would ask her jokingly to put on a hat. She had changed, losing her sense of humor which was always so prominent. I didn’t like her husband in the least and I didn’t think he was good for her, but ever since her break-up with Blair she was treading on thin ice. I was a happy distraction for a while, but I knew things with her were going very dark and I didn’t know what to do about it. The last time I ever took a psychedelic, I was with Patricia in a park near Santa Barbara. I told her with presentiment that after she died I wanted her ghost to visit me. She told me in all seriousness, like it was a foregone conclusion; she would do that very thing.

A little more than a month later a letter came to Larry. It was from Patricia, and it was addressed to nine people, Blair and I being two of them. It stated that she and Robin had grown tired of this crazy world and had planned to shoot each other with pistols at point blank range and their bodies would be found in Griffith Park. Was she bluffing? Could she actually do such a thing, such an insane desperate thing as mutual suicide? Their house was left with everything still intact except for a suitcase that was assumed to contain clothing, guns and food— but they were gone. For ten years the mystery of her disappearance was scrutinized by the local police and her mother and father had hired a private detective to find her to no avail.

I had a dream one night about her. I saw her riding in what looked like a miniature train circling through the Painted Desert or California Sierra forests, I couldn’t be sure—you know how dreams are, they can change locales in a split second. It was like that train ride in Disneyland—the western one under a blue sky streaked with cotton candy clouds thinly scattered like they were being pulled by young children trying to see how far they would stretch before breaking apart. The train kept circling around a mountain pass never seeming to get any higher or lower—just going around and around into oblivion. It seemed like a message to me. I knew she was somewhere near a train. But where? For ten years they searched every square inch of Griffith Park, but they must have missed the area at the north end of the park. In a ravine near a grove of twisted trees their bodies were finally recovered—about a hundred yards from the kiddie train. Was Blair jinxed or doomed? He was lucky in all aspects of his life but one—his love life. First it was Christa, then Caroleen and now the lovely Patricia. There would be one more tragic loss of love for Blair in the near future that goes beyond the boundaries of this story. If I were a girl I would stay as far away from him as humanly possible. Patricia was damaged goods and maybe it was wrong for her to come to LA where, as Ogden Nash once said, “the United States in built on a slant and everything that is loose rolls to Southern California” or would the same thing have happened if she stayed in Baltimore. God only knows; but he’s not telling me—or maybe I’m not listening. Sometimes I don’t—but other times I do.

Chapter 54 - You Bette Your Life

AT THIS POINT in 1978, Chas and I, being neighbors and all, used to hang out a lot together. I remember one time we took a walk out past his house on Walnut into the more underdeveloped regions of Laurel Canyon. It was a beautiful sunny day in LA (aren't they all like that?) and we stopped at a clearing where I could finally try to explain astrology to him using a walking stick. I drew an astrological chart in the dirt and divided the circle into twelve equal parts. I was so engrossed in my explanation, I hadn’t noticed a small black cloud forming directly over our heads, but Chas did and said, “Maybe this is not such a good idea, James.” I told him not to worry so much about it and that I was almost through. He was not convinced, especially after a giant of a man, who looked like an overstuffed version of Grizzly Adams, appeared on the horizon walking toward us at a rapid pace.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Chas pleaded, but I needed to finish. As the beast of a man came closer, I began to feel we had overstayed our welcome. The behemoth was casting a giant shadow over us as the cloud grew darker in tandem.

“What are you boys doing here? This is private property,” he said in a deep gravelly voice. We left before I could finish my explanation of Chas’ chart and I don’t think he ever had any intention of finding out about it in the future.

Chas was on a roll. His band, Romanse, was hired to perform in the Robert Altman film, A Perfect Couple, with Ted Neely (from Jesus Christ Superstar) and Paul Dooley, a wonderful character actor. I went down to visit him on the set of the film, and I sat in the audience of the Greek Theater where they were shooting a scene with the band playing a rocking, soulful number. There were a few other people in the audience but it hardly, if it were filmed without effects, would seem like a full house. A little while later, Chas was watching the rushes of that scene, and he was amazed to see a full shot of me that lasted for more than ten seconds. My face on the silver screen drinking a coke was all you could see. I have to rent that film and see if I made it to the final cut.

After seeing the film, Bette Midler had auditioned the band and they passed with flying colors. They performed to a sold-out crowd for over a week at the Greek Theater. One night, after a performance, I was backstage with him, but we had stayed a little too long. When we went back to his Rover in the parking lot, we found it was locked in behind a chain. Chas called a few people for a ride, I guess he wasn't a member of triple A. After exhausting most of his resources, he finally called Bette. She and her not entirely virtuous friend, Tanya Tucker, rescued us in a silver Rolls Royce limo, where the white powdery substance was passed around. Bette did not partake of the powder but did crack open a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and we all drank as we headed off to the Rainbow. Where else? At this time Chas was on top of the world and was very generous in picking up tabs at the aforementioned nightclub. I was happy to tag along and have him spend his money thinking when my ship came in, I would return the favor in spades. So far, I haven’t been able to reciprocate, and if I did find success, I wouldn't be buying drinks for the crowd since I eliminated alcohol from my diet over twenty-five years ago. I would maybe buy everyone a round of golf—or a set of golf clubs instead.

For my twenty-fifth birthday he bought me a CD player and a complete Beatles set of CD’s. This was one of the first CD players ever released to the public. He always had to have the newest, best and most expensive thing on the market. I had a nickname for him—Mr. Accessory.

Bette was really a wonderful person and so approachable. A few evenings later Chas, Bette and I were sitting in the kitchen of her Bel-Air home. She handed me a nylon string acoustic guitar and we all sang Beatle songs together. She reminded me of a girl I went to high school with, so relaxed and without any airs of superiority. She’s down home—I guess her being raised in Hawaii had something to do with that—or maybe it was just the way she naturally was. I could tell there was something more than friendship going on with her and Chas and I was right. They continued on tour and stayed together in one of the fancier hotels in Manhattan for a few months while her show, The Divine Ms. M had an extended stay on Broadway. He was connected in a big way now and I thought it would be beneficial to my career to hang on his coattails. Maybe we could write some songs together or he may ask me to play in his band. He didn't. I think he felt, since the demise of Silverspoon, I was too controlling, and way too stuck in my own way of thinking to be a side man, or even a co-writer. Maybe it all came down to his being fired from the aforementioned band by Mal Evans and was thinking that I had something to do with it. I wasn't even there that day, but I guess I could have gone to bat for him—thinking it may rock the boat and jeopardize our chances for success with an actual Beatle associate at the helm, I didn’t.

He might have had other reasons. When he got a gig in 1979 with Steppenwolf and then The Association, neither of which had any of the original members, he went on the road and asked me to keep an eye on some of his things. He had a set of Auratone speakers, and I had kept them on top of my piano. One day my cat, Gretel, or maybe it was Bosco, jumped up on the piano and knocked one of the speakers off. It had a two-inch scratch on the side, nothing that affected the sound, but it was scarred for life. He never forgave me for that. During a gig with The Association, the band was somewhere in Texas or Oklahoma and had just wound up the last set in the club. For some reason or other, Steve Green, the agent, had not paid the club owners and they consequently had confiscated all the band’s instruments and locked them in a storage closet in the back of the nightclub. Early the next morning, Chas and the rest of the band broke in, stole back their instruments and headed out of town. They didn't get far before the cops caught up with them and threw their sorry asses into a holding cell. He called his mom, and she wired the police station the money by Western Union. It wouldn't be the last time she would bail him out of trouble. Hey, beside love and nurturing their children, that’s what moms are for. Right?

Another time he had lent me his Guild acoustic guitar for a showcase I had at the Troubadour. There was a special cable that attached itself to a miniature microphone in the body of that guitar. I was trying to be as conscientious and careful with the guitar as I could, but me being caught up in exhilaration in the aftermath of the gig, I forgot about the cable and left it there. I went back the next morning to see if anyone had turned it in, but nobody had. It wasn't just any cable, mind you, it was specifically designed to fit that guitar and a replacement would cost a few hundred bucks, which I didn't have. I think he eventually sold the guitar but never forgave me for that either.

 Although we remain good friends to this day, I can’t help but feel there are some hidden resentments on both of our parts. It took more than thirty years, but I did finally confront him about an amplifier of mine I left in his mother’s garage back in 1974 that disappeared. He said it wasn’t him who had taken it, it was his brother, Richard (also fired him from Silverspoon) who sadly had died on December 8, 1985, from a drug and alcohol overdose which was deemed to be a mistake. He was trying to get sober and had slipped in big way with Vodka and Codeine. It’s a shame that Richard couldn’t be here to defend himself. It was five years to the day after John Lennon was brutally murdered.

I tried my best to console my friend. He was so depressed he was going to blow off his ski trip to Aspen. I told him I would help him drive his Chevy Blazer to Colorado and try to lift his spirits. He agreed. On the way we stopped in Las Vegas, got a room at the MGM Grand, and we did a little gambling. I won a few hundred bucks at the craps tables. We procured the company of some local female talent and after they left, Chas and I wrote a song called, It Ain’t Love, But it Ain’t Bad. You can imagine the details.

We were driving through Grand Junction, Colorado the next day when Chas had an uncontrollable urge for a burger from Burge King. MacDonald’s or Wendy’s wouldn't do, it had to be a Burger King Whopper. I thought it extremely odd since he was basically a vegetarian. We had no idea where in Grand Junction a Burger King was located and told him we should pull over and ask someone. This was 1985 and there were no GPS’s. He was a man on a mission and was determined to find one come hell or high water. Just when I was losing hope, a Burger King materialized like an oasis in a desert of fast-food restaurants. While standing in line, Chas noticed a girl behind him wearing a button on her coat. As he looked closer, he could see it was a Great Buildings (the band his brother Richard played drums in) button. Great Buildings was a wonderful group, but they were not very well known outside of Los Angeles and for this girl to be wearing it on her coat seemed like more than a coincidence, it was fate. It served to remind Chas, and me, that there are more things out there than meet the naked eye or as old Billy Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. He was so right.

I must confess, with all of Chas’s evasiveness and self-oriented lifestyle, he still calls me his best friend, well at least I’m his oldest friend. Later, we were living across the street from each other for the second time, he on Milner Road and I on Camrose drive. One evening, I had a very lucid dream. I saw a magnificent sky of blues, bluer that I had ever seen in my red-green colorblindness of waking reality. It was fairy-tale-like in feeling, and I woke up with a melody in my head reminiscent of ’til Tuesday’s— Voices Carry. At eight AM, I called Chas, played him the melody and, even though he hadn't had his morning cup of coffee, he told me to come right over. We recorded the demo in his 16-track studio through the Trident board, and it sounded pretty darn killer. About a month or two later, it appeared on Maria Vidal’s 1987 self-titled record and was released as a single by the familiar name, Make Believe—check it out on you tube— I still like it, you might too.

Chas and I would live in the relative same vicinity two more times after that. In the nineties, my wife Donna and I bought our first home in Woodland Hills when she was expecting the first of our three sons. Chas had moved about three miles away a few months prior. Before the Northridge quake, Chas had the presence of mind to move to the Nashville area in the more residential and slower paced Williamson County just outside of Franklin. Donna, our twenty-month-old son, Jonathan and I were not so forward thinking. At 4:28 in the morning, right after I had coaxed Jonathan back to sleep and I was just about to rest my weary head, the house starting rocking—not the good kind of rocking. I shielded my wife, who was sleeping on my left; she woke up to the convulsing room and screamed, “Jonathan.” I got up and my feet swayed like I was walking on the deck of a ship caught in a tidal wave. I crawled my way into Jonathan’s room and somehow lifted him out of his crib just before the substantially sized framed picture of a teddy bear painted by his Nana fell on his newly formed head. We all staggered to the dining room and in the midst of the crashing glass figures on the shelves, televisions flying off the stands to the wooden floors below, we hunkered down under the dining room table. Of course, I didn't have any batteries in my flashlight or for the portable radio, so I got my keys off the kitchen counter, went to the driveway and turned on the Jeep’s radio. I heard that there was a 7.1 earthquake in Los Angeles (tell me something I don’t know) and it was not the big one California had been expecting for some time now. “NOT THE BIG ONE! I am so out of here.”

Two months after that, in March of 1994, we went on a vacation to Nashville for three basic reasons. One, to scout out a place to move to where I could still have the opportunity to pursue my musical endeavors, two, to visit Chas and see what he is up to now, and three, I had registered to attend a writer’s seminar at the Loew’s Vanderbilt Hotel near Music Row. We stayed in Chas’s rented, historic, antebellum house where Hank Williams Sr. used to let the cattle roam freely, in March of ’94. By July, after our earthquake damaged house sold in six weeks, bought an old farmhouse with three acres in Thompson Station, about thirty miles south of Nashville in the prestigious Williamson County. The only person we knew there was Chas. We were in culture shock. I used to tell my L.A. friends that it was more redneck than the Beverly Hillbillies.

Chas had a plethora of parties there on Bailey Road between Leiper’s Fork and Franklin. I’ll never forget the Halloween party he threw on November 2. It was a little late for Halloween, but it fell on a Saturday, and it also happened to be my birthday. Inside this palatial mansion was a large formal entry hall leading to a spiral staircase. You could imagine Scarlett O’Hara walking down to greet her ruefully beloved, Rhett Butler. At the rear of the foyer there was a baby grand piano. I sat down to play a tune. Little did I know that in the dining room, one room adjacent, were Stevie Nicks, Billy Burnette and host of other local renown musicians. As they gathered around the piano to join in, somebody mentioned it was my birthday and they all wanted to sing Happy Birthday to me. Not knowing the best key, I played a G chord thinking that would be a good place to begin. It was the worst rendition of Happy Birthday I have ever heard in my life. It was awful—nobody, and mind you these are professional in their trade, could find the key. One would start with the opening words in one key then, another virtuoso entered in another key, than a third in another, before too long it was utter cacophony. Maybe they were a little wasted, but hey it was near midnight, and we were approaching the new millennium.

Although in Silverspoon Chas had a minor but significant role, our friendship didn't expand until after the band’s demise. He still lives in Franklin, has barely survived two marriages and two divorces, the second much worse than the first which provided him with four children all under the age of thirteen, three boys and a girl. He now has been married nine years to a wonderful and talented woman, Melanie, and they have a little genius seven-year-old son, Bowie. Right now, he is producing my fifth solo album called Still Moving which should be released sometime in January of 2024. I think he still calls me his best friend.

Chapter 53 - Stephen’s Disenchantment

                            

FROM 1977 THROUGH early 1980, Stephen was somewhere in transit from Santa Monica to Burbank with West Hollywood sandwiched in between. Basically homeless, he slept most nights on Jon Marr’s couch in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment at The El Cortez. It was a tough time for him, especially when Jon’s fiancée, Carol, was around. Carol had an apartment on the first floor directly below Jon’s and disliked Stephen, to put it mildly, and the feeling was mutual. To escape from the turmoil, he would take the bus to Burbank and visit with Renee, who was becoming a famous Hollywood actress. He would sleep in her spare bedroom and sometimes would knock on Renee’s locked door to enter, hoping he could cement their relationship, or at least take it to the next level. She would always have an excuse, she was tired, or was reading, and they never did move to the next level. Stephen, to her, was more of a spiritual advisor. He would analyze her astrology chart and decipher her numerology, although being with her in the Biblical way, was just not in the cards for him. Speaking of Biblical, she had now re-acquainted herself with Jesus and, for Stephen; any thoughts of a deeper love with Renee were all but lost. She had Jesus and that was enough for her now.

The day that Stephen realized that Silverspoon was finally over (if he ever truly has) was sometime in 1978. It was at Jon Marr’s apartment. Joey and Jon were arguing about vocal harmonies while I just sat there with my guitar in hand waiting for the dust to settle. It didn't. Blair was there too but left as soon as he saw the writing on the wall. It was the same old story, Jon was trying to teach Joey an intricate harmony which he couldn't grasp, a fight ensued, and I, having had enough, was out of there, too. Knowing that I had Robin Stewart waiting at home, who was more than happy to help write another song increased my feeling of independence from the dwindling, almost non-existent band. Stephen was mortified, finally realizing that a group with Jon, Joey, Blair, and me was out of the question. Not only that, but his love life was in utter chaos; between Renee, Robin (who always came in and out of his life like a yo-yo) and Stephanie, the beautiful French model. He would fly to Vegas and visit with Stephanie and all they ever did was have sex. Who could blame him? But when he came back to LA she rarely visited him. He knew he could always count on Robin, showing up at precisely the wrong time to squelch a budding relationship with someone new. He also had Renee, if he wanted spiritual companion, but most times he left feeling frustrated and alone.

Having no money and impacted teeth, Stephen was in dire straits. Ever since the death of his stepfather, Tom Gries, in 1977 and the events of the Red House with Christa’s murder, he was a lost soul drifting from place to place in the city of angels. Not being welcome at Jon’s apartment because of the animosity between him and Carol, Stephen began staying at John Shoemaker’s place not more than five hundred feet away. Shoemaker was a sports loving, druggie derelict who needed someone to share his cocaine delusions, although I don’t think Stephen took part in any of the drugging. He was barely hanging on to reality and cocaine was the last thing he needed. Alcohol, on the other hand, was a major distraction for him now, me too, unfortunately. I would see him from time to time in Venice. We would hang out by the beach, play a little guitar and reminisce, and later go to the bar. He had gotten a job at Merlin McFly’s as a doorman and would leave work wasted at three in the morning and somehow make his way back to Shoemaker’s apartment. Stephanie tried to convince Stephen to move to Atlantic City where her father was a pit boss at one of the casinos there. He couldn't see leaving LA, the hub for all the music, film and the rest of the arts, to be stuck in some godforsaken place where the only music was covers of cheesy sixties hits. They subsequently broke up.

There was another young woman who lived at the El Cortez, Maria Corvelone who, if you remember, was responsible for introducing the band to Bob Ringe, the hapless agent from William Morris two years earlier. It was now the end of 79, and I was living with Marly, who I had met in January of that year. Maria was acting as my agent and had procured a gig for me at a place in Venice called F. Scott’s on January 9, 1980. I had hired a band of musicians I had found from the Musician’s Contact Service, except for Brent Nelson, the drummer, who I had worked with before with Stephen Paul. Brent was a fine drummer who had an excellent voice, very reminiscent of Joey’s high tenor. Even though Stephen Adamick-Gries was around somewhere and Blair too, I had no intention of using them in my band. I didn't want another version of Silverspoon. We rehearsed some of the songs I had recently written for a week or two and it was show-time. The place was packed. Chas had brought Bette Midler (I will go into more detail about this later), who he was seeing on a regular basis. My sister, Susan, was also there all jacked up on something. I remember her yelling at the engineer behind the console in between songs to fix the sound, being somewhat distorted. Hey, we were loud, and the sound guy was doing the best he could to match the vocal volume with the screaming guitars, thundering bass and booming drums. Then Susan stormed out of her seat to fix the trouble herself. She rushed by my vocal mike which banged against my front teeth. I announced to the crowd that she would get the bill from my dentist. A cheap one-liner. She then tried to grab the controls of the console even though she didn't know the first thing about mixing. The engineer was at a loss for words but managed to keep my older sister’s hands off the faders. The performance was shaky at best but was saved when I came out to do a solo encore. I did a heart-felt version of my song, Final Bow (Susan’s favorite of mine), and the crowd responded in an enthusiastic way. After that show, Bette had told Chas that she liked some of my songs and wanted to record one called Mr. Lonely. I’m not sure what happened, because she never recorded it. I think she and Chas had broken up—so much for that.

Stephen had enough of the pain that Los Angeles had caused him and decided to go up to Carmel to live with his father, Chick. He got a job as a busboy at one of the golf courses at Pebble Beach, the western Mecca of golf in the US.. He would wait hand and foot for the elite; people like Clint Eastwood and Johnny River’s ex-wife, the latter of which he had designs on. I don’t think that ever happened, but it was a good time for Stephen to get out of LA and bond with his birth father. He had saved up his money and bought a guitar and amp to replace the one that Mikel and Ciri Japp had stolen from him. When he came back to LA, he told me he was ready to join the Two Guys From Van Nuys, but I told him we were going to keep it as a duo—just Blair and me. I wanted a situation where we would play live and from past experience with Stephen, we never really did play live. I needed to get my road legs exercised, and the only way was to perform in front of people and not just in the studio, a place where Stephen shined and still shines. Blair had plenty of live experience from Vegas and beyond and I thought the nucleus of the Two Guys should be us. I didn't mean to hurt Stephen’s feelings, which apparently I did, but I was on a mission and could not let friendships get in the way.

Stephen told me of his escapades in Carmel and I was a bit jealous. Having gone back to the great game of golf and I played at least once a week at Roosevelt, a course in Griffith Park. Golf was a game I began to take seriously at the age of twelve when my father took me out to Rancho Park. By the time I was fourteen I was, much to his chagrin, beating him at his own game. My dream was, and still is to be invited to play the Pro-Am at Pebble beach links, but to do so you have to be a celebrity. Maybe someday? But for now, or then as the case may be, I was pursuing a solo career in music, living with Marly and playing golf. Reuniting with Silverspoon was the furthest thing from my mind, although there would be one more reunion in the near future.

Chapter 52 - Cat and Mouse

AS I SAID before, Robin and I had broken up and it was an amenable break-up. We wanted to stay friends and I am happy to say we are still friends. For some reason or another, I managed to stay friends with all my ex-girlfriends and my wife doesn't mind. She is not the jealous type, the complete opposite of the kind of woman I would soon get involved with after Robin.

After the predictability and domesticity of Woodbridge, living in that treehouse on Gould was emancipating and exhilarating. I suppose it was originally meant to be a guest cottage since there was the main house upstairs where Jack (the junkie) and his girlfriend Betsy, a dark-haired beauty with piercing blue eyes, lived. My Dad was helping me move in and had rented a U-Haul van. We were winding down our first load and I had propped up the mattress against the inside of the garage door where Jack parked his car. We went back to Woodbridge for the second load. On our way back, my dad I could see smoke billowing up and it looked like it was coming from the downstairs part of the house, three hundred yards up ahead—maybe somebody was burning leaves. They weren't. The garage was on fire. The fire engines with their sirens screaming slowly made their way up the narrow street and had thankfully put the fire in the garage out in a matter of minutes— but my mattress was burnt to a crisp. I found out later from Betsy that Jack had sold some bad dope to one of the members of Three Dog Night and he, in retribution, had set fire to my mattress, he didn’t know it was mine, of course, but anybody’s mattress would have done the job. Welcome back to Hollywood, Mr. Haymer.

My friend Chas, who lived up the street on Walnut off of Kirkwood, was getting his career off the ground. He was now in a band called Romanse with Tony Berg on guitar, Art Wood on drums and Jeff Eyerich on bass. They were doing that pre-eighties style of music with the bass thumping the root with eight notes and the drums sounded like canons. The Knack was in the process of recording their first album and playing places like The Starwood and The Whiskey. There were some fairly good bands around then, a group called 20/20, and Chas’s brother Richard played drums in Great Buildings, a group fronted by Danny Wilde, who would later go on to write the theme song from Friends. Me, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with bands, unless they were a back-up. After Silverspoon and then The Knack I had enough. Doug Fieger was a demagogue and ran his outfit like Napoleon ran his little French army. I had no use for that kind of thing in music—hey, it’s supposed to be fun, right?

Ed Blair, whose real name was Blaustein, was a fellow New Yorker, and member of the tribe, who as I said, I had met at Alice’s, Robin’s landlady at 2222 Laurel Canyon. Ed is a kind of a hustling-bustling, streetwise and well-fed patron of the arts. He hired musicians, actors, street artists—anybody who needed a job. He figured these “artists types” could act or were desperate enough to make thirty calls and hour, for four hours straight, or as Ed called it,” dialing for dollars”. There was a storefront shop downstairs by the name of Shakey’s Wigs which I would bypass on my way through the glass doors to the elevator which lifted me to the third floor. We were selling typewriter ribbons and lift off correction tape, mostly for the IBM Selectric II, which comprised ninety percent of the business. I did well—some weeks were better than others. It wouldn't be until Central Supply moved to Van Nuys two years later when Jim Phillips hit pay-dirt—his ship had come in and it had come in directly from the U.S. Virgin Islands. I (or Jim Phillips) had found a phone book from The Virgin Islands in the back of the directory room, sort of a storage closet for phone directories. I asked Ed if it was all right to call the islands and if we could ship the product over there. He said any book in the directory room was fair game—go for it. I did and before too long, I was driving a Porsche and getting into that ubiquitous, wretched, white powdery substance— a little too much. I could always take it or leave coke; I never bought it. I remember doing a few lines with Ronnie Huff in 1969 before a gig at The Troubadour, or with my first girlfriend and her father on the houseboat which floated peaceably down the Sacramento River. I also did some lines with Blair and Jeff and most definitely with BJ, except he often snorted that sulphury stuff called crank. It burned my nose like the dickens, and it made me all jittery and nervous. I don’t think I ever snorted coke with Stephen Gries—thank God for that. The marijuana, acid and mescaline raps were bad enough—an all-night coke rant would have been unbearable. I often wondered, if I had stayed away from the habit for so long why did I start then at the age of twenty-six? Why so late? Jimmy Haymer could never afford it before. Jim Phillips changed all that.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and go back to Hollywood’s Central Supply. As I said, Ed Blair hired artist types and sitting next to me there was this tall, skinny, dark-haired guy who was struggling at the job at hand. I tried to give him some pointers and, on a break we started talking about music. He was a singer/songwriter too and had worked with some of the same people I had worked with. He told me he was the guy who had that billboard up on Sunset and La Cienega in the late sixties, proclaiming the Stephen Skull was coming. His real name was Stephen Scakulnikov, whose father was a Taxicab mogul in Manhattan. I told him that I remembered seeing that billboard and thought it was enticing and I often wondered who this Stephen Skull was and when he was coming. Little did I know he would arrive at the desk next to mine on Hollywood Blvd selling typewriter ribbons and lift-off tape?

 Stephen Paul, as he went by now, was a mad scientist sort of guy, kind of a genius in electronics. He drove a rust-colored Opel GT and we drove out to Joshua Tree to see the Blue Rose Ministry. He, being the rational thinker, was very skeptical but fascinated, nonetheless. We would also hang out at his apartment on Havenhurst and wound-up singing Beatles or Eagles songs. He had a decent voice, but really nothing to write home about. He tried to convince me to start a duo with him doing some of the same songs we were singing plus some Paul Simon and Cat Stevens. I had nothing else going on at the time, so I reluctantly agreed. He wanted to call the duo Cat and Mouse. He, of course, with his thick black hair and Snidley Whiplash mustache, would be the cat. I, much to my disappointment, was delegated to be the mouse. It was the “I’m not playing” syndrome I had gone through when my father was building a bed and asked his three progeny what famous cowboy hero they wanted to be to pass the time. They both picked my favorites before I could choose. Susan said, ‘I’m Daniel Boone.” Robbie said, “I’m Davy Crockett.” I said, “I’m…not playing—the story of my life. I did after a while reluctantly assume the role of the mouse. He said I reminded him of Anatole the mouse from some children’s book that was read to him when he was a kid.

Cat and Mouse had some promotional photos taken and we got a few gigs. They were terrible and we kind of sucked. His main talents were behind the recording console not in front of it. He had a friend who had a twenty-four-track studio in, of all places, Studio City, and we got some free time there. Stephen decided he was going to produce a couple of tracks that I had written there. I agreed, since the studio time was free, and I needed to add to my catalog of recorded material. The first song we did was a number I had written when Mikel Japp was staying at my sister’s apartment when I was house-sitting for her in 1977 called Daybreak Heartache. The second song was called Don’t Say You’re Passing Me By; a very Cat Stevens influenced song. He was a pretty darned good engineer, I must admit, and the tapes turned out nicely. The main problem was this Cat and Mouse thing. I didn't want to do it anymore, but I couldn't blow it off without jeopardizing the recordings, so I hung in there. Another problem was the fact that Stephen was very opinionated and controlling. I hated that. There is not a Scorpio I know that likes to be told what to do, and I was no exception to that rule.

As a producer, Stephen was very influenced by friends of his, Gary Usher and Curt Boettcher. Usher was the earliest outside collaborator of The Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson, co-writing more than ten songs (among them In My Room ,409 and Lonely Sea). Wilson's domineering father, Murry Wilson clashed with Usher and discouraged Usher's close personal friendship and working relationship with his son. Usher later recalled that the nicest thing Murry Wilson ever said to him was "not bad, Usher, not bad" upon hearing Usher and Brian Wilson play In My Room after they had co-written it. Curt was the founding member of the underrated group, The Millennium that had one album entitled Begin released in 1968. They were very psychedelic, and Stephen Paul was an ardent fan and student of the recording techniques used. Later, Curt would produce Mike Love’s solo record, Looking Back With Love in 1981 and was a fan of The Two Guys From Van Nuys, (a duo consisting of myself and Blair Aaronson). He loved our song Running Around the World and promised he would record it someday. He was true to his word, and it made it to the Mike Love solo record. Curt, a gay man, was the first person I ever knew who died from AIDS in 1986. He was an extremely talented character and I miss him and his amazing vocal and production abilities so much.

After we lost touch with one another, Stephen Paul went on to re-invent the microphone and built a company around that innovation. He, I found out, had developed some rare disease where his body compressed and shrunk by about a foot. He suffered with extreme arthritis for years and lost the use of his hands and one of his eyes but— he died from his ailments in 2003. His company is still alive, and you can visit his website at spaudio.com.

Chapter 51- The Package

I GOT THE word BJ was coming back to LA. He called me when I was back at Oakhurst Drive in between girlfriends or visiting my parents. I must have still been with Robin, but things were on the wane in our relationship. It wouldn't be long now until the two-year stint with her would end. It must have been Thanksgiving of 1978, that’s why I was home. BJ had called to tell me he, and his friend Walter Hallanan, were coming back to take over the LA pop scene and he was going to send me a package and I was not, under any circumstances to open it. Me being the trusting lad that I was at the time, listened carefully to his instructions. It was going to be a box; roughly the size of a shoebox wrapped in brown shipping paper, and it would be sent to BJ Taylor at the Oakhurst address. “What’s in it?” I asked my friend and social mentor. “Don’t worry about it. But I need to know I can trust you not to open it. The contents are very personal, and it is something that will help all our careers.” I wondered what it could be. Were they contracts from a record company? Were they gold bars or coins that his aging mother and father had given him to get him back on his feet again in LA?

BJ had a business partner, Walter Hallanan, who had sold his house in the Philadelphia area and had bought himself a significant percentage of Taylormade (BJ’s music company) productions. He wasn't coerced, nobody held a gun to his head or even twisted his arm— he did it willingly and under his own cognition. As I mentioned before, BJ could sell Bibles to an atheist, or garlic to a vampire, and he had sold poor Walter the bill of goods, lock stock and barrel. Welcome to the wild, wacky, and wonderful world of showbiz, Mr. Hallanan.

The package arrived right before Thanksgiving, and I had already told my folks that it would be coming and not to open it. I knew that they would never open mail belonging to someone else, but I was only taking precautions since I knew how valuable it was to BJ—it was a matter of life or death to him. I must have been staying in my old room in the back because I was the first one to see that brown shoebox size package addressed to a Mr. BJ Taylor. I was curious as to the contents of this shoe-box size package. What in the world could it be? But being the loyal and trusting friend that I was, I didn't open it. I might have lightly shaken it, or sniffed it, but I didn’t open it. There it stood on the edge of the mahogany baby grand piano in my parent’s living room.

BJ and Walter arrived in LA about a week or two later and I picked them up at the airport in my Mom’s Mercedes. There were these two six-foot four-inch bearded Philadelphians that looked exactly alike. At first I thought that Walter was BJ, since I hadn’t seen BJ in a couple of years—that’s how much they looked like one another. We all drove back to Oakhurst, and I asked my folks if it would be all right if the two transient friends of mine could stay in the back room for a night or two while they went apartment hunting in Hollywood. Of course, my parents being the greatest people that ever lived said they would be more than happy to accommodate them. They were always so supportive of my friends and my endeavors. God, I miss them so much now.

I gave BJ the package and he said thanks. I thought he was going to open it right there and then to make sure everything was hunky-dory. He didn't. He asked me to drop him and Walter off at a friend’s house in Hollywood and would call when he needed to be picked up. He said it would be worth my while to be around when he called in a few hours. So, I hung around my parent’s living room, played a little piano, watched some TV, probably a Dodger game with the incomparable voice of Vin Scully and waited.  He didn't call that day. He didn't call the next day. On the third day he finally called to tell me that they had rented a house at the top of Sunset Plaza for a hefty sum of money. I was wondering how in the world he could afford something like that. When he gave me a call to come up and see the place I was amazed. It was a modern house with white carpets and built on stilts. It looked out over the entire city, and I felt that BJ was on his way back with a vengeance, and this time he was taking no prisoners. I knew that Walter had sold his house to help finance their move from the city of brotherly love to the city of angels, but there must have been something valuable in that box to allow them the extravagance to shell out at least twenty-five hundred dollars a month on a place in the hills, not to mention the car they had rented— and it was party time every night. The bar was always loaded (as were the patrons) with everything you could imagine, and the fridge well stocked with cold cuts and Heineken beer. There were always beautiful women there drinking and snorting a white powdery substance which, from time to time, I sampled myself, but mostly I partook of the green leafy substance rolled in a Zig Zag.

It wouldn't be long until BJ had finagled studio time back at the Record Plant working with Michael Bronstein, a staff engineer who was employed at that studio. He had hired some of the best studio musicians including Jeff (Skunk) Baxter to play guitar, Earl Campbell on drums and many other giants of the music industry. I even played guitar on the two tracks called Rock and Roll City and Hollywood, the latter written about a woman named Holly, who would and could! The tracks rocked and I was getting caught up in the glitz and glamour of BJ’s world again. He was on his way back and I thought if I could hang on his coattails, success may just rub off onto my lapels. What did I have to lose? Silverspoon was a painful memory now and I had no idea what Blair, Stephen and Joey were up to. I had broken up with Robin and I was a single guy of twenty-six. Every night we would all meet up at Roy’s restaurant across the street from the famed “Riot House” and I would always sample their classic Hot and Sour soup or Chinese chicken salad. I never had to pay for a thing. But I would pay in other ways. There are no free lunches, or free soup and salad, as the case may be. It wasn't until a year later, maybe longer when I finally found out what was inside that shoebox wrapped in brown shipping paper. He told me that it was a large amount of that same white illegal substance he was sampling before that was the entire rave in Hollywood, if not the whole country—the finest that money could buy. I was flabbergasted. How could he use me like that? How could he jeopardize, not only my safety but the safety of my parents? “The end justifies the means,” he said, “and it’s not like you didn't benefit from the contents of the box, Jimmy”. I knew it was wrong and I felt guilty about what could have happened, but it was too late to do anything about it.

 This is the guy who once convinced me to charge a birthday present for my mother at Max Stollman’s Pharmacy, the family druggist (Mom had a charge account there) who had a shop on Wilshire and San Vincente. He emphatically told me we would pay the bill before anyone was the wiser. Well, the bill came before I had a chance to intercept, and the feces hit the fan. I took the fall for that and kept BJ out of it. This is also the same guy who, when I wanted to trade in my Martin D-18 in on a five-year-old Gibson J-200 at West LA Music, helped put me over the edge on my decision to acquire the guitar. I wrote a check for six hundred dollars on an account that only had two hundred in it. He said he had a check coming on Monday and it would be covered. It never came or came late, and the check bounced. My dad had to make up the difference. It wasn’t looking good for me in my father’s eyes then. Don’t get me wrong about BJ, I loved him like a brother, or as if he was a crazy old uncle, the kind you go visit and not mention it to the rest your family. This same guy also provided me with a beau-coup of opportunities in the music biz—he always promoted me as a great songwriter and would inspire me to play in my “Feely Wangbar” (surf-blues) Stratocaster style. He coined the name Feely Wangbar for me. I think he thought of me as his little brother—the one he never had. I was weighing my options, but I knew covering for BJ was getting old and I didn’t want to be taken advantage of—even though, in essence, it was a two-way street. I was a willing participant. Soon the money would be gone, and BJ would have to find other people (including Walter) to entice into his world of rock and roll and debauchery. I wasn't going to be one of them—not this time.

I (or Jim Phillips) had a new job selling typewriter ribbons and lift-off tape at Central Supply in Hollywood run by the irrepressible Ed Blair, who I had met at Alice’s house. Alice was the landlady of a cute little house on Laurel Canyon where Robin had moved into the room downstairs. I made sure she was close by since I had rented a treehouse on Gould—a studio apartment surrounded by Jacaranda and Night Blooming Jasmine. It was right down the street from Chas’s house on Walnut drive just off Ridpath in the famed Canyon. I don’t really know why Robin and I broke up, but it was over, and we both knew it by the end of 1978. Maybe it was because we were too much alike in some ways and totally different in others. Maybe it was the oceans of coffee she and I would drink trying to write songs. It was getting on my nerves having a lover who was also a songwriting partner. I knew it would be better for my psyche to be with a woman who had nothing to do with the music business. That would happen to me much sooner than I thought.

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.