When Joey snuck
out of the studio during the Last Autograph sessions he held Silverspoon for
ransom, threatening it at gunpoint and when no money was offered in return, he fired
his weapon where it slowly and painfully bled to death. He then threw it in a
plywood box, hammered the last nail in the makeshift coffin and then buried it
in his backyard. Yes, Silverspoon was
officially dead. I don’t blame Joey, it was not his fault, and he was only the
last straw in a series of mishaps and disappointments which paved the road that
started out as glory and promise but ended so potholed and twisted it was
beyond the repair of any structural engineer’s capacity. Even though Stephen
still held out hope of a rebirth, Larry and I knew it was a lost cause, the war
was over and the white flag of surrender flew alongside the flag of our
brotherhood which was waving at half mast.
I was upset and
felt like I had wasted the best years of my musical life, but now it was time
to pick myself up by my guitar stringed boots and carry on. I was tired of
being a studio musician and wanted to experience what is was like to play for
the people, the people who still went out to see a live performance, maybe buy
a cassette or two, and pop it into their home or car stereo system. On
September 30, Larry, Patricia and I went to the Forum to see the great and
inexhaustible Bruce Springsteen and his E Street band. It changed mine and
Larry’s life forever. The next night The Two Guys from Van Nuys was born and we
played our first gig at The Sidewalk Cafe on the beach in Venice, California. I
had my Gibson J-200 and Larry had a Wurlitzer electric piano, but I think he
only used the upright and out of tune piano supplied by the restaurant’s
establishment.
We did songs
like Cat Stevens’ Wild World and Bob
Dylan’s Just Like a Woman, and
sparsely throwing in some of our originals which was discouraged by the
management. I was still working at Central Supply in the valley, waking up at
five in the morning, so I had to limit the time spent at night, drinking,
smoking, coking and generally carrying on. As I said before in my last blog,
Patricia was a godsend. She had asked her father, who ran a music store in
Baltimore to send me harmonicas, strings and whatnot, all for free. She was
still Larry’s old lady at the time and I felt bad for her knowing their
relationship was like a sinking ship. I could see the holes in that vessel but
was powerless, at the time, to do anything about it. Larry was my partner and I
was a loyal and naive participant in that partnership. I also felt bad that we
were playing in Venice, not more than a mile away from where Stephen lived with
Portia, but he was too proud and pissed off at us for not including him in our
musical endeavor. But Stephen was a studio guy and Larry had the live
experience and it came down to a choice between the two of them. I chose the
latter and now I wonder if I made the right choice, but unfortunately I don’t
have a time machine at my disposal so the past is the past and will remain that
way. It’s the present that I must deal with now, but looking back to what got
me here is a worthwhile task.
I had a friend
at Central Supply when it was in Hollywood named Stephen Paul who I talked
about before. He had a friend who was a genius at vocals and production by the
name of Curt Boettcher who lived at the Oakwood apartments in Burbank. Whenever
I was bored on the hot summer days, I would sometimes stop by and see Curt
lounging by the swimming pool at Oakwood. He got a kick out of me and said I
was the only writer he knew that picked subjects that nobody else wrote about.
He loved the song Old Timer, written
by myself and Larry, about an old man living in a retirement home reflecting on
his youth while his children and grandchildren only visit him out of guilt on
Sundays. Another song we penned called Vagabond was a three part verse that
depicted three different types of vagabonds in three separate voices: I’m a
vagabond, he’s a vagabond, and we’re all vagabonds. I still think it’s a great
tune and Dave Mason thought so too when he recorded it later that year. There
was one song of ours that Curt could never get out of his head—Running Around the World. Later that
year he was hired to produce Mike Love’s solo record he thought about that song
and called me to ask if he could have Mike sing it on the record. I waited a
beat and said, “What are you kidding? Of course he can record the tune!” The
original demo was one of the songs I recorded at my Electra Records experience
in 1979 and it had a straight four/ four rock and roll feel. Curt thought it
would be better in a shuffle kind of like Help
Me Rhonda. Who was I to argue about something as minor as that and Larry
said “I don’t care if they make it sound like Liberace (Larry’s alter ego) with
his hair on fire, as long as it gets cut.” It did get cut and was market tested as being
a top five record by a company that does that kind of thing.
A month or two
later, Mike was doing a gig in the valley at some large club and we were told
he was going to perform our song live. We asked Curt if we could be on the
guest list and he said he would clear it with Mike. We never heard back from
him and time was running out so we headed out to the club thinking we most
likely would be on the list. When we got to the ticket booth we asked the girl
behind the leaded glass if out names were on the list. They weren’t. We had to
shell out $17.50 to hear our own song being played. That was a lot of money
back then, especially for a couple of starving musicians. It was still a thrill
I will never forget when they went into that shuffle intro and we heard one of
our songs being played to an audience of over a thousand appreciative people. I
felt that we were on our way to the big time, so did Larry.
I was still
living on Highland Avenue north of Franklin and across the street from Chas
when BJ showed up saying he was looking for an apartment to rent in the area.
It was an old Hollywood mansion that had been subdivided into four separate
dwellings. I lived in the northwest corner and next to me was a Latino gent
named Luis who had a Doberman Pincher called Sasha, Sadie, or something of that
ilk. She was good company for my dog Bridget Bardog when we would take them
across the street to the large park which was behind one of the Hollywood Bowl
parking areas. BJ expressed an interest in the room in the back that was in
shambles. He told the landlord he would help fix the place up if he reduced the
rent. As I said before BJ, who could sell sand to a camel, had convinced the
landlord that he would do a crack-up job and he moved in with his accomplice,
Walter Hallanan, the BJ look-alike.
BJ had become
friends with Carrie and Francie the fancy equestrian (we later wrote that song
together about Francie) and he got into the drugs big-time. He was losing
weight and losing all of his scruples, which he didn’t have much of in the
first place. He was selling everything he owned to stay afloat and he even
stole Carrie’s small television set that she kept in her apartment beneath her
childhood home occupied by her mother and sold that, too. He was incorrigible
but was still convinced that his demos, the ones he recorded at the Record
Plant with Michael B. behind the console were destined to become classics. They
were good, but I still don’t think that justified his criminal behavior.
After Patricia
moved out after the “rat incident” and into the apartment with her warlock husband
to be which eventually led to their sad demise, there was an event to occur
which I don’t think I can ever forgive BJ for. I was going to New York for a
couple of weeks to hang out with Larry, his Robin and Martine and try to get a
little playing and exposure in the Big Apple as the Two Guys from Van Nuys. I
left BJ in charge of my apartment and the love of my life, Bridget Bardog. I
knew he wouldn’t know how much to feed her so I bought twelve large cans of dog
food and gave him explicit instructions on how much and when to feed her, when
to walk her and so on. When I came back from my trip I noticed that Bridget was
looking awfully thin and asked BJ if he had been feeding her like I had
instructed him to. I looked in the cupboard and saw that all the cans of dog
food were gone, so I was scared that she might be sick. I called the vet and
made an appointment and he told me she was not sick but was extremely
malnourished from being underfed and dehydrated. I asked BJ again if he had fed
her and he swore up and down that he had. I found out later from Luis that BJ
was selling him the dog food in exchange for cigarette money. I was appalled
and livid. The next week I moved out of that apartment and got a place in
Venice by myself on Washington Way. I left BJ there to fend for himself and
hoped that I never would cross his lying, deceitful path again. You can mess
with me to a point, but whatever you do, don’t mess with my dog!
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