Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 391] I Partied with The Rolling Stones: Richard Lefkowitz's Wild 1970s Los Angeles Stories

Transcript

[EP 391] I Partied with The Rolling Stones: Richard Lefkowitz's Wild 1970s Los Angeles Stories · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Right after I just parted with Keith and Ronnie intimately
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: where we had great conversations. While we're slugging a bottle
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: to Jack Daniels together on a drum riser. It hits
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: me like, wait a minute, I am not gonna listen
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to anybody else. I got to listen to this. Heart
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: strings that are vibrating inside my soul were totally rock
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and roll. I mean, I leave you you're reading Little
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Hands says it's time to rock and roll roll.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock the
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: podcast for those about to read and rock. I'm Eric Sanitch.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Before we get started. To get fifteen percent off classic
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: rock merchandise at old Glory dot com, just use the
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: code Booked on Rock the link in the show notes
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: or at bookdown rock dot com under my Deals. So
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: check that out. But right now we're gonna check out
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a great book by Richard Lefkowitz. He is the author
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of Welcome to Fabulous Angelus, The Rock and Roll Adventures
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: of a Wayward West Side teen. Richard is an attorney,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a writer, an educator, and a lifelong music fan. Richard,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Welcome to book don Rock.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Eric, I appreciate you having me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: All Right, you're from the West Coast, So you got
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a Dodger's shirt on there.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Due I do. I don't like to throw at anybody's face,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: but I just happen to have this nice little LA
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: World Champion back to back Dodger shirt. So kind of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: goes with Fabulous Angels philosophy.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, for those who haven't picked up the book yet,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: how would you describe Welcome to Fabulous Angeles.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a time cap sole. It's the rock and
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: roll adventures of a restless teen searching for some type
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: of validation and fulfillment in the insane nineteen seventies.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: And the book opens with one of the most unbelievable
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: scenes imaginable, two teenagers finding themselves in a hotel suite
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: with Mick Jagger and members of the Rolling Stones entourage.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: You choose to open with that story.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is, it wasn't that unbelievable because we've
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: been doing it since we're little kids, and we walked
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: into the whiskey of Go Go when we were fourteen
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one and just it would never occurred
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to me in my Palmoxie to go through the front.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We just went through the backstairs and voila Biby King
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: is sitting there ready for a show. And he was
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: most welcoming, gracious, warm hosts to two interlopers. And by
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the time we stumbled into the Westwood Marquis Hotel in
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Westwood Village when the Stones were on their seventy eight tour,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: we were twenty one. So we just expected almost as
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a birthright, because we just you know, our credo, as
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: one of the chapters is named, is we just act
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: like you own the place, because we really did believe
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Eric in the grand scheme of things in the Cosmos.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: We sort of did own everything, but not in a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: malicious way. We were only there to be friendly and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: have that experience. So you know, our biggest agenda was
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: just the cool thing of meeting people and interacting with
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: them as equals, and so it was a fun time
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and this is the way we escaped from our parental prisons.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: There were various iterations, but what I realized, and it
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: closes with a Rolling Stone story as well with personal
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: love front close with Keith in rehearsals for the New
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Barbarians the following year, so it's a full circle cycle there.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: So it just made sense. It was inherent to the work.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I hate to sound like some you know, stuffy artists,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: but some artists, but it just worked that way best.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: It opens with making closes with.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Keith Moxie, one of the most memorable characters in the book.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: You mentioned him. Tell us about him and what was
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: it about him that made you follow him into so
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: many adventures despite knowing Trouble usually wasn't far behind.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Well, the best thing about Moxi is he wasn't me,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: and so I was restrained and kind of inhibited. And
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I met Moxi and he just blew the doors. His
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: family dyed, as I portray in the book, we're very
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: different than mine. His parents are going through divorce. My
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: parents are very close, but they both came out of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the Depression and they couldn't understand our generation back then,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Eric and not enough to remember, but we had this
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: huge thing called a generation gap, so we could not
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: relay it. I've been you know, I have a daughter
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: who's going to be thirty next year, and we saw
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: justin Bieber three or four times. We saw Hillary Duff
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: at the Greek Theater. We went to shows. It was fun,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: but that didn't happen. No, my parents did not go
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to see led Zeppelin with me. That's a whole other
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: discussion about what concerts were like back then in the culture.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So with Moxley, it was a it was a release,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: it was a relief high somebody who got me. I
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: got him, and we could just escape together to just
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: do things that we were told we could never do.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Talk about the first time you met him.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's school. We have met an elementary school and we
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: were just on the blacktop and we went to see
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  Speaker 1: my mom of all people singing the Camfield Elementary School,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: and we were just cracking ourselves up because of a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of mama's singing, you know, belting out whatever the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: heck show tunes they were doing. It was just funny
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to us and we just immediately had that bond. And
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of course we were always in trouble, and I was
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: always in trouble for seeing him, and that was banished
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: from seeing him because they used to say, when you
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: two get together, you know, you don't have any guard
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: rails and just crazy things. But see, like I said.
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  Speaker 1: The best thing is he wasn't me. I wasn't him.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: He would go into a market and just talk to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: me about the five finger discount you by let us.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Why would you buy one head when you can cram
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: four in? And they never noticed the difference, or certain
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: things may just find your way into your pocket. And
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: to me, that was exciting. And was it wrong. Sure,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not proud of it, not necessarily, but it's the truth.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And that was my mission statement, to just tell the truth.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: One of the themes I noticed is that Los Angeles
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: isn't just a backdrop, It's practically a character in the book.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: What made nineteen seventies Los Angeles uniquely suited to these
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: kinds of adventures?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Volumes have been written on that. It's a great question, Eric,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and of course it could be a comprehensive answer. So La,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: it's been disparaged so much. I just really felt it
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: in me to kind of tell the truth about it.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Was really like a lot of people from all over
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the world come and leave and they can't fulfill their
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: dream and they blame the city. But La was growing
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and going through its adolescent expansion at the same time
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: as we were, so we grew at the same time,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: so you're right. It is probably the major character. My mother,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: me Moxie, the girl, the love interest, first girlfriend. But
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the city is the backdrop, and the city is what
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: really formulated formed us. It was in our chemistry, it's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: in our dna. I was born on the Sunset Strip,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: but it technically wasn't the Strip. It was further down
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: by Vermont Revenue, so you know, it's a mile officer
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: but on sunsetbul or So I felt like this, this
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: is something I just needed to say and needed to
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: do because people needed to learn that La is like
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: a small town. There's nowhere to eat after ten o'clock.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's not all the plastic people are not from LA.
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  Speaker 1: People grew up in La are very much down to
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  Speaker 1: earth kind of small town. But it is very true
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: what Frank Lloyd writes said about if you take a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: vamp of the country and you tilt it to one side,
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  Speaker 1: all the loose nuts and bolts end up in LA.
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  Speaker 1: That's a fact. But that's part of what the American
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Dream and all the spiritual New Age philosophy, especially in
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the seventies when that was a big deal, expressed through
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  Speaker 1: the music and the culture and the big radio stations
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: with big audiences, all that stuff. Like I said, you
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  Speaker 1: could give a long answer to what made La special.
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  Speaker 1: But I think what people don't really realize is like
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  Speaker 1: a small town in sense of the character of the
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  Speaker 1: people who grew up there.
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  Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit more about the Sunset Strip
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: based on chapter six, Come fly with me. It's not
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: just a location. It's part of the freedom and the
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: adventure that defined your teenage years. The Sunset Strip has
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: become legendary and music history, but for you, it wasn't history.
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  Speaker 2: It was your backyard. Did you realize at the time
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  Speaker 2: that you were living through a special moment or did
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  Speaker 2: that only become clear to your years later looking back?
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  Speaker 1: Both it crystallized later and you're to be heard. But
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the suns and Strip is kind of place where you
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: just go up to one of the club called the
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  Speaker 1: Roxy and find a member of the Rolling Stone standing
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  Speaker 1: there with a bottle of champagne in his hand, Ronnie Wood,
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  Speaker 1: and hand it to me and give it to me.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, that went on my technique's receiver for the
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  Speaker 1: rest of my life. What a sheerish memento. Ronnie Wood
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  Speaker 1: gave me a bottle of champagne, or like I said,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: walk in on BB King. We walked at the Roxy,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: we went and saw Muddy Waters. It was really easy
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: just to walk up the stairs backstage and go say
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: hi to Muddy and Pinetok Purple Top Perkins's warm hearted
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: piano player. And I just saw picture of Muddy in there.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And in the picture there was this guy named Shaky Jake.
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  Speaker 1: And I was reading an article about the new book
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: on the Stones that's coming out, because there's a launch
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: at books Suit Bookstore tomorrow, and I was reading about
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  Speaker 1: Shaky j Krris, a blues guy who was in England
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  Speaker 1: when influential on the Stones, and he's up there backstage
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  Speaker 1: with Muddy Waters, and we just walk in. And that's
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the kind of place the strip was. But the center
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  Speaker 1: of the Sunset Strip then was, and I still miss it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: The strip is there, the Rocks, he's there, the whiskey's there,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the Rainbow, which is not the Rainbow Room. We all
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: know that's in Manhattan, the Rainbow and Bar and Grill.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: But the center of the strip was Tower Records. And
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I was just in Japan and there's a Tower Records there.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: There's not in La but there's one in Tokyo. So
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Tower was the center because you never know who you're
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: going to run into. A lot of musicians hung out
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: there and even the like there's a huge guitar center
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: instrument shop down there now, but it's and that's good.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But the little guitar stores were tiny back then. Guitar
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: center was tiny. Whoever, we didn't have sam Ash like
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the East Coast. But this Tower Records was where when
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you didn't know what to do, and maybe you drive
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: it around it, you ended up the Tower because where
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: else is it going to go and you don't know
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: what to do.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: New release day was Tuesdays, if I recall correctly. New
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: albums came out on Tuesdays, so the line would form
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: right waiting for a new album to come out.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: They had acts that would play in the parking lot.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: But what I remember at Tower the big the bag,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the yellow bag with the red writing and the big
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: mural on the they're like murals their album covers on
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the side facing sunset strip. So if a new album,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you know, Elton John, Rock of the Westies or something
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the Caribou, there'd be a big mural on the side
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: so you would see all the new releases, and of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: course Sunset Strip is spitting distance up to Hollywood Hills,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and so you make a right undini and you go
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: up to Blue Jayway where we used to go to
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: throw football around. Or we didn't drink back then, but
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you know, we smoke a little whatever. Look at the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: view and in those days were unincumvered because they built
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of houses. And of course that cheap immortality
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: on the was that the no, It's on a magical
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Mystery tour Blue Jayway the Beatles song, right, So these
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: things were right there next to the strip. If you
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: take some set all the way down toward the beach,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: wouldbout not even halfway get to Westwood Village where UCLA
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: is and where there are all kinds of people behind it.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Out Today it's not as accessible to the rock stars musicians.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I mean now it's heavily guarded if you wanted to
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: try to do what you did back then.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Right, it all changed on nine eleven oh one and
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: not to eleven changed everything. And of course by then
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I was forty four, so I wasn't exactly sneaking in places.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I was bad and had a four year old daughter
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and a one year old son and by then so
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I wasn't doing it anyway. But yes, it all changed.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: There was security, by the way, Eric, I want to
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: say that there was nothing. They had those white jackets
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: bouncer guys at all the concerts at the Forum, and
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: they weren't very nice. And you know, there was a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: moticon was it required some finesse. It wasn't like you
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: could just the roxy. You could just sort of walk
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: back stage. Wasn't a big deal because it's a three
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: hundred c club. The bigger venues had security. But that
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: was the whole fun of it. Is that, for example,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the Forum, which I'm sure you've heard in Inglewood, the
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Fabulous Forum was the place where all the great Zeppelin
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and Tall and the Who and the Stones and whoever
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: else you want to name as portrayed Welcome to Fabulous Angeles.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But the Forum had security. You couldn't even go from
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you where you're sitting up in the nosebleed because we
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford the good tea down to the floor. But
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: if you took a drink in each hand, or you
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: had some puppet and you were walking just what like that,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: of course you slid right down. I mean, it took
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: me a little finesse, but to answer your question, yeah, secure.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: But when nine to eleven happened, that's it.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: It changed. Could not change every sure, I've heard stories
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: of people telling me that they would bring their own
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: guitar and carry it backstage and pretend they were with
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: the band, and they'd let you go right in. I
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: mean that's the way.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: But what did you do with your guitar?
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Gris, But you talk about a time when you're roaming hotels,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: television studios, concert venues, I mean, no restrictions at all.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Well, we went to CDs Television City, which many may
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: know from the lead into a lot of famous shows
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: from Television City in Hollywood. It's and I think Bill
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Maher and some other people still it's still there. They
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: built it's next to what is now called the original
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Farmers Market and they its guy Rick Ruso's developer, built
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of malls, built something called the Grove that's
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: there now. So it's huge and it's way over built.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Way back before my time, there was a minor league
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: ball field there for the Hull We All Stars minor
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: league club before the Dodgers even came here, so it
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: was all small town. But when me and Moxie were
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: taken the bus up Television City and crashing the Calburnett
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Show or Sonny and chare all in the family I
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: write about And when Norman Lear said that that show
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: will never make it, when I asked him, that's in
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the book because it's too radical, these influential shows that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: are at this point legendary. There wasn't much going on.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: We went through the back. We just went through the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: loading dock.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Amazing, they're fourteen years old.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Who's gonna bought it to fourteen? What are we terrorists?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it didn't exist in nineteen seventy one or two.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: As somebody grew up in Mrson FM radio culture as
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I did as well. What do you think the younger
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: generations have lost by not experiencing radio the way your
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: generation did in mine? Too?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's all homogenized everything, And it's okay because it's
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: just a different world. And there's lots of benefits to
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the world we're in, and I love the Internet and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: there's lots of We could talk about all the positives,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: but the answer to that question is community. We had
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: these radio stations like Kamie t counterculture underground as a
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: guy started AOAR oriented rock up in San Francisco. Tom
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Donahue and is what Rachel brought it down here and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Kami T. It was more than just there was lots
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of fastest. I don't want to overstate it. They weren't
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: my best friends, but there's nothing like getting on the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: freeway and just having a miserable day because your parents
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: are just don't believe in you, or don't get you,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: or just acting irrationally because of their own suffering they're
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: going through and I've had in their childhood, whatever it
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: may be. But you're driving and then you know, Mary
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the Burner Turner or Jim Ladd or any of these
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: disc jockeys could feel the pulse of the city and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: they played that moment because they just somehow you just knew,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, Loue Olster Colt, I'm
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: burning for you. It's just like somehow it just hit.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: But they was the art of the DJ that you
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: can't get and I love. I've had serious XM since
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Howard moved there twenty years ago. I had been crazy
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: when I got Wow, this is amazing, you know, commercials,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: all this music. I'm not putting it down, but it's automated.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: You're not going to get the Tom Petty channel. There's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: so many good things on there. I could go on
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: about how good it is, but the question is what
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: are people missing? And the answer is community, the emotion
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and the spontaneity of it.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a magic to radio. We all had
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: our favorite local stations here. I'm from Connecticut. I had
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: my stations that I would listen to. Who are your
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: favorite DJs? And what were your favorite radio stations?
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: It was even more than DJs. Even the news guys
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: are great. So I could have written a whole book
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: about that. But kmy T was the station that went
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: against the grain. There were two really on FM. The
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: ninety four to seven was kmy T. Ninety five and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a halfs K los Kalos was more corporate and they
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: had playlists. But Jim Ladd came in and said, I'm
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: not using a playlist, and he had no qualms while
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: getting on the air, high as a kite and just
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: go real and against the political establishment. And half the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: time he made sense and half of the time he didn't.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And it didn't matter because at the end of the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: day he put in the light on from physical Graffiti
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and we all just so cool.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you mentioned Tom down to you. What's cool
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: about that? Is there a couple of names that it
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: was a radio station prior to the one that Tom
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Downe who formed in San Francisco, or maybe it was
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: that one, but Howard Hessman later who became Johnny Fever
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: on KRP, was worked with Tom Downey you as a DJ.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: And then Gottlieb, the guy who wrote the script for Jaws,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: and he went on to all that he was a
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: DJ two and it's just fascinating that whole life.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So he was based on b Mitchell Reid, and the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Beamer was called him. And one day I'm driving, I'm
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: going to school because I was forced to go to college.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I guess I didn't. I guess I could have just
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: left the house. But that's a whole other logical analysis.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Right Where am I going? Anyways? Headed over if you
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: know La and all you had over the four or
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: five into the valley to go to cal stateon Northridge,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And I'm driving there and I'm listening to the Beamer
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and I gotta get a little high for a class
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: because I hated what am I doing here? I'm an
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: English major and I cut class to write because I'm
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: reading Emerson in Thorow. They're like, what are you wasting
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: your time in my classroom? Let nature be a teacher.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So I'm driving, I'm listening to B. Mitchell read and
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I know we're playing a lot of Leonards Skinnered seventy
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: seven and by the third song he came back on
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and B. Mitchell Reid is delivering the news about the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: plane crash.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: October.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to school. I turned my car around,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: went to Moxie's and went, oh my god, because I
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: saw the moment for the Who Quadrophenia tour and that
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: was seventy three, and so it was an onslaught of guitars.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It's like wow, because the Allman Brothers may have invented
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Southern rock and they and the double track guitars, you know,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: octaves apart an amazing Dicky Pets Dwayne configuration. But they
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: weren't as you know, cutting it Leonard Skinner. It was
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: just like three minute songs, Boom we bird. Of course
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: we heard it live when they opened for the Who
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: with the Forum and seventy three on the Quadrifenia tour.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: It blew our minds. And there I am listening to
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the beamer who has been based like Johnny fever On,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and he's telling now one of my I supposed to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: go to school and sit and concentrate the whole band parish.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: They didn't even know at the time. And plus news
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: traveled slow. It wasn't like now we're you know, I'm
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: finding out. By the time I we've been talking ten minutes,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I could tell you I got four alerts about the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: news right my phone. And this was the night before
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: it happened, and the news was just breaking. So these
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: kinds of things that were special in the city at
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the time. It's some good, some non.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: I love them. Open in the book when you tell
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: your mom you partied with the Stones, this is what
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: you're right. You're write quote. I stayed awake for an
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: early dinner with my parents. I partied with the Rolling
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Stones until seven this morning, you said, Mom, smirked, you
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: need to start rolling yourself into bed, not stoned at
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: a decent hour. I shook my seat, did you hear me?
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I partied with Ronnie and Keith mob slid her leftover
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: salad onto my plate. That's nice, dear, but you need
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: your sleep. What was the funniest thing that happened during
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: that night with Keith and Ronnie that made you think,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: you know what, only in Los Angeles can this happen?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just amazing how and there was security and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I mentioned names and we did know them slightly from
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the year before when we partied with Mick at the
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: West Marquis. And by the way, when we're in that
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: hotel room with Mick and seventy eight, I wasn't putting
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: on a ship.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I was quiet.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I was intimidated. I mean, my god, we were just
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: up there hanging out and Mick comes in with Jerry Hall.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And it's funny because I read an interview with Mick
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: excuously saying most of the men I meet on the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: tours are task turned. I had to look that word
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: up and taska turned exactly was what I was withdrawn,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: completely intimidated. Plus there's blow going around the room. It
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy eight. You know that doesn't exactly calm
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: you down. I hope you never know. It's a dreadful,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: devilish drug. Stay away all I got to say. But
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: this is the girls tour right exactly, and also they
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: were with a lot of being uptight because Keith was
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: still on bail. They didn't know if he was going
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to jail for life for hero He even caught control. He
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: woke up in Toronto with the Montreal what you Canadian police,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: whatever you call people. He was in Toronto though not Montreal,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and he uh, he got arrested for trafficking and they
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: didn't know that. So, as it turned out, the Barbarians
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: had to do a benefit for the blind. He had
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: was sentenced to. He went to rehab and he made
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a good showing. And the truth is I had some
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: damn lawyers and he got he did not have to
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: go to jail. But the next year he toured with
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Ronnie as the new Barbarians, and to satisfy that sentence,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: he was did it benefit for the blind? The album's out,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you could stream it and uh, they did the rehearsals
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: in la and then he asked me, what the funniest
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: thing is. The whole thing is, it's amazing what you're
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: The security guys made and may not remembered Moxie, but
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: he was just so full of charisma and you just
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: couldn't say no that it's amazing how much just a
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: little bit of that get you right in the door.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: You know. That's the funniest thing. The funny you know,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the funny the stories in the book is Keith. The
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: really funny story about Mick that he Keith said, he
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: used Falcolm powder for his hands and he puts him
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: on the amp during the show, and you know, he
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: went back to playing. Mick came over and snorted.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Oh god, and they are still going at eighty two,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: eighty three years old.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're not doing that now. Even Keith snorted.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: His dad's remains as ordered. But I think after he
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: fell out of that tree he quit all the hard stuff.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Keith said he stopped smoking. I think he said
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: six or seven years ago, maybe longer. But he still
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: smokes an occasional joint.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Oh he's He's a total stuff. You know. What's not
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in the book is later on and we're going out
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: because I couldn't get the book. And it was about
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: two thousands, right after the Stoves played that huge concert
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: in Rio there was half a million people plus whatever.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Moxy happened to find out that Keith was staying in
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the four seasons and I'll say the name because they
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: wouldn't use it again under the name Clouseau. So he
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: called mister Clusou's room and gets Keith on the lot.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: But Boxy can't do it as Moxie. He pretends to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: be Billy Preston, who we had met a couple of
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: times the Rocky and he's talking like Billy and I
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: only wish I'd recorded this. This went on for like
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: at least thirty forty minutes, and he gave a hole
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: and Keith was going to give tickets to us to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: go to the show that was coming up at the Forum,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and I told Moxy, I said, don't take the tickets.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: You know I'm a lawyer. That's false predet you're pretending
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: to be so. But we took the backstage passage because
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: it was only free food. So it did go on,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and that.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Was post nine to eleven. I'm pretty sure just Moxie.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Is that his real name, or I mean, because it's funny,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: I can't do it too.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Most of the names are real A couple I wanted
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: to protect people. It was a tough I wrote it
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: originally with all the original names. Moxie is very supportive
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: of the project, and you know, there's some tough stuff
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: in there about it. It's the same with my parents.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: If you're looking for a whitewashed, just light hearted rolled
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: through the woods where everything's beautiful, this ain't it. There
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: may be a lot of that, but how to tell
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the truth, And the truth is it was a very
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: tough time politically, It was a tough time college, a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: huge generation gap. We all felt trapped in our homes.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And only the biggest salvation for us other than each other,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: or maybe even bigger than each other, were the songs.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: What made you decide to write this book? Now?
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like you asked before, did you know at
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the time, And yeah, we sort of did, Like this
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is really cool. We don't know anybody else who's doing
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: these things and getting away with this stuff and having
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: so many laughs with so many people, and the bigger stars,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the higher level stars, they were, the nicer they were
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to us. The people at the bottom who were climber
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: just trying to be known or you know, not that nice,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: but the ones that very top are always a super nice.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: The mix of thet yeah, I've heard that. In fact,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you between Keith and Ronnie.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Who was who was most like their public image and
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: who surprised you the most? Or were they I've heard
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: they're both cool.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I haven't met Charlotte, Mick, Keith and Ronnie. One thing
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: is these guys are hilarious. They live, they love to laugh,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: make a few hours it's with him and see him
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: later as hilario or tangentially or but Keith and Ronnie,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: we spent nights with. These guys are hilarious. They just
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: love to laugh. But I want to ask your question.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: But yes, sorry, yeah, the question was initially what made
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: you decide to.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Write I always wanted to write it is the answer.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And finally, these.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Guys just love to laugh. They're hilarious. They've now everyone's older.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Now reality kicks in. I mean what Ronnie Wood's got too,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: a pair of twins with his new wife and it's
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: gotta be And you know, these guys are in their eighties.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much laughter it's like Don Henley said,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I love the quote. He said, I had a lot
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: more fun in the seventies when I was in my
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: twenties than here in the twenties when I'm in my seventies.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: That's very true, but that nevertheless, these guys, their life
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: is a party or was probably still is too large.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: That they loved the love. They had great sense of humor.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they obviously still love to make music, record
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: and hopefully play a few shows. The Stones they're saying
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: there's probably the days of consistent touring are over, but
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean they're not going to play live again, which
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: is really well.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: They're growing. Stone today has a big article he says
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: they may not tour with but one thing people think.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I've heard this my whole life. And by the way,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I listen to the at least the highlight of that
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: great book that's coming out that you do with Steveen
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: about Stevie Nicks Rachel Rotsky. Great, that's what I look
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: forward to that. Yeah for a plug, why not?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Sure?
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: But sure Steve who is misunderstood it crystals in light
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and the dresses and the scars, and yes, the people
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: thought she was just insane. And all I heard about
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the Stones is the money. They're in it for the money.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: How many times I hear friends or parents say that,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and it's I knew that it was a lie because
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: they were artists and they heard something we couldn't hear.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: They it was a higher calling, they to them. It
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: was all about moving the culture and the music through
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the songs, depending upon who it was forward, and it
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: was all always about the music and moving that music
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: and that circle of giving the music to the people
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and then getting the love back to the people. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: it's going around around. And yeah, it's nice to make money. Sure,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: buy a million copies of Welcome to Fabulous Angel. It's great, Okay,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: but I didn't write it. You do things the reason
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you're involved in what you do, and congratulations, because people
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: need to read. This is perhaps the biggest problem faced
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in the country. Not to even start with that or
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: be here a midnight. Is that a lack of critical thinking.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And people read people. And I read on my phone too,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and I read magaz younger and I understand, I'm tired,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and I had my phone, I'm scrolling and I do
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the same thing. But at the end of the day,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it's a whole different world on libraries and reading and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: educating yourself and becoming better. And it's just a different experience.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Whether it's the radio, whether it's books, all these things.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: They need to come back and that's really why the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: book is fabulous. Angeles is timely?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Is that? Well? Can we do? You know? It's nice
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to have an exercise in nostalgia, Eric, that's great, we all.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: In fact, I just read an article in the Longevity
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Institute from Stanford University's magazine about nostalgia is actually quite
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: good for the brain, it's good for community, all kinds
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of possible. And I never thought of nostalgias predictably productive,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: but I guess it is. But forgetting all that, it's
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: nice as that may be, and it's great to have
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a time capsule of what happens so it's not lost.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: The bigger question is how do we bring this into
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the present day. John Lennon said, we all want to
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: see the plan. He was right, because the whole culture failed,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: the whole seventies, sixties, Piece and Love and I had
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: on yesterday, what's this song? Uh, Territorial pissings Nirvana song song?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Great song? Obviously I was.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Come on people, everybody, That's what I'm saying.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: They were sneering in the nineties at that peace and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: love and all that, but it's real. It was very
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: real to us, and it took place in La in
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: the architecture called Gooki, which is the spaceships and the
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: theme building at lax Disneyland, futuristic stuff, and it's all
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: over the city on the Sunset Strip. It started at
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: a place called Googie's Coffee Shop. Forgetting all that, that's
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: not important. What's important is there was a hope and
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: optimism and there was a culture community and people thought
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the future would be better. And how do we get
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that back? It's and books are a big part of it.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I commend you for getting people back into reading if
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: you can, because that's a part of it. Is that everything, No,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: but it's a big part of it.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: It's a huge part.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Who's our brain. God gave us this brain. Let's use it.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize I've been doing this for five years,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: this particular podcast. I just did it. It just felt
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: right to do. I know the authors have all these
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: great stories, so let's do it. No idea how many
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: books that were coming out, and there are a lot
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: of books that come out on a regular basis. And
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: what's also really cool is I remember reading that there
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: are more Barnes and Nobles popping up than ever before.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And sure enough, here in Connecticut. There's a huge Barnes
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: and Noble that just went up brand new, and I
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: go in there and I see young people reading through books.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, we're drinking coffee, but that's okay.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: But at my full time job, I'm in the I
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: work in the laws system during the day and we
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: have a couple of people in my office, young twenties,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: actually three of them. They have books right there on
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: their desk, physical books on their desk. I'm like, this
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: is great. I love this. Yeah. So it's just we
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: alle it.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: It's like music. There's terrific music out today, and it's
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: just different when it's made by machines. We all crazy.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: That's why I think The Devil was such a big hit.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: It was a piano and a beautiful singer, and the
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: songs were great because we connect with that more or
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: than pomp, which is good too. If I want a
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: dancer and there's and there's a perspective there that's great
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: for people who are younger, and that's all good. It's
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: just uh, it's a different thing. We crave humanity. We
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: were community creatures who we need that, and I think
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it's important to remember what happened back in the Psychedelic Age,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: as silly as it may have been, peace and love
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and groovy Age of Aquarius. Guess what, there was a
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: lot of truth in that, and we'd all be best
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: advised to listen to our hearts and our minds and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: to what happened then. And there's not gonna be another
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Beatles in our lifetime, No.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: No, And I can't believe Ringo and Paul with brand
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: new albums out and they're great. I love it. I
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: love it.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just listening to Paul's There's I always
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: try to forward to the up tempo songs and there's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: some really good stuff. You know, a lot He's does
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the Stones too, great producer.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: The Stone, the Stone stuff that this the two new
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: songs I've listened to that that part of the upcoming
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: album and that last album are fantastic and I love it.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Hackney Diamonds, there's a song was that a Whole Wide World?
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: It's a great song. Mess it up. His song is
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a really great But the difference is, as you well
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: me being in the radio business, is that when a
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: new song came out, let's just say nineteen seventy three,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: when How's of the Holy? When How's the Holy? Came out?
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And you heard every station was playing over the Hills
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and far Away, and you know that's a story. We're
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: driving down Sunset Strip back then. The Continental Hide House,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: which Cameron Crowe portrayed in almost famous as in his
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Golden Gods scene was kind of similarly based. But this
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: is a real thing that happened to me, and it's
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of course in the book. They actually put in big
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: letters at the front of the building welcome led Zeppelin,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And there was a huge billboard across the street for
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: How's of the Holy? The dates concerts were coming up,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: but every station was playing the over Hills in our way,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: and the song remains the same, And of course we
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? I'm driving down Sunset Strip
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: in May, but nineteen tell me three, I see a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: sign welcome LED's up on. I'm supposed to keep driving,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: No stop the car park go And if you saw
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: most famous, that was a very true recreation of what
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: that was like, except for it didn't show the part
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: when we went up to the pool and they threw
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the group eats in the pool, who then took the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: clothes off, which for a sixteen year old was pretty exciting.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Find the bookdown Rock website at bookdown rock dot com.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: and x. Also check out the book down Rock blog.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Find your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: hot rock book releases, and before you go, check out
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: the booked on Rock online store. Pick up some book
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: rock merch. It's all at booked on rock dot com.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: That excitement, though, like you say, of a new single
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: coming out or a new album coming out, which leads
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: me to Van Halen, because you were there when that
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: debut album came out in Los Angeles and like you
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: call it the perfect La album, that debut from nineteen
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: seventy eight. It sounded like the car exhaust above Hollywood
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Boulevard pressed into vinyl. That's a great description. Yeah, I
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: mean what made Van Halen feel different when they arrived
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: on the scene as opposed to the Stones and Zeppelin.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You can count I know, I'm appreciates the choir. You
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: can count on one hand how many truly influential guitar players.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And of course the song. It's all about the songs
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to me, and the songs are great, and David Lee
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: gets a lot of credit, maybe fifty percent, I don't know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: but and I know Eddie says he picked it up
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: from Jimmy Page. He was, you know, he didn't necessarily
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: invent tapping, but he saw Jimmy Page doing the forum.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at the LA Forum.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I was probably next to him, but who knew?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: You could have been, yes, but that.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I'm just I guess you say proud even though it's Pasadena,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: not from Pasadena, but it's La. There's something in the
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: air in the sonics that just sounds as much like
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: LA as anything. And of course Satisfaction was recorded on
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Sunset Strip. That has a bit of an l A
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: sound to me because of the room it was in RCA,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: right on Sunset Strip. But Van Halo just epitomized everything
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of that time, and their songs were great, and that
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: was truly a game change, because every song was great
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: on that first album.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants something running with the devil, you want that.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody wants someone from Women and Child first, but
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: on the first one, it's INtime love running with the Devil.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: You really got Jamie's eruption.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Eruption and you really got me. They took a kick
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: song and just blew it through the stratosphere. That was
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: just unbelievable.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: So right, But you know the California thing too, is
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: it had that it has the Beach Boys harmony kind
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: of vibe to it as well.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Think that David Lee more than but it's a great
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: it's all. It's all chemistry. And but that Eddie was
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: just there. It wouldn't even matter if he came around now,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: he probably changed the face he was that kind of
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: he's a generational talent. I mean, that's a hundred year
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: game changing and so that's in the pantheon for me.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: But that's that's his la. You want to say, the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Beach Boys, the Doors Van Halen is just as much.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: And like I said in the book, that is exactly
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: when I hear mean streets, I smell the exhaust of
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Boulevard.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: What a man from Fair Warning.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Unchained and they had a sense of humor, you know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: put the seedback. Yes, you know what break coming up.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I mean they have a sense of human that's Ted.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Templeton, by the way, Templeman, Yes, he's in the book
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: because the Doobie Brothers, well, the.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Doobie Brother's story is me and Moxie when we had
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with take the bus up to Farmers
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Market and then go into CBS. And so after we
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: tool around the sets and CBS, as I just detail
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: in the book, we'd go next sort of Farmers Market,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: which is a bunch of stalls and food and shops
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and all that. We you know, go in the magic
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: store and have a little magic by making a few
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: items disappear. But one day was our adventure for the
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: afternoon is we were going to bullsh Can I say
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: that s people? And we put on these dreadful Brittish accents.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Now you know we're like fifteen years old, right, So
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: and we don't want to sit at the empty table.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: We go with there's somebody there so we can practice
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: our This is just what we did for fun is
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: BS people. But we didn't do it militialy. We did
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: just fun and but BS this lady Lynn Wilson, and
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: she loved us so charming that she said, would you
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: like to get to a recording session? And I'm like sure,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be in town for another week whatever. So
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: she gave us a card. Unlike us, she wasn't foolish crap,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and she We tracked out from West LA to the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: valley on buses on a corny a cooking day where
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it's small and it was so bad and we just
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: saw this unknown band rehearse. A guy named Ted was
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: behind the glass and these guys working on this one
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: like this one riff, you know, and they were This
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: was not a party like I experienced when I worked
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: at the record plant, and that was later. This was
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: just work, hard work, hard work. And then after about
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: five or six hours, they said, okay, we're gonna do
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: a We're gonna do a close set. Actually, before they
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: kicked us out this this asked us to go get
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: some sunflower seed. This was the big party combustible for
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the band. Sunflower Seeds said you guys could just give
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: some sunflower seeds and I said, yeah, we bought. It
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: was like fifty cents, go back. We said we was
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: fifty cents. They said, well, we'll pay you back when
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: we're rich and famous. Right, nobody had heard of this band.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: We didn't hear of it, and so we After a
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: while there was closed session, we left, went back and
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: the song they were working on was listening to the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: music to be the Doobie Brothers. And then not to
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: spoiler alert, but later in the book, when they played
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: a benefit for a hundred bucks of plate in Century
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: City at the Century Plaza Hotel. We knew the Sentry
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Plaza really well from the back rooms and made up.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: We didn't pay. We walked in and there was the band,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and they remembered us, and we were like, wow, where's
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the fifty cents for the sunflower seeds?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: They were like, wow, what a great story.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: That was our adventures. We're just gonna be s people today.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: So that's an idea of what we were like. Because
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: you had to make your own entertainment. There wasn't an
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Internet to be fixated with all day long.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Sure sure, like you say, act like you've been there
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: was that, act like you owned the place, in the
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: place that's it's in.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: The cosmic picture you do. I mean, what are you
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: a harmony? It's just a little kid and you're just
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: looking to have a few laughs. Yeah, story to go
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: home and say so your parents can spare it you
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: and tell you who cares what? You can become a
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: lawyer or what.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Richard Lefkowitz is the author of Welcome to Fabulous Angelis,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: the rock and roll adventures of a wayward West Side teen.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Throughout the book, readers are experiencing the magic of Los Angeles,
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: all the fun times, the great stories, the music, the celebrities,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: the adventures. But in chapter twenty one, it's titled free Clinic.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: This is where we read about the dark side. You
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: write about the shocking nineteen seventy six murder of actor Salminio.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: And for listeners who may not know, sal is best
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: known for starting alongside James Dean and Rebel without a
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Cause and was one of Hollywood's most recognizable young actors.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: His murder became a major story in Los Angeles. Why
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: did that murder hit so close to home for you?
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Literally, Eric, you're right, because it was close to home.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And so that's like eighty four hundred block a Halloway
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: right across from Tower Records, and we're nine thousand block
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of a street. That LA's a grid, so the streets
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: are laid out in order pretty much with some exceptions,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: but so it wasn't very far away. The proximity of
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: it really chill off our spine and the brutality of it.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: He was axed or knife knife and Manson murders were
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: not that far off. I think it had happened shortly before,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and those were not that far away either. So it's
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: one thing the crime in Las and maybe in a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: lot of places sort of the same to New York
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and maybe in Boston wherever. It's kind of localized where Okay,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: you know, we had I remember ninety sixty five we
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: o the Watts riots and that was I was aid
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: and it was scary, but it was in Watts, Okay,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: And it was two freeway and a half away. Wasn't
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that far maybe seven or eight miles but still a
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: couple of freeways away. But that was right in our
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: stomping grounds, right across some tower records. The guy was
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: knifed him and that street was very dark because the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: street lights, and it was really scary, and coming off
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the Manson murders, which was horrifying, the cold blooded brutality
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: these guys who scared you know, scared us all. So
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: it is kind of like a terroristic act and it
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: had to do with because it was right in the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: middle of our stomping.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Grounds, So you were I think it was a was
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: it an apartment complex or a condo complex?
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: It was in the back parking area where sal Mineo was. Yeah,
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: So did he live in that unit or was he
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: visiting somebody there? I can't recall. I think he might
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: have lived there, okay, because he came upon a robbery
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: and he went to this person like, hey, what are
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: you doing and confronted him, and then the person stabbed him.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: It took years to unwine that. I'm not even sure,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: and there's always conspiracy theories now proliferating on the internet,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: but I'm not I've been sure that he got the
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: stories because it took him so long to solve that murder. Really,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: but he was young and he was you know, macho
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: got I mean, this is so mini as you expect
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: him to stab them. Then there's all the rumors about
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: sexuality or weird things in Hollywood. But it's in the
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: book because it's fits and also to portray the fear
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we felt in the suburbs. But also that's the sunset strip,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: you know, Mickey Cohen had his hat shop, which was
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: really a bookie salon. The Rainbow used to be Villanova,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: where they are all kinds of the various activities. It
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: was a shooting the place like Stor Gazari's teen Dance
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: club with Sherry's where there was a shooting with these gangsters.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a strip. In fact, the title of
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: the book, which is a nod to the obviously the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: sign in Vegas is because the only reason there's something
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: called the Las Vegas Strip is because the and it
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: was an unincorporated area. The city of West Hollywood was
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: didn't become a city till in the eighties. So what
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: happened is when the heat came down on the gamblers
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: and the monsters on the Sunset Strip in the forties
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: in the fifties, they moved to the desert where it
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: was lawless. So you had all kinds of back room
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: gambling and prostitution, sex were and violence all over the strip.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: And I saw it a little bit the tail end
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: of it in my lifetime. And in those days the
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: strip had Dean Martin had his restaurant, and Rodney Binginghammer
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: had his place, and he's a disc jockey who catered.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: It was this British cafe where all the young, very
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: young girls, and even when Zeppelin was here, not to
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: speak out of school about one of the greatest bands
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: of all time, but those girls were young, and that
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: wouldn't happen these days. And I don't mean eighteen young
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: or seventeen young.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I mean young.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: But okay, I'm not even going to say more about that.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I'll get in trouble, right. But there was all kinds
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of crime on the Strip. And what happened is they
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: moved to the middle of nowhere, three hundred miles away,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: which you could get there in four or five. There
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: was a one lane highway and most cars sit in
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: that air conditioning these bags they went for my time.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: But still I'm saying is that you could get there
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and it was lawless. So the mob moved their headquarters
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: to Las Vegas, and they called what was the LA
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Highway the Strip after the La Strip, the Sunset Strip.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So crime has been endemic to the Sunset Strip. It's
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: in the DNA of the Sunset Strip from the beginning.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the book Down Rock podcast.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your support, and make sure
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: media and let people know about Booked on Rock. And
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: if you do like the podcast, make sure you subscribe
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: give a five star review. Wherever you listen to the
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Booked one Rock podcas cast, run, Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: to the show. All right, let's get to Amy. Some
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: readers might expect the book to be primarily about rock
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: and roll, but relationships like the one with Amy provides
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: the emotional heart of the book. Tell us about Amy.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Why was it important to include that side of the story.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: It's a coming of age, first love, infatuation, but there
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: was a depth to Amy that needed to be seen
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and as probably one of the maybe the biggest part
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: of growing up is that first romance, and especially when
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you're in a difficult situation with your parents where you
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: have the overbearing, sort of stereotypical Jewish mother who's shaming
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: you when she's not over loving you and telling you
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: she knows better than you. And maybe she's right a
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: lot of the time. Maybe she's right most of the time,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: but she can't be right all the time, and you
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: feel trapped, and then the music comes along to free you,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: and then you find your first love and it cut
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: very deep, and it's Kat Stevens and later Rodde s
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: Heuwert saying about that first cut being the deepest. So
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's a universal tale that's irrespective of time
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: and space. And while this may be a I call
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: it a metro mair more than a memoir. The metro
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: more about a city where you are, about you and
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the culture more than just me. I think the heartbeat
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: of it, as you said, is really the interaction between
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: young lovers and what that's like. And so many great
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: books have been written, and it's one of my favorite genres.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: And I just felt that Amy needed to speak in
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: her own words, and you'll see that while I portray
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the dynamics of that and how it congealed and how
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it became on glued and everything happened in between Amy's
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: words speak and her letters and the other thing she
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: said came from her, and when I in the process
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: of writing this, I asked for that help. And I
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: didn't ask directly because she's long gone out of my life,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: but I called on the universe to say it helped me.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: And what just again, it's all about the truth. What
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: was it really like being young lovers? And I'm sitting
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: here casting judgment on led Zeppelin And she was fourteen
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: when we met, and I was sixteen. She turned fifteen immediately,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: but still fifteen, and we were young lovers and I
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: was sevent and she was fifteen nineteen seventy four. So
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I just had to portray the truth of that. And
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: it was very different in some ways because the culture
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: was different and it was all about the music, and
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I think the drugs were the undoing, as it was
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: for everything else, and that's why part of the reason
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: why the whole generation failed. But a lot of that's.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Universal, too, sure. And you're also at that age that
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: we're at when you're starting to think about the big
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: picture of life, and that's where we get to chapter seven.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: There's an entry in there that really struck me, and
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: you write, quote, I thought of myself in celestial terms.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't pray to dollar Bill Idols. I badly wanted
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: to believe our spirits will ascend at the moment we
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: depart this lifelong dream. I thought, maybe when we're awake,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: we're imagining, and when we sleep, we're awake. At age fifteen,
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: I wondered whether I could call death a heinous case
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: of mistaken identity. The title the book suggests, you know venture,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: rock and roll, but passages like this reveal a much
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: more introspective side. Wasn't important for readers to see that
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: beneath all of the celebrity encounters and the escapades, there
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: was a young man searching for answers about life.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Exactly searching for Irygandy, but searching for meaning, and maybe
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: that pursuit still continues with a lot of us to
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: this day. I've always been a a seeker, and as
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Pete Townsend said, I won't know what I'm after till
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the day that I die. But still as that seeker,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: I've always sought the spirituality and everything. And as I
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: was just hinting at, the whole culture failed in a sense.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: The dreams were never realized, and Lennon said he wanted
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to see the plan for the revolution and the evolution,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: and we never had the plan. It was all just
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: flower power fantasies. But for me, any book that was
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: written by a guy named Swami, I would buy it.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: And we used to have a great spiritual bookstore up
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood called the Body Tree, and that's in the book.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: And go have a cup of tea and smell the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: incense and try to And that's what the culture was.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: And that's why I say nostalgia is wonderful. If listen,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: if the Stanford Institute of Longevity says it's healthy, I'm in.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: But it has to be more than that. For me,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: what can we get you as a time capsule while
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: we dig it up? Don't want to learn something is
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: not the whole point of the time capsule. It's great
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: to be entertained, if levels if somebody just wants to
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: be entertained, if somebody is just for purely historical purposes,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: I feel really great that that time and place has
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: been preserved. Wonderful. But there's a deeper meaning for me,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: and I tried to pass that along. Is what are
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: we here for? I say on that somewhere one of
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: those pages that he just read that if you believe
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: in nothing. How do you get out of bed in
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the morning? This is it and it would just killing time.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: What he Allen says, it's all just a big distraction.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: We're all just trying to distract ourselves. And that's just
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: He's right to a large extent, and that's the way
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: he's lived his life, and God bless him. Is fifty
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: movies and all kinds of other things other than whatever,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: more morality that people can talk about, but just saying
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: for me as a seeker, as one of the most
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: important components. And that thread goes all the way through
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: the very last words on the very last pages. The
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: spirituality of it, and that is what I like to
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: bring into the present day is how do we get
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: back that the hope and the optimism that we felt
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: when we saw tomorrow Land at Disneyland, or or that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: theme building at lax that looked like a spaceship, or
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: all the stuff that the colored psychedelia, A lot of
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: it was drugs. Lot was a waste of time in
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: this revolving door that just goes around on. But there
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: was truth to it, and we need more than ever
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: in the present day. Eric. I really believe that.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the last chapter is so powerful. You're twenty one
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: decades about to end. You're on a plane, you're riding
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: on an aircraft safety card essentially about where you've been,
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: where you are, and where you're going. Can you take
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: us to that moment there you're looking out the window
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: and what's happening in your life at that moment of reflection, moment.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Of clarity that I said, I have to quit partying.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: And the truth is I didn't get stopped doing all
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: that stuff for another That was seventy nine. I didn't
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: stop doing that stuff for twenty more years. I well
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: and partly, and I didn't do hard drugs anymore after
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: the eighties, but still I drank. I smoked weed pretty
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: much in the eighties. Now I use all kinds of stuff.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: But it's kind of a full circle thing, is that? Okay,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: it comes right off of it that the ending the
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: chapter you're talking about is right after I just partied
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: with Keith and Ronnie intimately where we were had great
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: conversations while we're slugging a bottle of Jack Daniels together
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: on a drum riser. I mean, these things were life
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: changing for me. And I just flunked out of college
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: where because that was my passive aggressive. I didn't want
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: to be there, so I just won't go.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: There's a Jackson Brown. You mentioned something about that to
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: become the we become the person we choose to be, right?
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: Is that the song the Fuse?
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: That?
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: That's the Fuse is a song that is the theme
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: of a scene when I move out to school in
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: my last days before I get uninvited back after being academic,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: put on double secret probation and kicked out, And that.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Was animal house reference, got it?
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well zero start drinking heavily. That was like my
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: mission statement for life. So if Ludo could say it's
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: funny he hit the end, he becomes a senator, right,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And that's pretty much so I the salvation. It was
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: so meaningful to me to meet these holes because I'm
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: getting kicked out of school my parents. I'm just going
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: no dead end and I have no future because I
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: don't want to do what I'm supposed to do and
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: go to law school and all that. But I've just
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: spent every night with Ethan Rondey and all these other
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: great things that to me your validation. And then we
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: go to Hawaii and have that experience but on the
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: way back it hits me like, wait a minute, I
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: am not going to listen to anybody else. I got
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: to do, you know, listen to this heart strings that
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: are vibrating inside my soul. And so that's kind of
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that moment. And it's kind of a cliffhanger in a
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: sense that it's leading to the sequel, which is pretty
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: much in pretty good shape already written, and there's there's
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: some some Easter eggs in there that I couldn't let
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: it to be. It had to have some closure. But
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: really again, it's the spiritual circle of things and that's
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: where and it was all about the music. And what
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I say there is that you've got Dylan Thomas talking
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: about the force that fuses the flower through his famous poem,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and it's you've I said that wrong, No, I have here, right,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: it's it's the force, yes, right, you're right.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I pledged there and then to germinate the holy seed
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: planted by what Dylan Thomas called the force that through
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: the green fuse drives the flower.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: And then the fuse is Jackson Brown and he's from
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: La basically his whole life. I think he might have
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: been born on the army base in Germany, he said,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: but he's an LA guy. His songs are all LA.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: There's another on that short list of real La, authentic
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: truth and art. And Dylan Thomas is what was he Well,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: she's But the truth is the truth, and that's the
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: story I'm trying to tell.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: dot app to find over twenty great shows there that's
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Boneless downlovable dot app, or just go to bookdown Rock
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: dot com the Boneless podcasting network. It is what you
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: want to be listen with confidence. So the next one
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: will be based on the eighties.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think there's a lot to be left
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: in the seventies. And of course, to me, the seventies
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: ended on December seventh, nineteen eighty when John Lennon was assassinated,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: even though it was nineteen eighty and there's a lot
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: to be said, and there was a lot that This
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: story more is a family dysfunctional thing, and the amy
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: story and the best friend thing. Next thing a little
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: deeper dive into the psychology and into some of the
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: events that happened. Yeah, the eighties, sure, and up through
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: my personal journey healing and sobriety and my own artistic
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: satisfactions or whoever it may be. But it's always about
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the city. It's not you know, it's a memoir that
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: I don't even like to says about me. Of course
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: it is, but the same elements that are incorporated into
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: the first one. We'll be there. But that's a discussion
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: for another day. For today, I'm glad they're picked up
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: on the fact that, yeah, I'm trying to send deeper
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: message than just the music was good. We had fun,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: we had sex, and we partied with the stones. I mean,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: that's all nice, But what does it all mean?
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Without giving way too much, what became of Moxie.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I try to stay away from the spoiler alerts. I'll
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: tell you this. I have no problem telling you he's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: safe and healthy and live and well and doing great.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, good good. You're still connected. You guys are still connected, still.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Will always be connected. When we we shed this mortal coil,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: we'll probably still be connected in the afterlife. But yes,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: we are still connected deeply, And doesn't mean we hang
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: out every day or see each other. But friends you
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: have for a long time, you go through all kinds
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: of various stages. So yeah, he's alive.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: And well that is good to hear. All right. Last question,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: if you could sit down with the teenage Ricky that
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: we meet in these chapters, what's the one thing you'd
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: want him to understand about where his adventures were leading
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: If you could go back in time, would you warn
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: him or would you say, go for a kid, live
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: it learn.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I've had that thought many times, and of course
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you can't. It's like if you went a time machine
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: and you changed one thing, it would change the entired
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: civilization because of that one plant that didn't grow on
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: whatever it may be. So, but if we're going to
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: have the willing suspensions disbelief for that, I would say
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the one thing I would tell myself is trust yourself,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: health and your truth and your process, and your parents
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: have compassion for them. I wouldn't have wanted to grow
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: up with my parents' parents, as might they were great grandparents,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: but as parents things were very different growing up through
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the depression, and they lived a very different life, full
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: of all kinds of suffering, whether it was economic or
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: whether it's self inflicted, whatever, whatever it may be. It
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: was a different time to grow up in World War
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Two and to face the challenges that we no longer face.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: They had to just survive, whereas I wasn't born wealthy,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: but I didn't have to worry about it. I was going
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: to starve to death either. So but the one thing
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I would tell myself is have compassion for them. They're
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: doing their best, as people like to say, and even
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: if they're not, Even if they're doing their worst, they're
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: your parents at the end of the day. They love
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: you and they want the best for you. But they
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: are completely full of shit. They don't know what they're
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: talking about. You could get the hell out of the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: house as soon as possible.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: On that note, Welcome to Fabulous Angelis the rock and
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: roll Adventures of a wayward West Side teen. What a
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: fun read man. It's out now, it's been out a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: little while, and it's wherever books are sold. You can
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: find it online or look for it at youineerest bookstore
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: and if you want to look forward at your neeers
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: independent bookstore. Booked down rock dot com is where you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: can find one your nearest one and where can people
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: find you online.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you for us. It's fabulous, funnily enough, fabulous angelist
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: dot com got the website lover with all types of
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: content and reviews and musings, blog and some links and
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: some other interesting things about the book, some excerpt stuff
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: there for everybody's interested. But I want to thank you
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: Eric for having me on and for the wonderful job
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: you do for the country, for society, the world at large,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: getting people plugged in. We're in the golden age of
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: maybe we're even a little over the edge of the
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: golden age of rockstar and other type of musical biographies.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: When I grew up there were none. There are people
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: still living in their dreams. And then Keith wrote that
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: book Life and then the gates flood gates exploded, and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: it's wonderful thing to get people engaged literarily. So I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: thank you for that, and thank you for having me
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: on here.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Richard. I appreciate that. Richard left Kwitzev
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: a great night, and thank you again for the book,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: and we look forward to that next one. We'll have
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: you back then, Thanks.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Eric, you will. That's it.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: It's in the books.