Roastin' in The Joshua Tree

Chapter Three

- ‘The Five’ Become ‘The Four’ -

Early 1965, famed B-movie producer Roger Corman was assembling talent (yes, I use the word loosely) for a flick titled ‘I was a Conflicted, Co-ed Vampire’. (It was released as ‘Flesh-Munching Hippies Go to College’). The film was to star a then-unknown Jack Nicholson. My agent said there might be a part for me, ‘Lord Firmwood’, a vampire by night and a bond broker by day. I turned it down because I was trying to get gigs that matched my talent.

But I thought the Brothers, Pete, Charlie, Keith, Dick, or Carl might have a shot. It could be a career-booster for any one of those dopes. So I called Corman and the lads went off to auditions.

Pete got a ‘non-speaking’ part as vampire-zombie—which I thought was brilliant casting—and Keith got a part as a vampire hairdresser with a gamy leg, quite a challenge when you think about it.

Shooting was to begin about two months later. To prepare for the parts, the boys were supposed to stay out of the sun and lose about ten pounds each. Easy enough, right?

At this time I learned that over at Screen Gems, producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson were casting for a Beatles’ ‘Hard Day’s Night’ kind of TV show and wanted four, young singers to play members of a band called The Monkees. So I sent over Charlie, Dick and Carl. They never made it to the audition: I found out they’d stopped at the Whiskey a Go-Go, and ended up drunk, in their underwear, gabbing with owner Elmer Valentine, dancing in the Go-Go cages ‘til the wee hours. Such is ambition.

I wasn’t mad at them. You can’t get mad at idiots, and most people involved in rock are idiots. Just accept it and move on.

1965 was a very weird year. It’s like the 50s finally gave up, and even uncool, goofy people began to change somehow. In fact, everybody wanted to be hip, and if you didn’t, you were denied pleasure on a grand scale and kicked out of town like an oozing leper.

I remember when the Byrds released ‘Mr, Tambourine Man’, early ’65, and I thought it sounded like the Beatles had collided with Dylan. In fact, it sounded like the future. But how was I to get there with any degree of success? Somehow I decided that electric folk music was where it was at, but it didn’t look like the permanently dazed Brothers were going to get me on the gravy train. I needed a new vehicle.

Around March of that year I made the single biggest mistake of my music career. I blew a chance at producing the Mamas and the Pappas. I knew John Phillips way back when he was with The Journeymen (who had a guy that played banjo and later when on to co-write the film ‘ Manhattan’ with Woody Allen, go figure) in Greenwich Village. I stayed in touch with him mainly because it was fun to be around his beautiful wife Michelle. John asked me to produce his group because he knew that I had immense talents and was stuck in a rut with the Brothers Five.

My big hang-up was that I thought John Phillips was too tall. I just didn’t see how somebody of that height could be a believable hippy. Plus, he wore a sad-looking fur hat that made him look even taller. Most hippies were skinny, small and smelly. It was unbearable for me to see such a tall, clean man and I told him no, my hands were full with the Brothers Five, and I suggested that he go see my old pal Lou Adler. It’s painful to recall all this and it really makes me feel like going on a two-week, wood-alcohol bender.

he good part is that John and Michelle Phillips were easily the best hosts, and gave the greatest parties, of that entire era—and I rarely missed one. You want to know how strange those parties were? I can remember once when Doris Day tried to pick me up. I mean, Doris Day? In a sick, dark way it was kind of tempting, but I knew that it was the kind of thing that would rot out my brain faster than highly virulent syphilis. You don’t walk away from something like that a strong man.

Brothers Four: 1965

Okay, in the previous chapter I said that I’d be talking about two murders. My publisher told me to insert ‘teasers’ at the end so readers would be curious to continue with the book.

When a professional musician dies prematurely (murdered) other musicians sometimes say ‘Uncle Jack’ got him. This Jack is kind of a tone-deaf boogieman. Growing up in the south, I’d heard the term. Okay, around 1964, some serial killer began stalking Southern California, taking down musicians. The police figured he was a nut who had been burned by a musician or record company. He called himself ‘Uncle Jack’. I don’t know if I’m the only one to make the killer-musician connection, but I kept it to myself.

Around this time, a lot of musicians started dying under mysterious circumstances. Most of their names are forgotten. You might recall Rudy Lewis, a guy from The Drifters, who croaked suddenly. I heard though a law enforcement pal that this Uncle Jack killer got him. Sadly, Pete Vandusen, one of the Brothers Five, disappeared completely in July 1965. Nobody knows what happened. The police found nothing in his apartment except a Bob Dylan album, a bag of elastics, and a human liver. It made no sense. I say he was murdered by Uncle Jack.

The other ‘Brothers’ didn’t seem perturbed about Pete’s fate: in fact, three of them couldn’t clearly recall his name, while the fourth denied he had ever existed. As I’ve said, the Brothers were pretty dim lights.

So now it was the Brothers Four, which was okay: one less mouth to feed. To get the money rolling, I wrote a song called Three O’clock World, which became a regional hit for the Brothers. It was ripped off the following year as Five O’clock World and became a monster smash for a bunch of zipperheads called the Vogues. Such is life. Where’s Uncle Jack when you need him.

It was easy for me to kill time in Laurel Canyon. Sometimes I got into great late-night discussions with producer Paul Rothchild, who lived nearby on Ridpath. Paul was one of the few guys whom I felt was going anymore. Plus, he had a steady job (at Electra Records) and that was rare. Anyway, those were sunny days— Mount Olympus, Kirkwood, Wonderland, Lookout Mountain Avenue—the names come back to me now like the sweet scent of hashish surfing across a blue, Pacific breeze.

By the time 1966 arrived, I knew that I had to change my lifestyle or I’d forever sink into that lava-lamped groovyness that was Laurel. I’d heard of a new band called the International Submarine Band (groups had names like that back then) who played a kind of country music, but with a twist. It was fronted by Gram Parsons, who would go on to play a role in my life, however ghoulish. I thought maybe I’d dump the surviving Brothers and hook up with someone like Gram who appeared to be headed for the stars. The band had that combination of folk and electric that I found appealing.

About then, Uncle Jack came out of semi-retirement and sniffing for meat up and down the Pacific Coast highway. A lot of small fry got picked off, guys who played bongos in Holiday Inn bands, or irritating street musicians who should have been murdered anyway.

But in July ’66, Uncle Jack outdid himself with a singer named Bobby Fuller. I never knew the complete story, but they found Fuller murdered in a car, all covered in gasoline. To this day, the crime hasn’t been solved. For a while everybody suspected Sonny Bono, simply because he always looked guilty and dressed like a moron.

As I said at the beginning, it was a weird year. And it ended weirdly. I was there, in front of Pandora’s Box on Sunset in L.A., in December as I recall, when a riot started, later immortalized by Stephen Stills in ‘For What It’s Worth’. A hippy riot, can you imagine?

ou see, that’s what I’ve been trying to get across to you: it was both a peaceful and violent time. You can’t have one without the other. And out of this beautiful nightmare erupted 1967, the Summer of Love. I was about to go on stage with the Jefferson Airplane. I was still looking for my boat into the future; in fact, I’d had been riding in that boat for a while, I just didn’t know it.

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