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#Post#: 24142--------------------------------------------------
Αποπαίδια τ	
59;υ κρατικισμ
ού οι χίπιδε&#
962;!
By: Pinochet88 Date: August 25, 2016, 2:18 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Στο πίσω
μέρος του
μυαλού κάθε
σοσιαλιστή
είναι το πως
θα αρπάξει
αυτό που οι
συνάνθρωπο^
3;
του
παράγουν
και πως θα
εκμηδενίσε_
3;
την
ελευθερία
των άλλων
υπό το
πρόσχημα
κάποιου
δήθεν
ευαγούς
σκοπού με
τον οποίον
θα τους
ξεγελάσει
να
συνεναίσου_
7;
στον
εξανδραποδ_
3;σμό
τους.
[hr]
Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel
Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation Part 2
Dave McGowan
Center for an Informed America
Tue, 13 May 2008 21:58 UTC
"He was great, he was unreal - really, really good."
"He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. I thought
he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a
living poet."
Image
©Steven Johnson
[Today's first trivia question: both of the above statements
were made, on separate occasions, by a famous Laurel Canyon
musician of the 1960s era. Both quotes were offered up in praise
of another Laurel Canyon musician. Award yourself five points
for correctly identifying the person who made the remarks, and
five for identifying who the statements refer to. The answers
are at the end of this post.]
In the first chapter of this saga, we met a sampling of some of
the most successful and influential rock music superstars who
emerged from Laurel Canyon during its glory days. But these
were, alas, more than just musicians and singers and songwriters
who had come together in the canyon; they were destined to
become the spokesmen and de facto leaders of a generation of
disaffected youth (as Carl Gottlieb noted in David Crosby's
co-written autobiography, "the unprecedented mass appeal of the
new rock 'n' roll gave the singers a voice in public affairs.")
That, of course, makes it all the more curious that these icons
were, to an overwhelming degree, the sons and daughters of the
military/intelligence complex and the scions of families that
have wielded vast wealth and power in this country for a very
long time.
When I recently presented to a friend a truncated summary of the
information contained in the first installment of this series,
said friend opted to play the devil's advocate by suggesting
that there was nothing necessarily nefarious in the fact that so
many of these icons of a past generation hailed from
military/intelligence families. Perhaps, he suggested, they had
embarked on their chosen careers as a form of rebellion against
the values of their parents. And that, I suppose, might be true
in a couple of cases. But what are we to conclude from the fact
that such an astonishing number of these folks (along with their
girlfriends, wives, managers, etc.) hail from a similar
background? Are we to believe that the only kids from that era
who had musical talent were the sons and daughters of Navy
Admirals, chemical warfare engineers and Air Force intelligence
officers? Or are they just the only ones who were signed to
lucrative contracts and relentlessly promoted by their labels
and the media?
If these artists were rebelling against, rather than subtly
promoting, the values of their parents, then why didn't they
ever speak out against the folks they were allegedly rebelling
against? Why did Jim Morrison never denounce, or even mention,
his father's key role in escalating one of America's bloodiest
illegal wars? And why did Frank Zappa never pen a song exploring
the horrors of chemical warfare (though he did pen a charming
little ditty entitled "The Ritual Dance of the Child-Killer")?
And which Mamas and Papas song was it that laid waste to the
values and actions of John Phillip's parents and in-laws? And in
which interview, exactly, did David Crosby and Stephen Stills
disown the family values that they were raised with?
In the coming weeks, we will take a much closer look at these
folks, as well as at many of their contemporaries, as we
endeavor to determine how and why the youth 'counterculture' of
the 1960s was given birth. According to virtually all the
accounts that I have read, this was essentially a spontaneous,
organic response to the war in Southeast Asia and to the
prevailing social conditions of the time. 'Conspiracy
theorists,' of course, have frequently opined that what began as
a legitimate movement was at some point co-opted and undermined
by intelligence operations such as CoIntelPro. Entire books, for
example, have been written examining how presumably virtuous
musical artists were subjected to FBI harassment and/or whacked
by the CIA.
Here we will, as you have no doubt already ascertained, take a
decidedly different approach. The question that we will be
tackling is a more deeply troubling one: "what if the musicians
themselves (and various other leaders and founders of the
'movement') were every bit as much a part of the intelligence
community as the people who were supposedly harassing them?"
What if, in other words, the entire youth culture of the 1960s
was created not as a grass-roots challenge to the status quo,
but as a cynical exercise in discrediting and marginalizing the
budding anti-war movement and creating a fake opposition that
could be easily controlled and led astray? And what if the
harassment these folks were subjected to was largely a
stage-managed show designed to give the leaders of the
counterculture some much-needed 'street cred'? What if, in
reality, they were pretty much all playing on the same team?
I should probably mention here that, contrary to popular
opinion, the 'hippie'/'flower child' movement was not synonymous
with the anti-war movement. As time passed, there was, to be
sure, a fair amount of overlap between the two 'movements.' And
the mass media outlets, as is their wont, did their very best to
portray the flower-power generation as the torch-bearers of the
anti-war movement - because, after all, a ragtag band of
unwashed, drug-fueled long-hairs sporting flowers and peace
symbols was far easier to marginalize than, say, a bunch of
respected college professors and their concerned students. The
reality, however, is that the anti-war movement was already well
underway before the first aspiring 'hippie' arrived in Laurel
Canyon. The first Vietnam War 'teach-in' was held on the campus
of the University of Michigan in March of 1965. The first
organized walk on Washington occurred just a few weeks later.
Needless to say, there were no 'hippies' in attendance at either
event. That 'problem' would soon be rectified. And the anti-war
crowd - those who were serious about ending the bloodshed in
Vietnam, anyway - would be none too appreciative.
As Barry Miles has written in his coffee-table book, Hippie,
there were some hippies involved in anti-war protests,
"particularly after the police riot in Chicago in 1968 when so
many people got injured, but on the whole the movement activists
looked on hippies with disdain." Peter Coyote, narrating the
documentary "Hippies" on The History Channel, added that "Some
on the left even theorized that the hippies were the end result
of a plot by the CIA to neutralize the anti-war movement with
LSD, turning potential protestors into self-absorbed
naval-gazers." An exasperated Abbie Hoffman once described the
scene as he remembered it thusly: "There were all these
activists, you know, Berkeley radicals, White Panthers ... all
trying to stop the war and change things for the better. Then we
got flooded with all these 'flower children' who were into drugs
and sex. Where the hell did the hippies come from?!"
As it turns out, they came, initially at least, from a rather
private, isolated, largely self-contained neighborhood in Los
Angeles known as Laurel Canyon (in contrast to the other canyons
slicing through the Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon has its own
market, the semi-famous Laurel Canyon Country Store; its own
deli and cleaners; its own elementary school, the Wonderland
School; its own boutique shops and salons; and, in more recent
years, its own celebrity reprogramming rehab facility named, as
you may have guessed, the Wonderland Center. During its heyday,
the canyon even had its own management company, Lookout
Management, to handle the talent. At one time, it even had its
own newspaper.)
One other thing that I should add here, before getting too far
along with this series, is that this has not been an easy line
of research for me to conduct, primarily because I have been,
for as long as I can remember, a huge fan of 1960s music and
culture. Though I was born in 1960 and therefore didn't come of
age, so to speak, until the 1970s, I have always felt as though
I was ripped off by being denied the opportunity to experience
firsthand the era that I was so obviously meant to inhabit.
During my high school and college years, while my peers were
mostly into faceless corporate rock (think Journey, Foreigner,
Kansas, Boston, etc.) and, perhaps worse yet, the twin horrors
of New Wave and Disco music, I was faithfully spinning my
Hendrix, Joplin and Doors albums (which I still have, or rather
my eldest daughter still has, in the original vinyl versions)
while my color organ (remember those?) competed with my black
light and strobe light. I grew my hair long until well past the
age when it should have been sheared off. I may have even strung
beads across the doorway to my room, but it is possible that I
am confusing my life with that of Greg Brady, who, as we all
remember, once converted his dad's home office into a groovy
bachelor pad.
Anyway ... as I have probably mentioned previously on more than
one occasion, one of the most difficult aspects of this journey
that I have been on for the last decade or so has been watching
so many of my former idols and mentors fall by the wayside as it
became increasingly clear to me that people who I once thought
were the good guys were, in reality, something entirely
different than what they appear to be. The first to fall,
naturally enough, were the establishment figures - the
politicians who I once, quite foolishly, looked up to as people
who were fighting the good fight, within the confines of the
system, to bring about real change. Though it now pains me to
admit this, there was a time when I admired the likes of
(egads!) George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, as well as (oops,
excuse me for a moment; I seem to have just thrown up in my
mouth a little bit) California pols Tom Hayden and Jerry Brown.
I even had high hopes, oh-so-many-years-ago, for (am I really
admitting this in print?) aspiring First Man Bill Clinton.
Since I mentioned Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown, by the way, I
must now digress just a bit - and we all know how I hate it when
that happens. But as luck would have it, Jerry Brown was,
curiously enough, a longtime resident of a little place called
Laurel Canyon. As readers of Programmed to Kill may recall,
Brown lived on Wonderland Avenue, not too many doors down from
8763 Wonderland Avenue, the site of the infamous "Four on the
Floor" murders, regarded by grizzled LA homicide detectives as
the most bloody and brutal multiple murder in the city's very
bloody history (if you get a chance, by the way, check out
"Wonderland" with Val Kilmer the next time it shows up on your
cable listings; it is, by Hollywood standards, a reasonably
accurate retelling of the crime, and a pretty decent film as
well).
As it turns out, you see, the most bloody mass murder in LA's
history took place in one of the city's most serene, pastoral
and exclusive neighborhoods. And strangely enough, the case
usually cited as the runner-up for the title of bloodiest crime
scene - the murders of Stephen Parent, Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring,
Voytek Frykowski and Abigail Folger at 10050 Cielo Drive in
Benedict Canyon, just a couple miles to the west of Laurel
Canyon - had deep ties to the Laurel Canyon scene as well.
As previously mentioned, victims Folger and Frykowski lived in
Laurel Canyon, at 2774 Woodstock Road, in a rented home right
across the road from a favored gathering spot for Laurel Canyon
royalty. Many of the regular visitors to Cass Elliot's home,
including a number of shady drug dealers, were also regular
visitors to the Folger/Frykowski home (Frykowski's son, by the
way, was stabbed to death on June 6, 1999, thirty years after
his father met the same fate.) Victim Jay Sebring's acclaimed
hair salon sat right at the mouth of Laurel Canyon, just below
the Sunset Strip, and it was Sebring, alas, who was credited
with sculpting Jim Morrison's famous mane. One of the investors
in his Sebring International business venture was a Laurel
Canyon luminary who I may have mentioned previously, Mr. John
Phillips.
Sharon Tate was also well known in Laurel Canyon, where she was
a frequent visitor to the homes of friends like John Phillips,
Cass Elliott, and Abby Folger. And when she wasn't in Laurel
Canyon, many of the canyon regulars, both famous and infamous,
made themselves at home in her place on Cielo Drive. Canyonite
Van Dyke Parks, for example, dropped by for a visit on the very
day of the murders. And Denny Doherty, the other "Papa" in The
Mamas and the Papas, has claimed that he and John Phillips were
invited to the Cielo Drive home on the night of the murders,
but, as luck would have it, they never made it over. (Similarly,
Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night, a regular visitor to the
Wonderland death house, had set up a drug buy on the night of
that mass murder, but he fell asleep and never made it over.)
Along with the victims, the alleged killers also lived in and/or
were very much a part of the Laurel Canyon scene. Bobby "Cupid"
Beausoleil, for example, lived in a Laurel Canyon apartment
during the early months of 1969. Charles "Tex" Watson, who
allegedly led the death squad responsible for the carnage at
Cielo Drive, lived for a time in a home on - guess where? -
Wonderland Avenue. During that time, curiously enough, Watson
co-owned and worked in a wig shop in Beverly Hills, Crown Wig
Creations, Ltd., that was located near the mouth of Benedict
Canyon. Meanwhile, one of Jay Sebring's primary claims-to-fame
was his expertise in crafting men's hairpieces, which he did in
his shop near the mouth of Laurel Canyon. A typical day then in
the late 1960s would find Watson crafting hairpieces for an
upscale Hollywood clientele near Benedict Canyon, and then
returning home to Laurel Canyon, while Sebring crafted
hairpieces for an upscale Hollywood clientele near Laurel
Canyon, and then returned home to Benedict Canyon. And then one
crazy day, as we all know, one of them became a killer and the
other his victim. But there's nothing odd about that, I suppose,
so let's move on.
Oh, wait a minute ... we can't quite move on just yet, as I
forgot to mention that Sebring's Benedict Canyon home, at 9820
Easton Drive, was a rather infamous Hollywood death house that
had once belonged to Jean Harlow and Paul Bern. The mismatched
pair were wed on July 2, 1932, when Harlow, already a huge star
of the silver screen, was just twenty-one years old. Just two
months later, on September 5, Bern caught a bullet to the head
in his wife's bedroom. He was found sprawled naked in a pool of
his own blood, his corpse drenched with his wife's perfume. Upon
discovering the body, Bern's butler promptly contacted MGM's
head of security, Whitey Hendry, who in turn contacted Louis B.
Mayer and Irving Thalberg. All three men descended upon the
Benedict Canyon home to, you know, tidy up a bit. A couple hours
later, they decided to contact the LAPD. This scene would be
repeated years later when Sebring's friends would rush to the
home to clean up before officers investigating the Tate murders
arrived.
Bern's death was, needless to say, written off as a suicide. His
newlywed wife, strangely enough, was never called as a witness
at the inquest. Bern's other wife - which is to say, his
common-law wife, Dorothy Millette - reportedly boarded a
Sacramento riverboat on September 6, 1932, the day after Paul's
death. She was next seen floating belly-up in the Sacramento
River. Her death, as would be expected, was also ruled a
suicide. Less than five years later, Harlow herself dropped dead
at the ripe old age of 26. At the time, authorities opted not to
divulge the cause of death, though it was later claimed that bad
kidneys had done her in. During her brief stay on this planet,
Harlow had cycled through three turbulent marriages and yet
still found time to serve as Godmother to Bugsy Siegel's
daughter, Millicent.
Though Bern's was the most famous body to be hauled out of the
Easton Drive house in a coroner's bag, it certainly wasn't the
only one. Another man had reportedly committed suicide there as
well, in some unspecified fashion. Yet another unfortunate soul
drowned in the home's pool. And a maid was once found swinging
from the end of a rope. Her death, needless to say, was ruled a
suicide as well. That's a lot of blood for one home to absorb,
but the house's morbid history, though a turn-off to many
prospective residents, was reportedly exactly what attracted Jay
Sebring to the property. His murder would further darken the
black cloud hanging over the home.
As Laurel Canyon chronicler Michael Walker has noted, LA's two
most notorious mass murders, one in August of 1969 and the other
in July of 1981 (both involving five victims, though at
Wonderland one of the five miraculously survived), provided
rather morbid bookends for Laurel Canyon's glory years. Walker
though, like others who have chronicled that time and place,
treats these brutal crimes as though they were unfortunate
aberrations. The reality, however, is that the nine bodies
recovered from Cielo Drive and Wonderland Avenue constitute just
the tip of a very large, and very bloody, iceberg. To partially
illustrate that point, here is today's second trivia question:
what do Diane Linkletter (daughter of famed entertainer Art
Linkletter), legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, screen idol Sal
Mineo, starlet Inger Stevens, and silent film star Ramon
Novarro, all have in common?
If you answered that all were found dead in their homes, either
in or at the mouth of Laurel Canyon, in the decade between 1966
and 1976, then award yourself five points. If you added that all
five were, in all likelihood, murdered in their Laurel Canyon
homes, then add five bonus points.
Only two of them, of course, are officially listed as murder
victims (Mineo, who was stabbed to death outside his home at
8563 Holloway Drive on February 12, 1976, and Novarro, who was
killed near the Country Store in a decidedly ritualistic fashion
on the eve of Halloween, 1968). Inger Steven's death in her home
at 8000 Woodrow Wilson Drive, on April 30, 1970 (Walpurgisnacht
on the occult calendar), was officially a suicide, though why
she opted to propel herself through a decorative glass screen as
part of that suicide remains a mystery. Perhaps she just wanted
to leave behind a gruesome crime scene, and simple overdoses can
be so, you know, bloodless and boring.
Diane Linkletter, as we all know, sailed out the window of her
Shoreham Towers apartment because, in her LSD-addled state, she
thought she could fly, or some such thing. We know this because
Art himself told us that it was so, and because the story was
retold throughout the 1970s as a cautionary tale about the
dangers of drugs. What we weren't told, however, is that Diane
(born, curiously enough, on Halloween day, 1948) wasn't alone
when she plunged six stories to her death on the morning of
October 4, 1969. Au contraire, she was with a gent by the name
of Edward Durston, who, in a completely unexpected turn of
events, accompanied actress Carol Wayne to Mexico some 15 years
later. Carol, alas, perhaps weighed down by her enormous
breasts, managed to drown in barely a foot of water, while Mr.
Durston promptly disappeared. As would be expected, he was never
questioned by authorities about Wayne's curious death. After
all, it is quite common for the same guy to be the sole witness
to two separate 'accidental' deaths.
Art also neglected to mention, by the way, that just weeks
before Diane's curious death, another member of the Linkletter
clan, Art's son-in-law, John Zwyer, caught a bullet to the head
in the backyard of his Hollywood Hills home. But that, of
course, was an unconnected, uhmm, suicide, so don't go thinking
otherwise.
I'm not even going to discuss here the circumstances of Bruce's
death from acute morphine poisoning on August 3, 1966, because,
to be perfectly honest, I don't know too many people who don't
already assume that Lenny was whacked. I'll just note here that
his funeral was well-attended by the Laurel Canyon rock icons,
and control over his unreleased material fell into the hands of
a guy by the name of Frank Zappa. And another rather unsavory
character named Phil Spector, whose crack team of studio
musicians, dubbed The Wrecking Crew, were the actual musicians
playing on many studio recordings by such bands as The Monkees,
The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and The Mamas and the Papas.
To Be Continued ...
(As for the trivia question, the person being praised, of
course, was our old friend Chuck Manson. And the guy singing his
praises was Mr. Neil Young.)
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