Dennis almost destroyed Christine McVie’s life before he finally moved out and got his own place in Venice, which was soon filled up with vagrants, pushers, and hangers-on. One day a blond teenage girl showed up with a friend. Sixteen-year-old Shawn was Mike Love’s shunned illegitimate daughter, and Dennis set out to make her his own. “Mike Love was a total asshole,” Karen Lamm said. “Dennis came offstage one night, and the light was in his eyes and Mike kicked him square in the balls. Dennis stole shows. He was a heartthrob. He married Shawn as a “fuck you” to Mike.” Shawn became one of the many people who crashed at Dennis’s pad, and when their son, Gage, was born, Dennis married her. Shawn had hoped that her close proximity to the Beach Boys would endear her to her father, but the ploy didn’t work. Neither did the marriage. Less than four months after the wedding, Shawn drove her silver BMW right into the front door of Dennis’s rented Trancas beach house, scrawling “No love” and “No respect” on the walls with crayons. Dennis filed for divorce, and Shawn moved into the Santa Monica Bay Inn with baby Gage.
When the lease was up on the beach house, Dennis’s manager, Bob Levine, made him an offer—Dennis could spend some time in rehab, and when he finished the program Bob would get him a new home. Dennis was half a million dollars in debt, with no real place to live and no money in his pockets. He was overweight and bloated, his bearded faced heavily lined, his eyes bloodshot. He spoke in a hard, rasping voice, made worse by several operations to remove polyps from his vocal cords, and still smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels a day. Over the past few years many people who cared for Dennis had tried to get him some help. At one point the Beach Boys put a private jet at his disposal to take him to the rehab center of his choice, but Dennis never set foot on the plane. They offered to pay him one-fifth of the touring money—even though he wasn’t on tour—as long as he was in a clinic. He had tremors and had started to have seizures, but Dennis always had an excuse not to go to rehab, and his latest excuse was Gage.
On December 4, 1983, his thirty-ninth birthday, Dennis went to Room 353 at the Bay Inn to pick up his son Gage, and found Shawn asleep in bed with two men (all of them fully clothed), his son wandering around the room unattended. He went wild, screaming and ripping the room apart. Threatening to call police and have them all arrested for drugs, Dennis suddenly bolted with the baby and wandered into traffic on Ocean Avenue. When he saw the BMW he had bought for Shawn in the parking lot, he smashed the windows in with a baseball bat. Eventually Dennis dropped Gage off with friends and resumed his frenzied downhill roaming.
During the month of December, Dennis was adrift and disoriented, crashing in cheap motels and at friends’ apartments. Two days before Christmas, Bob Levine drove Dennis to St. John’s Hospital for a twenty-one-day detox program. He was given Librium to relieve the wretched withdrawal symptoms and, though he tried to reach Carl and Brian several times, seemed determined to stick out the three-week program. Then Shawn called to tell him that she and Gage were being thrown out of the Bay Inn for nonpayment of rent. Determined to help, Dennis left the clinic on Christmas Day and, arriving at the Bay Inn, found Shawn with a boyfriend. A shoving match ensued, and Dennis, doped up with Librium, got beaten very badly. St. John’s Hospital refused to readmit him, so Dennis checked into Marina Hospital, where he spent one night before making yet another escape. A sometime girlfriend, former Playboy Bunny Crystal McGovern, picked him up and they went to see an old friend of Dennis’s, Bill Oster, on his boat, the Emerald, right next to the empty slip where the Harmony had been docked. Bill and his girlfriend, Brenda, were happy to see Dennis but were concerned about the condition he was in, hiding his bottle of vodka several times. Oster told Dennis, “It wasn’t six months ago that I said to Brenda, ‘I hope the next time we see Dennis it’s not at his funeral.’” To which Dennis replied, “Don’t you worry about that.” The foursome slept that night on the Emerald, and Dennis was up at nine A.M. drinking screwdrivers. He called Bob Levine and agreed to spend thirty days in a detox program in New Mexico if Levine would buy back the Harmony for him, swearing over and over that he would complete the program—for Gage’s sake. He would pull his life together for Gage.
After lunch Dennis decided to take a swim in the icy water, diving down thirteen feet where the Harmony had been berthed, recovering small pieces of metal fittings, an old rotted piece of rope. After about twenty minutes he came in for another turkey sandwich and his friends tried to convince him to stay out of the freezing water. He got the shivers, his teeth were chattering, and he was knocking back the screwdrivers. Swearing there was a treasure chest below, Dennis insisted on diving again, this time returning with a large rectangular object covered with mud that turned out to be a wedding picture of Dennis and Karen Lamm in a sterling silver frame. The glass was shattered, but the water-bleached photo showed the confident young couple, laughing at the world. Then Dennis went down into the dark waters again, and never came up.
Dennis was found forty-five minutes later. A four-man team located his body on the muddy floor of the marina, directly under the spot where his precious Harmony had been berthed. The only surfer in the Beach Boys had drowned.
Since the divorce hadn’t come through, Shawn was still legally Dennis’s widow, and the family had to go along with her wishes that Dennis be buried at sea. It turned out that there was a federal law prohibiting burial at sea, but a personal request was made to President Reagan, and special permission was granted. Dennis’s body was put in a body bag and dropped into the ocean.
“I’ve always had this deep-seated thing in me that I’ve never talked about,” Karen Lamm later told me. “I know he was on one hundred milligrams of Librium a day to get off alcohol, he was in rehab at St. John’s, and within forty-eight hours he was dead. He had a huge gash in his head, and they called it hypothermia, and I’ve talked to several detectives and doctors—the water temperature was fifty-eight degrees, and his body was not even near that, so it wasn’t hypothermia.” Karen says she’s not convinced by any of the explanations of how Dennis died.
“The killer for me was he had just found our wedding frame. He’d pitched it over the boat when he was mad at me. The last words he spoke were about that picture.” Karen’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Dennis had the deepest, most caring heart. He was in a lot of pain because he was so supersensitive. There’s a medical terminology for someone who is so hypersensitive. I can find it out for you.”
Said big brother Brian Wilson in his heartfelt book, Wouldn’t It Be Nice:
I thought of the last time I’d seen him. Where? A concert. He’d stumbled out from behind his drums and wobbled to the microphone. He smiled. That never changed. Then, in a voice ruined by cigarettes and alcohol, he sang, “You Are So Beautiful.” As he sang, tears ran down his face as if he was singing for the last time. After the show, I’d stood backstage and watched Dennis sip from a can of soda. He wasn’t much different from when we were kids, still angry and restless … . I was riveted in the front of the [television] set through the five, six and seven o’clock local broadcasts. They provided me with a glimpse of my middle brother. They showed Dennis lying on the cement, covered by a large body sack. His arm and leg stuck out. I knew the picture was real, but I still hoped, expected, Dennis to get up and yell “Surprise!” He didn’t. He couldn’t. I thought, My God, that’s the last time I’ll ever see Dennis.
FINAL CHAPTER
JIM GORDON
Mother, I Want to …
As one of the finest drummers in rock and roll, Jim Gordon played with John Lennon, George Harrison, the Beach Boys, and Frank Zappa, and was a member of Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes, Traffic, and one of my faves, the Souther, Hillman, Furay Band. Brought up in the San Fernando Valley by hardworking parents who appreciated his musical talent, by the age of twelve Jim had his own drums and a music room to practice in. Jim’s dad coached his Little League team, and even though Jim was a shy teenager, he was voted class president in junior high. But something was wro
ng. As a little boy, Jim felt isolated and alone, turning at first to food for solace, until his weight became a problem, and then to the voices. Inside his head the voices cheered Jim, made him feel worthwhile. But in high school, the voices gradually took a backseat to his music, which had become all-important.
His first band, Frankie and the Jesters, played Hollywood clubs, and when UCLA offered Jim a music scholarship, he turned it down, ready to pursue a career in rock and roll. Spotted by the Everly Brothers’ bass player, Jim landed a gig touring Europe, which led to more gigs, and pretty soon he was an in-demand session drummer, charging double time for his services. In 1964 Jim married a lively go-go dancer, and the couple both worked on the TV show “Shindig,” buying themselves a house near Jim’s parents. Jim continued to do well as a session drummer, briefly forming his own band before joining the bluesy duo Delaney and Bonnie in 1969, which led to a stoned-out stint with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. He had only piddled around with pot, but on the road Jim discovered psychedelics and found he had a huge appetite for all kinds of drugs. Having divorced his wife, Jim took up with singer Rita Coolidge—also on the Cocker tour—but the romance ended when, for no apparent reason, Jim gave Rita a black eye. Called to England by George Harrison, who wanted him to play on All Things Must Pass, Jim was asked to become a part of Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes. Jim’s creativity was at full force when he cowrote “Layla” with Eric, but the group broke up in 1972. “The producers wouldn’t pay me for ‘Layla,’” Jim told Rolling Stone, “because they said I would be dead in six months anyway.” Despite the warning, Jim went from heavy cocaine use to shooting heroin, continuing to play drums behind the greats.
After working on John Lennon’s Imagine album, Jim recorded and toured with Traffic, and back in L.A., he was more in demand than ever. He bought a house, a new Mercedes, and got married again. His reputation was solid, and Jim thought he was happy. The voices had all but faded, kept at bay by his addiction to speedballs (cocaine mixed with heroin). But out of the black they started coming back. Jim’s pleasant, outgoing manner was replaced by a brewing paranoia. Even as a new member of Souther, Hillman, Furay, he hid out in hotels, worried about younger drummers stealing his place. Arriving home from the market one afternoon, his wife, Renée, was confronted by a wild-eyed Jim who pointed at the floor, saying “the magic triangle.” He then accused her of bringing evil spirits into the house before knocking her down and cracking her ribs. After six months of marriage, Renée left him, but Jim’s voices—an entire family of them, including his mother—were there to keep him company.
“The voices started out friendly,” Jim told Rolling Stone. “They were giving me little pointers. How to take care of myself and the house. How to shop. I was glad for the help … . They said I had some kind of responsibility to God and country. I was king of the universe, they said. I had to make sacrifices, and I had to do what they said. That’s when my mother started making me eat half my food.” Jim may have eaten only half the food on his plate, but his alcohol consumption quadrupled. He still managed to play drums. Barely. When Jim accused session guitarist Dean Parks of “moving his hands,” word got out that Jim Gordon had become a liability. One after another, women came and went, frightened by Jim’s uncontrollable violent streak, and the voices, especially the voice of his mother, tormented him night and day, demanding the impossible.
In the real world, Jim’s mother was very concerned, insisting that Jim seek help. He checked into a psychiatric hospital for the first of fourteen times, but the voices continued and he attempted suicide. Ironically, his mother saved his life. Encouraged by an offer from Jackson Browne to tour, Jim made an attempt to bring his life into some kind of order, but was thwarted by the imagined voice of his mother. Dylan asked him to go on the road, but Mother said no. In the middle of a Vegas gig with Paul Anka, Mother made Jim go back to L.A., where he checked back into the hospital and threatened to kill a nurse. By 1980 Jim had given up his music and started moving from place to place, uncomfortable wherever he went. His mother’s voice had become the voice of evil, and his mother had become that voice. He believed she had killed Karen Carpenter and wanted him to die, too. In October 1982 Jim checked himself into the hospital again, claiming that he was “dying of hate.” On June 1, 1983, Jim called his mother, telling her that she was “bugging” him again, threatening to kill her. When Mrs. Gordon called the police, they told her to leave her lights on. She tried to get a restraining order against her son, but got no help and finally had to give up.
The voices told Jim how to silence his mother’s voice. He was to hit her with the hammer first, so that she wouldn’t suffer when he began stabbing. When Mrs. Gordon opened the door to her son at eleven-thirty the night of June 3, that’s exactly what he did, leaving the knife in the seventy-two-year-old woman’s chest before heading to a bar and getting beyond blitzed. When the police arrived at his door to tell Jim of his mother’s death, he calmly confessed. In the police car Jim sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but she’s tortured me for years.” Later he said, “I had no interest in killing her, I wanted to stay away from her. I had no choice. It was so matter-of-fact, like I was being guided like a zombie. She wanted me to kill her, and good riddance to her.”
James Beck Gordon was found guilty of second-degree murder and given sixteen years to life, even though five psychiatrists testified that he was an acute paranoid schizophrenic. Even after Mother was gone, the voices didn’t stop. In his head Jim was forced to obey his attorney and his brother, who wouldn’t let him eat desserts. Jim has served fourteen years and, despite being heavily medicated, has a dim hope of release. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Jim wasn’t able to admit to the crime, believing that it just “happened.” But he no longer hears the voices. “My mother, she persecuted me a great deal, I felt. And it finally got so bad that I just gave up and got a condominium and just stayed indoors. I didn’t ever go anyplace. That’s when I started hearing voices and having delusional thoughts and hallucinations, and all of a sudden the crime occurred.”
I wrote to Jim in jail, sending him my first book, and received a letter many months later, which began: “You may not remember who I am. I am Jim Gordon the drummer from Hollywood and Sherman Oaks.” In closing he told me that he was still playing drums, “and keeping my music up … .”
KURT STRUEBING
On April 7, 1986, a Seattle 911 operator received a call regarding a “problem.” When asked the nature of the problem, the caller referred to it as a “God job.” Asked what a “God job” was, the caller replied “insanity,” adding that he had just killed his mother with a pair of scissors and a hatchet. When the police arrived on the scene, they discovered a young nude male standing in the parking lot. Kurt Struebing, age twenty, approached the officer, saying, “I killed my mother and then I killed myself.” The officer then went inside the house and made a report: “I took a preliminary walk through the apartment, a white victim approximately fifty years is naked on her back in the master bedroom … partially clothed with her nightclothes pulled up above her hips … . The victim’s head has numerous hatchet-type wounds. There are numerous stab wounds to the left breast and neck as well as defense type wounds to both arms. There is a bloodied hatchet and a pair of scissors on a wall chest of drawers … . The walls are bloodspattered.” A search warrant revealed various books on “the occult and Satan,” as well as photos of Kurt in “staged death scenes.”
N.M.E. (spelled with swastikas instead of periods) were/are a doomy death-metal band from Federal Way, Washington, and guitarist Kurt Struebing was/is the driving force. Their first album, Unholy Death, came out on a small label, Pentagram Records. In a 1985 blurb in Subway magazine, N.M.E. placed an ad that read:
N.M.E. are of Hell—or is it more? We, young as we may be, have taken a responsibility … have declared war on the world, be it a peaceful or violent war. I, Kurt have taken the responsibility of New Messiah Emerging. Spewing fo
rth from the New Metal Energy capitol [sic] of Seattle, we N.M.E. are very intent on getting our message across … . If doubt is evil, then evil we are. Take this only as serious as it is meant, but don’t bet against us … . respectively, N.M.E.—Kurt Struebing—The New Messiah.
In the police car, Kurt said that his mother, Darlene Struebing, was a data processor for Pacific Northwest Bell, and when asked to describe events leading to the murder, Kurt replied, “It’s been a long night, I just got off from reality, can I still be an artist?” The police wondered why Kurt felt his mother had to die and he answered, “I just got caught up in everything, I couldn’t cry. I learned too late that I could be whatever I want to be.”
According to Kurt’s friends, although he didn’t get along with his father, his relationship with his mother was one of mutual respect and support. (His parents were divorced.) They also said that Kurt was not a heavy drug user but had gotten “weird” right before committing the heinous crime, cutting off his waist-length hair and admitting to one friend that he had recently realized he was gay. The day before the murder Kurt had been practicing with N.M.E. and acting strangely, saying that he was reading people’s minds and felt “psychotic.” The band rented a rug shampooer to clean the rugs, and unbeknownst to the rest of N.M.E., Kurt drank an entire bottle of rug shampoo, later telling police he had wanted to “clean himself out.” He became violently ill and stripped naked before heading back home.
“Kurt says that during this confusing time he was thinking that all people were robots,” his psychiatric evaluation reveals. “He had paranoid thoughts such as that people were stealing things from him. He was unable to sleep and very hyperactive. He felt his friends were going to kill him when they took him home. He grabbed a baseball bat … and hit one of his friends in the chin. He indicated that his mind was ‘racing’ … . He kept having recurring thoughts that he was really an alien cleaning up after humans. He felt that he was a robot placed here in order to build up the planet for some other force. He remembers killing his mother with the ax and scissors, but denies any sexual activity of any kind. However, at Western State Hospital he did tell one orderly attendant that something sexual had gone on. Apparently he felt that if he killed himself and his mother, he would be killing robots who would be replaced by the other force … . This was an experiment for him to determine whether or not they were actually robots.”
Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Page 41