Finally I said, “Hell, yeah—let’s do it. You got any songs?”
Over the next couple of months, Neil and I put together an impressive assortment of musicians, from Dr. John to Bob James, and we had a blast making the record, which was called Beautiful Noise. The theme centered around New York City and a young man learning the hard way about the trials and tribulations of making it in the music business during the midsixties. Neil and I wrote one song together called “Dry Your Eyes” about how many people felt after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As a whole, the songs on the album had a cinematic quality, and I could even imagine it as a Broadway musical.
Neil had a tour of Australia booked in the middle of making the record, which allowed me time to experiment with production ideas and to play a little guitar on it. When Neil returned, he took delivery of a new BMW motorcycle with all the trimmings. Soon after, he showed up at the studio all battered and taped up. He’d taken his new bike up into the Malibu Hills for a spin and two Doberman dogs had charged and chased him, gnawing at his boots and his pant legs; then, as he returned to the Colony, the guard accidentally put the gate down on him, landing it on his face and cutting his nose open. He joked to me about his bandaged face, saying, “It’s only my livelihood.” I told him to stick to his singing—joining the Hells Angels wasn’t his calling.
When the album came out, Neil put my producing credit on the front cover as part of the artwork, something I had never seen before. I told him that it really wasn’t necessary, but he insisted. Neil was so dedicated to his art while making this record and so devoted to his songwriting craft that I ended up profoundly impressed by the whole experience. The record was tremendously well received, which Neil truly deserved. I was grateful to have had another terrific musical experience while pulling off something that most people thought went totally against the grain.
Life inside the Malibu Colony was a scene unto itself. There was the movie director Hal Ashby, Paul Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Burgess Meredith, Larry Hagman, Ronnie Wood, and my old friend Charles Lloyd; but there were also folks who just liked living there. Directly across from our house two attractive girls lived in a funky bungalow on an overgrown lot. I don’t know what they did for a living, but Dennis Hopper visited them on occasion. Whenever I ran into him, he looked happy to be there and a bit stoned, with a mischievous smirk on his face like Dennis the Menace on a motorcycle.
A few houses down from us on the ocean side lived a friend of Dominique’s named Barbara Linson. She was into healthy foods, supplements, and seeds and would sometimes take Dominique up to Ojai to meet with certain spiritual leaders. Barbara’s husband, Art, drove a Rolls-Royce. Through our wives, Art and I ended up spending time together, and I found out that he was a lawyer who had turned his back on the profession and gone to work for the music entrepreneur Lou Adler. He was now producing movies, which may or may not have explained the Rolls-Royce. Hey, we were in the Malibu Colony—where excess was the order of the day. Hell, I had just purchased a Mercedes-Benz 600 Ambassador model with curtains in the back window. Who was I to talk?
Art turned out to have a sharp sense of humor, and we both liked a lot of the same things, drugs and all. One day I was over at his house and he was listening to the Bob Seger song “Night Moves.” “There’s something about this guy I really like,” he said. “Obviously his voice is really good, but take a look at the picture on the album of this fellow. He looks like a werewolf, and he’s singing about his sexual maneuvers. It’s kind of hilarious and great!”
Up at the clubhouse, Larry Samuels was a doing a fine job running Shangri-La and helping with the Band’s business affairs. The only major problem was his vicious temper. On occasion I would hear him screaming on the phone in an ugly manner that I wasn’t comfortable with from someone representing the Band. He promised me he would cool it.
Larry made the studio available for some of our friends. Eric Clapton booked time to cut his new album. He and Richard had a special bond, and they did some writing and recording together. They were also grand drinking buddies, both speaking the same language during this period. Rick got in on the action too, working on some songs with them called “Beautiful Thing” and “All Our Past Times.” Crazy as things were then, they did some pretty damn good work.
Bob would stop by Shangri-La on occasion, and Eric asked if he had any songs kickin’ around that he could cut. Bob laid a funny tune on Eric called “Sign Language.” They recorded the song, and then Eric asked me to play on it at the Village Recorder. I set up out in the studio with Eric; my old friend from Oklahoma, Jesse “Indian Ed” Davis; and the engineers in the control room. They played the track for me and I did a take on the guitar. When I looked up, Eric and Jesse were in stitches. What the hell’s so funny? I wondered. Then I realized it was the deep dive-bomb whammy-bar maneuvers I was playing. I tried another take, and they fell apart laughing again. I went into the control room, where they were both getting their drink on, and they were really enjoying my guitar acrobatics. “Nobody plays like that,” they said. “Incredible! You play guitar like it’s an East Indian tabla drum.” It was a beautiful compliment coming from Eric Clapton and Jesse Ed Davis.
One of Dominique’s heroes, the American author Henry Miller, lived in the Pacific Palisades and had recruited her to help with a book he was writing in French. Henry spoke French after living in France for many years, but it’s one thing to speak the language and another to write it. Dominique asked me to accompany her to weekly Thursday-night dinners at Henry’s. It was usually just him, us, and his assistant, the lovely Twinka, a model who had recently become known for posing nude in a Judy Dater photograph that appeared in Life magazine. Henry said he had a thing for women with one name. Every Thursday he told breathtaking stories about how he had struggled to get his books published, about his affairs with Anaïs Nin and so many other lovers. His friend D. H. Lawrence had delved into the sexual revolution, but Henry threw down the gauntlet.
Henry was now in his eighties and came to the dining-room table in his pajamas and dressing gown. His age was mild in comparison to his experiences. With every meeting I understood and appreciated him more. Dominique worked diligently on the book, making his written French sound more sophisticated, as he’d requested. As time went on, I could see Henry was becoming infatuated with her, but somehow, from a man in his eighties, this was excusable to me. His character and his stories held me in a spell.
As Dominique was finishing work on the book, the publishers decided they preferred Henry’s broken French with its innocence and charm. I think she felt a sense of rejection, and she stopped going to the Thursday dinners, but I continued for a while. Henry and I would watch wrestling matches on TV together. When I’d declare that professional wrestling was a circus act and it was fixed, Henry would get very upset. He didn’t want to admit that it was a sham. He preferred this world of make-believe and the bad guy sometimes winning.
One night at Henry’s, it was just the two of us, with Twinka serving the food. He asked if I knew any Asian women. I thought for a moment and said, “I know these girls at one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in Santa Monica.”
He grinned out of one side of his mouth. “Can you invite them over here sometime?”
One of the girls had heard of Henry and said he was quite famous in Japan. I convinced them to stop by his place and say hello. I went over before they arrived and found Henry pacing back and forth with his walking cane in front of the living-room window in anticipation. The girls brought wonderful Japanese food and served Henry like a king. When they sat down, Henry asked them intimate sexual questions that he could somehow get away with. They answered honestly and in a surprisingly straightforward manner. I saw pure joy in his face as he studied the girls’ every move.
Around ten, Henry said, “Well, I’ve got to go rest now.” He smiled. “My beauty rest.” I helped him upstairs, and on the way he called back down, “If you young ladies insist, you can join me up here.”
We heard giggling coming from the girls.
“I think they like me, don’tcha know?” Henry said.
“Sure,” I said. “But I don’t think you could handle both of them.”
He let out a coughing laugh. “Oh, don’t bet on it.” He lay down, closed his eyes, and drifted off with a slight smile on his face.
—
Back at the ranch—literally, since Shangri-La was still a ranch, in appearance, anyway—Larry Samuels was bringing on some new help. The most unusual hand we brought into the fold during this period was Rock Brynner, who became our road manager. He had quite an unusual background. Rock was the son of actor Yul Brynner and actress Virginia Gilmore and had grown up around the Hollywood set with the likes of Liza Minnelli. Then, later, he lived in London before coming to the conclusion that he was a full-blown alcoholic. He stopped drinking, pulled himself together, and subsequently worked as Muhammad Ali’s bodyguard.
Rock was an intellectual and what some might consider mild-mannered, not your typical bodyguard type. I enjoyed having him around, because he was incredibly entertaining as well as helpful. Sometimes when he talked to his father on the phone he would put me on for a minute. Yul would ask me in a kind but concerned tone if Rock was doing a good job, maybe because of Rock’s dark past. I didn’t bother to mention that even though Rock was quite a character, he was still one of the sanest people in our crazy world.
As the days of wine and roses unfolded around us, cocaine became as common as candles. No matter where you turned, somebody was offering better-quality stuff than the next guy. Quaaludes were also all the rage. Doctors prescribed them and Percodan like they were health supplements. One doctor in Malibu would talk you into having an assortment of these meds on hand “just in case.” No cautionary advice, only the occasional “Don’t get carried away, now.” All of this carrying on felt weird around our children, but it was a part of the culture that surrounded us. Sebastian was now going on two years of age, and Dominique no longer treated him like a baby. Our girls, with their friends in the Colony, had a routine of their own going. And with Jacques and Rosemary to help, everything seemed reasonably well covered.
For some people, pot made drinking unnecessary. For others, cocaine made alcohol more desirable to “take the edge off.” I didn’t drink much regardless, but as time went on, Dominique was finding more comfort from vodka. I flashed back to when we lived in Woodstock and she and our nanny, Nicole, had come home tipsy after drinking a vodka cocktail at the Bear restaurant. She’d thought it was such fun, and relaxing. Now it was progressing to a place of concern. But it’s hard to be judgmental about anybody when you’re no angel yourself, so you live and let live without recognizing danger up ahead.
—
In ’76, the Band was booked for a summer tour. One of the dates at the end of June was just up the way at the Santa Barbara County Bowl. It was an afternoon show and a little unusual to be playing in broad daylight. The day turned out to be an extreme scorcher—over one hundred degrees on the stage. Our roadies had to set up fans to keep the amplifiers from overheating, so you can imagine how we felt. After the first song I looked over at the guys, and we were all soaked with sweat. Well, maybe not Garth. He always claimed that he didn’t perspire—ever. I’m not sure how, but we played really well while being cooked. Sometimes extreme circumstances will do that to you. After the show, Dolly Parton came backstage to let us know she really enjoyed the concert. We looked like a bunch of drowned rats smoking cigarettes, so she didn’t stay too long.
On this tour we struggled from job to job with Richard’s drinking. Half the nights he didn’t know if he could sing. By then he was no longer with his wife, Jane, and had taken up with an old girlfriend of Levon’s, Cathy Smith, from Toronto. Cathy tried helping Richard keep it together, but she had her own battles with drugs, so this was a relationship with definite pitfalls.
Toward the end of the summer we were booked to play a festival at Steiner Ranch near Austin, Texas. The roads were blocked, and the only way in and out of the festival grounds for the acts was by boat. They had speedboats ripping up and down the river, carrying performers to and fro. The boat bringing us in was flying over the water when Richard decided he wanted to move up to the front. But as he stood up, we hit a wave and the boat pounded down hard and threw Richard backward, snapping his neck badly.
We found a doctor, who told us that Richard had fractured his neck. He could barely move without excruciating pain. We had several more dates booked on our tour and had no idea what we were going to do. Then Rock Brynner came up with a very strange suggestion. He said that when his father was on the road doing the musical The King and I, he had developed a serious health issue, and was treated by some Tibetan monks led by Norbu Chen, headquartered not far away in Arlington, Texas. As the story went, Norbu and his associates attended to astronauts who came back from outer space with mental issues. I wasn’t exactly clear on how Norbu and his people helped the astronauts get grounded again, but Rock made what they had done for his father sound quite miraculous. It seemed like a long shot, but we were lost, and Richard was in extreme pain.
Rock made a call, and a few hours later Norbu and another monk showed up at the door of our hotel suite. I was expecting men in robes with shaved heads but these guys looked more like FBI agents. Dressed in dark suits with big, clunky shoes, they were direct, almost rude—as if they were on some kind of mission.
Richard was laid out on a flat table in the bedroom, squirming in discomfort. Norbu and his partner approached him on either side of the table. When we asked what they were going to do, they shooed us away like you would an annoying horsefly and closed the door to the bedroom.
“This is very odd,” I said to Rock. “I’m concerned.”
“It was the same thing with Yul,” he replied.
I listened at the bedroom door. First I heard a quiet chanting, then two voices holding certain frequencies, with the tones rubbing against each other.
“This is some weird shit right here,” said Rick.
After about an hour, Norbu opened the door. Both monks looked flushed as they rolled down their sleeves and put their jackets back on. Their facial expressions had completely changed from when they’d arrived—now they seemed pleasant and content, calm and respectful. Norbu explained that Richard should be okay to finish the tour, but because he was healing he should be careful not to cause any unnecessary stress to his neck area. In disbelief, I went to Richard, who looked somewhat reinvigorated. “What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay? They say you’re going to be able to…How do you feel?”
Richard sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “My neck feels okay,” he said, “but I think my eardrums nearly exploded.”
“What did they do?” I asked.
“First they both put their hands over me and moved them to different areas of my body. They hummed different notes like they were searching for a sound. Gradually, the humming got louder and louder until I could hardly take it anymore. My eyes started to water, so I closed them to help shield me from the sonic bombardment. Didn’t you hear it out there? It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, by far. Finally it got quieter and softer and softer until they stopped. They took my head in their hands and moved it around and around and it didn’t hurt. I told them they nearly burst my eardrums.”
Norbu smiled. “That was just a tonal vibration. Very strong, but in no way harmful to your hearing.”
I helped Richard to his feet carefully, and by the time we made it out to the living room, Norbu and his partner had left. Larry said he gave them a check for their institute and they went on their way. As the guys and I tried to digest what had just happened, we settled for thinking, If Richard’s going to get better, we’ll take it.
—
The next few days were tough. At a show in Mississippi I kept a keen eye on Richard. He wore a neck brace during the day but removed it when we played. At this point, I wasn’t even that worried about his in
jury; it was the drugs and alcohol that were way out in front, and not just with Richard. We were all skating on thin ice in one way or another.
Even before Richard’s accident I had started to contemplate the idea that we might need to get off the road before something really bad happened. One night I spoke to the guys about the possibility of bringing this phase of our journey to a conclusion, that we needed to look out for one another and get out of the line of fire for a while. At every concert we played, packs of destructive influences showed up like they were in the business of helping you drown. It made me paranoid.
Our rock ’n’ roll lifestyle was passing the point of no return. The examples of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison—and more recently Gram Parsons, Nick Drake, and Tim Buckley—brought home the dangers of the road. We’d heard this story about so many musicians, it was almost part of the ritual. All around us, bands we knew were imploding, trying to live what they thought was the rock ’n’ roll high life. We saw them falling by the side of the road, but through a one-way mirror. We saw everything but ourselves.
Somewhere in the middle of this storm, even with my own shortcomings, I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder, reminding me to tread lightly and try to protect my brothers. I kept harping to Levon, to Richard and Rick, about finding some kind of sanctuary where we could stop riding so close to the edge.
At times we lamented, and other times we rejoiced. But somewhere along the way we had lost our unity and our passion to reach higher. Self-destructiveness had become the power that ruled us. How does that happen? Where did that demon come from? Were we too blind to see?
Testimony Page 50