David McGowan - Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippy Dream

FOREWORD
by Nick Bryant

O SCAR W ILDE SAID OF ART , T HOSE WHO GO BENEATH THE SURFACE DO SO at their peril. And author David McGowan has found that Wildes quote is quite prophetic for the rocknroll scene that thrived in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and 1970s. Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is McGowan taking a hammer to the icons and mythologies of 1960s counterculture, reducing them to dust, swept away by gusts of pomp, pretense, and even deceit. McGowan though isnt wielding his hammer with the zeal of an establishment conformist or neocon, but rather in the same forlorn spirit as Nietzsche declaring that God is dead. As a homegrown product of Los Angeles with an encyclopedic knowledge of the southern California rock scene, McGowan appears to be essentially declaring that the gods of his youth are dead.

Laurel Canyon was the fountainhead for the peace, love, and brown rice vibes that overflowed Americas airwaves as the Vietnam War raged, but lurking beneath its tie-dyed and florid veneer was an exquisite darkness of drugs, unbridled debauchery, full-tilt depravity, and shocking carnage. When readers of this book are delivered to Laurel Canyons blood-drenched tapestry of murder and mayhem, they will have to decide whether or not those sinister synchronicities are uncanny coincidences, conspiraciesor perhaps a kaleidoscopic blending of both.

Sprinkled throughout these pages is the ominous specter of the military/intelligence complex, and perched quite literally atop Laurel Canyon was the top-secret Lookout Mountain Laboratory, which seems to be McGowans grand metaphor for Dr. Strangelove having a birds-eye view of the nascent hippie movement, treating it as though it were a petri dish brimming with a lethal biological weapon that could be unleashed in meticulously monitored increments. Indeed, many of Laurel Canyons rock n roll idols had former incarnations steeped in the world of military/intelligence operations. Jim Morrison, aka the Lizard King, was one such example. Mr. Mojo Risin didnt much like to talk about his parents and was even known to tell reporters that his parents were dead. But as it turns out, Lizard King, Sr. was not only alive and well, he just happened to be the commander of the US warships that allegedly came under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking Americas napalm-fueled bloodbath in Vietnam.

Frank Zappa, another major mover and shaker of the Laurel Canyon scene, was certainly the raddest of the rad, so surely he couldnt have had any connections to the military/intelligence complex right? Not exactly. According to various accounts collected by McGowan, Zappa was a pro-military autocrat who didnt really resonate with the countercultures peace and love vibe. Like the Lizard Kings dad, Zappa, Sr. was a cog in the intelligence communitys dark machinations; Francis Zappa was a chemical warfare specialist with a top security clearance at Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore, Maryland. Some readers might recognize Edgewood as the location of ominous mind control experiments conducted by the CIA under the rubric of MK-ULTRA.

Guilt by familial association has the potential to be an ill-fated formula for speculation, but McGowan relates accounts of Laurel Canyon luminaries whose own hands were possibly awash in the blood of the military/intelligence complex. Consider, for example, Papa John Phillips, who penned the smash hit San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), imploring thousands of runaways to make bacchanallaced pilgrimages to the City by the Bay. The son of a Marine Corps captain, Phillips was among the more prominent fixtures of Laurel Canyon who had a particularly interesting interrelationship with the military machine.

Rock superstar Stephen Stills was the cofounder of two Laurel Canyon dynamosBuffalo Springfield, and, of course, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Surely then hippie icon Stills couldnt possibly be enmeshed in the military-intelligence complex? Maybe, maybe not. The progeny of yet another military family, Stills spent chunks of his childhood in El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama, where the US has a history of spreading a genocidal form of democracy. And McGowan has sifted through accounts of Stills actually confessing to running around the jungles of Vietnam in the early 1960sanecdotes generally dismissed, as the author notes, as drug-fueled delusions.

Tales of drugs, unbridled debauchery and full-tilt depravity are often populated by ethical eunuchs whose elite deviance yields to particularly malignant appetites, and the people calling Laurel Canyon home were no exception. McGowan introduces us to aging beatnik Vito Paulekas and his Freaks, a dance troupe of Dionysian goddesses who accompanied Vito to the LA nightclubs where the fledgling Laurel Canyon bands were playing their early gigs. In addition to saturating the dance floors with sultry young nubiles for emerging bands, Vito was also a purveyor of teenage girls for the up-and-coming rockers. McGowan also comments on Vitos swift exodus to Haiti, for reasons explained herein.

Vito Paulekas certainly isnt a household name, but he was far from being a fringe player on the Laurel Canyon scene, where he and his Freaks mingled freely with rock n rolls burgeoning royalty. McGowan collects anecdotes suggesting that Vito may have played a key role in the formation and early success of the Byrdsthough his name is conspicuously absent from the autobiographical tome of Byrds co-founder David Crosby. We also find Vito in a string of low-budget films, and in a cameo appearance on one of rocks first concept albums: Zappas Freak Out! Vitos parental skills, however, left a lot to be desired, as evinced by the very mysterious and bizarre death of his young son, Godo.

Further excavating the idolatry of his youth, McGowan encounters Laurel Canyon fixture Billy Bryars, a male madam and gay porn entrepreneur. Bryers was investigated for trafficking child pornography in the 1970s, whereupon his stable of male hustlers began coughing up the names of frequent flyers at his bordello, the most notable among them being super freak G-man J. Edgar Hoover and partner Clyde Tolson.

The 1960s was a revolutionary epoch not only in music but also in Hollywood, and McGowan discusses the symbiosis between the Laurel Canyon music scene and Hollywoods Young Turks, with the box office phenomenon Easy Rider providing a salient nexus between Laurel Canyon rockers and Hollywood upstarts. Many of those upstarts, including Warren Beatty, Peter and Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, Marlon Brando, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, Peter Lawford, Dennis Hopper, Ryan ONeal, Mia Farrow, Peter Sellers, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, were among Papa John and Mama Michelle Phillips circle of friends.

Also making the rounds in Laurel Canyon was Americas favorite psychopath, Charles Manson. And Charlie and his Family werent just a peripheral flock of crazed killers among the Laurel Canyon sovereigns; to the contrary, the Family mingled with many of the Canyons rock stars. Manson even laid down tracks in Brian Wilsons home studio, stunning the likes of Neil Young. He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing, said Neil of Charlie. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a living poet. Charlie also impressed Terry Melcher, the Byrds first producer and a major force in sculpting the Laurel Canyon music scene. Melcher also recorded Manson, finding him to be a much more amicable character than David Crosby.

Mansons homicidal lieutenant Bobby Beausoleil also had some impressive moves as a guitaristand an occultist. Beausoleil played in a number of forgotten bands that had an occult topspin, one of which even opened for Buffalo Springfield. Bobby eventually landed a gig as a rhythm guitarist for the Grass Roots, which later transmuted into the Laurel Canyon band Love.