Ciro’s nightclub at 8433 Sunset Boulevard had been through several incarnations since first opening its doors in 1940. In the ’40s and ’50s it was the fashionable hangout for Hollywood celebrities like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and Judy Garland. By the mid-’60s it was Ciro’s LeDisc, hosting some of the hippest groups of the day, including the Byrds and the Leaves. In fast pursuit of the changing trends, in July 1965 it rebranded as It’s Boss, its walls redecorated with oversized pop art images in the style of Roy Lichtenstein. Then, in the summer of 1967 it underwent another remake/remodel as a futuristic psychedelic hotspot complete with liquid lightshow conjured by eight slide projectors. It’s Boss was reborn as Spectrum 2000.
The Penny Arkade were booked to play the grand opening on August 17th on a bill headlined, somewhat incongruously, by a Latin-flavored lounge music combo called the Unbelievables. To mark the occasion, Phyllis Nesmith arranged for the band to be picked up in a limousine so they could arrive at the club like the pop stars they were surely about to become. Spectrum 2000 was packed to the gills that night with an estimated 1,500 people crammed into a room with a listed capacity of 500. Afterwards Phyllis took the band out to celebrate at an expensive Hollywood restaurant.
As it turned out, the celebration was premature. The next day a review appeared in the Los Angeles Times, criticizing the club (“nothing more than a Whisky-A-Go-Go East with lesser known acts”), the décor (“cribbed from the Trip, the Cheetah, and the San Francisco hippie ballrooms”), the lightshow (“routine by the standards set by most local lightshow places”), and, most pointedly, the Penny Arkade: “…a quartet that might be good with several months of practice. Their voices, both in solos and in harmonizing, have an annoyingly sharp edge, and their playing is merely routine.”
Don Glut ready for the Penny Arkade’s appearance at the opening of the Spectrum 2000 club on August 17, 1967. (Photo courtesy Don Glut)
Bobby Donaho remembers them taking the review hard. “We got shot down at the Spectrum 2000. We got a bad review, man, and the heart went out of the whole thing.”
Live performances clearly weren’t the group’s forte, so songwriting and recording remained their main focus for the time being. “We played at the Cheetah at Santa Monica once or twice,” recalls Glut, “but most of our time was spent recording. I think we played at the Galaxy, we played at Gazzarri’s, and we played the Magic Mushroom in Studio City”—at the same Ventura Boulevard location that had once been Larry Potter’s Supper Club”—“But we really didn’t want to work our way up through playing all the nightclubs. We were so close: we had Mike’s money behind us, Mike’s ‘star power’ and all this, and we really were very close, through that whole period, to making it big.”
Because of their association with the Monkees, the group also began to get coverage in some of the teen magazines of the day like 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat. In the autumn of ’67, for example, a 16 Magazine Monkees Special ran a piece called “A Day in the Life of Mike Nesmith,” which included the following excerpt: “A leisurely evening with the Nesmiths will probably find you dining at a very fine French restaurant in Beverly Hills. After a delicious dinner, Phyllis and Mike will take you to see the Penny Arkade, a new group Mike is sponsoring—the leaders of which are two adorable boys named Chris and Craig. Tonight, the Penny Arkade is appearing at the Spectrum, one of the Sunset Strip’s liveliest clubs. While you’re sitting there, the ‘Monkee crowd’—consisting of Davy Jones, David Pearl, Micky Dolenz, Henry Diltz and Peter Tork—comes pouring in. And the last thing you remember about a day in the life of Mike Nesmith is this fabulous high point of music, talk and friendship. The Monkee brigade has turned out to be just like you always thought they would be—a regular fun-loving gang of groovy guys.”
Ann Moses was the Feature Editor of Tiger Beat from July 1966 until January 1968, when she became the Editor-in-Chief. Ann first introduced the Penny Arcade [sic] to Tiger Beat readers in the October 1967 issue in her “Meow” column, mentioning that Nesmith was producing them. The accompanying photo was of Chris and Craig only. “We only presented the Penny Arkade in Tiger Beat because of the connection with Mike Nesmith,” she told me in October 2013. “But once I met Craig, we just hit it off as two young people around the same age.”
In her December ’67 column, she was pictured with Craig at the Santa Monica Pier after visiting a photo booth together. “I can’t remember the circumstances of my afternoon with Craig at the Santa Monica Pier,” she says, “but the Pier is also a small amusement park. I think the two of us went down there to shoot some photos of Craig [and the band] at the—you guessed it—penny arcade, plus the famous carousel.” A shot of the band on the carousel eventually appeared in the March 1968 issue. “I did love the shot of Craig with me holding our photos from a 25-cent photo booth that was also a pier attraction. He had been wearing a straw hat during the photo shoot, but I was the one wearing the hat in the photo-booth pictures. That picture really captures the Craig I got to know—fun, great sense of humor, playful and carefree.”
Ann and Craig also went out on a date of sorts. “I guess it wasn’t really a date as such,” remembers Ann. “I just know that he called me up—both of these events were in the summer of 1967—and asked me ‘out’ for the evening. I honestly don’t remember if we got something to eat or what. What I clearly remember is talking and laughing for a while at his place in the San Fernando Valley—I think it may have been his parents’ house—and then going for a long ride over Mulholland Drive through the Santa Monica Mountains on his motorcycle. No helmets, he just told me to hang on to his waist and then he proceeded to drive fast, taking terrifying turns on the curving highway. It was dark and I vowed I would never get on another motorcycle the rest of my life. I didn’t let him know how afraid I was, but I thanked God when we ended our ride safely. To him it was just a blast flying through the summer night air. More of his carefree and love-of-life demeanor. I had probably driven over to his house, as our ride was round-trip back to his house, and I imagine I drove home to Hollywood in my Pontiac Le Mans—safe with all that metal wrapped around me! That was the last time I saw Craig.”
Because of their Monkees connections, the Penny Arkade landed another media showcase event in December, when they performed at the Screen Gems Christmas Party. “Sally Field was sitting at our table,” remembers Don. “She was the Flying Nun back then. We played a lot of those kinds of things rather than nightclubs.”
In early 1968 the group auditioned for an appearance on Peyton Place, the popular ABC-TV soap drama. “They needed a house band whose members were gonna be characters on the show,” remembers Don. “We went down to the Columbia/Screen Gems lot dressed in our blue suits. We were on a sound stage and we did a few of our better songs, and they loved us. Cocky us, we pretty much thought we’d won the gig, also taking into account Mike Nesmith’s association with Columbia/Screen Gems. I don’t think there had been any other bands trying out. Then what happened at the very last minute, someone who was like the brother-in-law of one of the people involved with the show threw a band together overnight and they got the job. Apparently they wanted somebody a little bit freakier than we were. Even though we had long hair and everything, we looked more presentable; we had these blue suits Mike bought us—I still have mine hanging in the closet, it might even still fit—so we looked more like the earlier Beatles than the Rolling Stones.”
In the end the producers put together a band called the Pillory for a recurring role on the show. In an interesting twist, their lineup included Suzannah Jordan, Chris and Craig’s cast mate from The Happeners. The Pillory performed Boyce and Hart’s “Teardrop City” along with a couple of other songs, including Suzannah’s own “Castles of Sand,” on an episode broadcast in June 1968.
Suzannah had continued to see Craig socially after the cancellation of The Happeners. She’d moved to Los Angeles and had even joined the still touring remnants of the Good Time Singers for a short time. “I hung out with Craig a lot,” she remembers. “Craig used to come over on his motorcycle and I’d hop on the back and we’d fly around L.A. We would go see the La Brea Tar Pits and go to the museum over there. I just always loved hanging with him. I didn’t know much about his life. He seemed to have money, didn’t seem to have any problems. We’d just hang out and have fun. We went to a lot of art galleries. We hung out for quite a few years intermittently.”
With Craig now earning some significant money from his songwriting, it appears he was able to help out his family. On February 15th, 1968, a notice in the Van Nuys News revealed that a Business Tax Certificate had been issued to Charles G. and Craig V. Smith for a business located at 17978 Ventura Boulevard in Encino. Evidently Chuck and Craig went into business together on a bar called the Buckeye Inn. What their exact business arrangement was, we don’t know, but Craig later told friends that he’d bought his father a bar.
During this period Craig continued to spend a lot of time with Jason Laskay. “Craig and I used to go out every night and do something,” says Laskay. “We’d go to these different parties and music industry functions. Craig got invited to a lot of that music industry stuff.” Laskay remembers, for example, a publicity party at the Magic Castle in Hollywood for Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, who’d recently hit the charts with “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” One of Craig’s Grant High School classmates, Mike Post, was producing the First Edition, and Craig also knew their manager Ken Kragen, so he was hoping to get the group to record one of his songs.
On February 10th, 1968, Craig and Jason went to see the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Electric Flag at the Shrine Auditorium. Laskay’s old school friend Mike Bloomfield was on the bill, too, with his band Electric Flag, along with Blue Cheer and Soft Machine. “I remember driving down the Hollywood freeway to the auditorium,” says Jason. “We were in Craig’s car, and we might have been with Suzanne Love and her friend Teri. We had smoked some really good grass, and all of a sudden there were two huge semi trucks on either side of us, and that car wouldn’t go any faster. It was a Volkswagen and we had four people in it, and we were all freaking out: ‘Get outta here! Go faster! We’re gonna get crushed!’ It was a typical, stoned-out paranoia thing. It was really funny, man. And that car just would not go any faster, and we couldn’t slow down because there were people behind us and these big semi trucks either side. We thought we were going to get crushed between these two trucks, but we made it—obviously. We saw Hendrix at the Shrine, and Mike Bloomfield was playing, and we went backstage to see Mike and I introduced him to Craig.”
Chris and Craig in Tiger Beat, October 1967.
Laskay and Smith would also hang out at Frank Zappa’s house in Laurel Canyon, an elaborate roadhouse log cabin originally built for Hollywood movie cowboy Tom Mix. “Frank Zappa lived down the street from me on the corner of Lookout Mountain and Laurel Canyon,” recounts Laskay. “We used to go to parties there all the time. They had a bowling alley in their house. They had the coolest house. Houdini’s house was nearby, behind a wall, and they had left it in ruins for years. We would go to Zappa’s house a lot. There always seemed to be a party there and chicks,” he laughs. “That got a little heavy sometimes though. Craig and I would smoke dope once in a while, but there were some big-time druggers around there. We kind of got put off by some of that. Zappa let all those people come around and have those parties, which were just a trip. His house was multi-level craziness.”
There was a similar scene happening at Dennis Wilson’s estate in Pacific Palisades, another log cabin mansion, this one originally owned by Will Rogers. “Dennis had a great house down in the Palisades,” remembers Jason, “a lot of woods, nestled in. There were a lot of strange people around there after a while too.”
Strange people like Charles Manson and his followers, who spent much of the spring and summer of ’68 camped out there, mooching off the Beach Boys drummer’s good will. “Craig and I got to know Manson and all those people,” says Laskay. “They were just around and singing songs the same as anywhere. In those days we’d go to somebody’s house, get stoned, and start jamming and singing songs: ‘Here’s this new song I wrote’ or just playing songs that were out, a Beatles song or something. People would just sing. In those days everybody was just kind of ‘cool’—you know? Your brother, sister—that whole ‘peace-love’ thing was a little overdone. But you’d go to parties at people’s houses and there’s people around, and everybody’s cool because you know the same people so it’s basically friendly.”
The Penny Arkade get a plug in a 16 Magazine Monkees special in late 1967.
After a while though, everything was not ‘cool.’ “Manson and those people had a weird vibe,” admits Jason. “We would be there some nights and it didn’t feel right so we would leave. We’d do that a lot.”
By early ’68, Smith and Laskay were already on more of a spiritual trip—a search for inner harmony that ran counter to the dark, discordant vibes around Dennis’ house. Their shared interest in Eastern philosophy had been inspired in part by the Beatles’ well-publicized association with the Maharishi, and more directly by Mike Love. Love, along with Dennis and Carl Wilson and Al Jardine, had met the Maharishi in Paris in December of 1967, and he soon became a passionate advocate for Transcendental Meditation. In February 1968 he traveled to Rishikesh, India, along with the Beatles, Donovan and Mia Farrow, to take a course in Transcendental Meditation at the Maharishi’s ashram.
Love’s enthusiasm for TM was contagious, and with his encouragement Smith and Laskay began reading up on the subject, along with related strands of Eastern mysticism. The Maharishi opened up a TM Center in the Westwood neighborhood of L.A., near UCLA, and Craig and Jason decided to go there to get initiated. “We were really excited about it,” remembers Laskay. “It was kind of a new thing in life to go on this spiritual path that neither one of us had had before. So we went to Westwood where the sign-up thing was. They were doing initiations for like two days. You signed up and then they’d give you your mantra. So we stood in line and maybe we wore white or something, and we got initiated, and then it was like ‘Oh wow! Do you feel different?’
“I remember walking through Westwood afterward and we had kind of that ‘new’ feeling like ‘Oh yeah, life is gonna change now!’ kind of thing. It was a special day because we had a good feeling about doing that. For a day or two we were being real spiritual, chanting our tone and all that kind of thing, saying our mantras. That was a big deal for us.”
While they hadn’t expected instant enlightenment, the experience gave them a sense of well-being, like they’d taken the first step on an important spiritual journey. For Laskay that journey would continue long into the future. For Craig, though he had no way of knowing yet, the road ahead was to be shorter and more treacherous.