Interim Memo
In several of the Hornbook essays I made passing mention of being out on the road, touring with a then-popular rock group called Three Dog Night. It was not the first, or only, time I’d been thrust into liaison with musicians. Many years ago I made a brief, and precarious, living as a singer; and off’n’on I’ve been a music critic—mostly jazz—for about thirty years.
But during the Sixties and Seventies it chanced that I was called on either to write an article about the rock scene for some magazine, or was solicited to write a movie for some musical entity. (Did you know there’s a rock group named after your humble columnist? They call themselves Harlin; and it may be the source of their name that has denied them stardom.) Auracle, The Rolling Stones, Vikki Carr, Kenny Rogers…yes, all of them crossed my auctorial path.
The weeks I spent with Three Dog Night in 1970, however, were particularly invigorating. I liked the group, I liked the guys who made up the group, and I liked the feeling of imminent damnation that came with running alongside them.
How it came to pass, was not all that extraordinary. What happened during the tour, and what happened after…ah…those were pitted prunes of another variety.
In 1970, the billionaire Huntington Hartford decided to start a magazine called Show. Big, glossy, very chi-chi magazine, filled with writing on the arts and entertainment by the top wordsmiths in the country. The editor was Dick Adler (until its demise last year, with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner). He called one day, and asked me if I wanted to write a piece on science fiction movies. He offered me what was, in 1970, enough lucre to purchase several fair-sized islands in the Comoros chain. I counted to seven, just to let him know I was an independent kind of guy, and to Dick I said yes. That was a 10,000-word article succinctly titled “Lurching Down Memory Lane with It, Them, The Thing, Godzilla, Hal 9000…That Whole Crowd.”
When they ran it, they retitled it “Them or Us.”
Ah, me. Where hath fled the opulence of yore?
Anyhow, the piece made a bit of a splash; Huntington Hartford—hisself a man who liked to play at being an editor—took notice of the scads of letters (well, perhaps only half a scad), and advised Dick Adler to keep me working for them. Almost before “Them or Us” (yechhh) appeared in print, I was put onto a piece about Sal Mineo. That was March, 1970; six years before Sal was murdered. We became good friends, and I began writing an extended essay-interview based on about twenty hours of taped conversations we held over a period of many weeks. The tapes are here, the article remains one-third written…maybe some day I’ll finish it. Not that it’ll do Sal any good now.
But Sal got a gig in Italy on some potboiler that never got made, and because I couldn’t go further with it till he got back, I called Adler and asked him if there was something quick and now that I could do to fill the dead time.
He told me they were interested in Three Dog Night—very hot at the time—because Mr. Hartford had attended one of their concerts and was impressed. Was I interested in doing a rock-oriented piece? Was I knowledgeable about the rock scene? Did I have something already in print that might establish a credential in that area?
I sent him a copy of my 1961 rock novel, SPIDER KISS.
The one Elvis’s people had had under option for a while.
Dick called a few days later and said, “It’s a go.” And arrangements were made to send me out on the road, Texas and Louisiana, with the group. I’ve written some about that trip, in one of the GLASS TEAT books.
But I didn’t write about what happened in Lubbock, Texas.
That’s a helluva story. How I leveled Lubbock with a tornado. Maybe some time I’ll tell you that one.
Anyhow, I got back in one piece, sat down and wrote the article at 4200 words, and sent it off to Dick. Unfortunately, Dick was out of there. Show was a bit of a nuthouse operation, and Adler washed his hands of it, and split. Hartford brought in a couple of editorial bagmen from Back East, and decided he could edit as well as anyone, himself. And I waited and waited, but no check arrived; and I called and called, but “Mr. Hartford is in conference.” Finally, a month or two later, the bag-men got around to sending back the article with the advisement that they were no longer interested in doing a piece on anything as tacky as rock’n’roll. “Fine, jes fine,” I told them, “but you commissioned me to write this thing, I spent many bucks traveling with them, and you are into my pocket for about three grand; hey, so pony up.”.
They told me, in effete bag-man parlance, to go take a flyin’ leap at a rolling doughnut. I said to them, grasping at the last vestige of rational behavior, “I have a letter of commission, stating terms of this assignment. You owe me this money.” They chuckled and hung up on me, with the parting shot, “Tough titty…sue us!”
Well. I’ve heard that line before. And I’ve sued. And I’ve always won. But there are other situations in which suing them into oblivion would be letting them off too easily. There are other ways of adjusting the balance of justice in the universe. (In such matters, I take as my role-model Dr. Doom. Today Latveria, tomorrow…)
On Vine Street, midway between Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, in 1970, flourished The Huntington Hartford Theatre. A nice little legitimate theater where elegant stage productions were mounted, for the predilection of the public, the amusement of the glitterati, and to the greater wealth and grandeur of Huntington Hartford. Every evening (save when dark) limos would sweep up to the curb, and emergent from same would be all those personalities whose exotic lives were chronicled in TV Guide and People…and Show.
My picket sign read something like:
HUNTINGTON HARTFORD IS A CHEAPO WHO STIFFS HIS WRITERS!
About a week of that, strolling up and down, perfectly within my Constitutional “rights of peaceable assembly and petition,” not to mention exercise of my rights under the First Amendment, and the word got back to Mr. Huntington Hartford, the great editor, philanthropist, doer of good works, endower of museums (and maybe even attendee of stage productions at the elegant Huntington Hartford Theatre). Sue you? Hell, no, I’d rather embarrass you. Tough titty, indeed, Mr. Huntington Hartford, employer of snotty bag-men.
The check was hand-delivered by a messenger to my home.
Thereby keeping my record for getting stiffed (see Hornbook Installment 5) at Artists 2, Lions 0.
So now, with the exception of what happened in Lubbock, you know it all; and for the first time ever, that essay on Three Dog Night reaches print.