The Swinging, Singing,
Murderous Sixties
Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me
Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me
Before we get married some pleasure to see.
—Traditional, “Pretty Polly”
WE continued to record tracks for Who Knows Where the Time Goes in June 1968, and the music flowed quickly and easily. I was in love with the sound of Stephen’s guitar and his voice—in love, as they say, with love. After the first day of making music with him it seemed I could not remember a time when I had not known Stephen. He sang and played and drove me around the canyons and beaches of Los Angeles in his Bentley, and I fell deeper into the affair that he would chronicle in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”
Something inside
Is telling me that I’ve got your secret
Are you still listening?
Fear is the lock and laughter the key to your heart
And I love you
The songs for my eighth album for Elektra were exciting, and the band was fabulous. “Story of Isaac” and “Bird on a Wire,” Leonard Cohen’s contributions, were beautifully played by Van Dyke Parks, with Stephen’s guitar wrapping around the piano part; “My Father,” the song I had written for my dad three weeks before his death, was poignant, and I couldn’t get through it at first without sobbing. How could I have found “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” in time for this album, when it was so perfectly honed following the death of my father? There had to be an overseeing angel who takes care of these things. I just had to let go and let the music and the love and the wine flow, and everything took care of itself. I was ready to catch the gems when they fell into my lap, and they kept on coming. By now I was officially eclectic and would try my hand at anything that touched my heart.
And while we made music, we were safe in this magical place. The Elektra compound seemed to have sprung full-blown from what had been a vacant lot only a couple of years before. Now it shone brilliantly between the vintage clothing shops in Beverly Hills along La Cienega Boulevard. Just up the hill was Sunset Boulevard, home to Barney’s Beanery, a bar and pizza joint where the pictures and memorabilia covering the walls seemed to hold the place together. There was a sign that said “Faggots Stay Out.” People were always trying to pull it off the walls, and the offending sign was finally torn down in 1984. A lot of artists and musicians hung out at Barney’s—from Clara Bow, Judy Garland, and Errol Flynn in their day to Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Charles Bukowski in ours.
One week I ran into Tiny Tim in the lobby of the Landmark Hotel. Tiny was famous for his version of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” which had become hugely successful in spite of the fact that it was an odd version of a hackneyed standard sung by a guy with a high, falsetto voice strumming a ukulele. He had become a regular on television variety shows with his long curling hair, his tall, stooped figure, and thin, haunted face. He had recently been married in a bizarre ceremony on The Tonight Show to Miss Vicki. I suggested that since we were both staying there, we should meet at the Landmark pool some afternoon and “hang out.” He looked down at me and declared in his high, haughty tone, “Hang? I never hang!”
Perhaps I could have put it differently, but it was certainly fun to hang out at clubs, like the Ash Grove, where Mississippi John Hurt might be on the bill with John Jacob Niles, the clear-voiced troubadour, or Kris Kristofferson might be performing with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. The Troubadour was another legendary club where many artists and entertainers of the era would launch their careers. Over the years Lenny Bruce, the Byrds, Bill Cosby, the Committee, Bo Diddley, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, Steve Martin, Roger Miller, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Mort Sahl, Kris Kristofferson, and Nina Simone appeared there. You could always find a friend in the audience; many of us showed up regularly to watch, to listen, and to learn from one another. After the shows, we would often wind up eating dinner and drinking at the Italian restaurant next door, where the veal rollatini was mouthwatering and the martinis were the size of birdbaths.
At Lawry’s steakhouse, you might find Big Brother and the Holding Company having a midnight meal after a concert at the Greek, the six-thousand-seat amphitheater in Griffith Park. A few rock-and-rollers might wind up at Hamburger Hamlet, Sambo’s, or maybe the Captain’s Table on La Cienega.
Janis Joplin was in her heyday and by then had added heroin to her diet of Southern Comfort. She made a profound impression on the world, and on me. At the Monterey Pop Festival, where we had first met, I stood backstage as the lights swirled around Janis. Her voice was big and raw, hanging over the festival like the moon. By the end of the night, everyone was courting Janis. Her first big album on Columbia was released late that year, and everything seemed to be finally coming together for her. D. A. Pennebaker made a documentary of the Monterey Pop Festival, and Albert Grossman (now managing practically everyone in the business, I thought, except me) had become Janis’ manager. She was on cloud nine, in more ways than one.
Heroin was cutting a swath through the music community by then, and Jimi Hendrix was using smack openly, as were Tim Buckley and James Taylor. Janis was certainly not going to be left out of the fun, and by the time of our second meeting at the Troubadour, she was hooked. Al Grossman hated drugs. He told me that when he found out about Janis’ heroin use, he took out a $100,000 insurance policy on her life—a fortune in those days. Leonard Cohen, who had an affair with her, captured a sense of her yearning and desperation in “Chelsea Hotel #2.”
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
You were talking so brave and so sweet,
Giving me head on the unmade bed,
While the limousines wait in the street.
Clark, then nine, spent a few weeks with me that summer in L.A. He played a little guitar and loved being in the studio, harmonizing with me in his sweet voice, hovering around John Haeny during the mixes, and learning his way around. Clark got along well with Stephen, who taught him a few licks on the drums. The two of them even organized the recording of Clark’s song “I’m Flying.”
“I’m Flying” consisted of Clark’s repeating of the phrase over and over, followed by a second line, “Don’t you know, don’t you know.” John Haeny, our engineer, let the tape run for thirteen minutes, with Clark singing, Van Dyke playing piano, Joni Mitchell and me singing harmony, David Crosby somewhere in the background, Jim Gordon on one drum set, Clark on the other, and Stephen on guitar.
Ever the obsessive, John Haeny would pull out a copy he had kept for forty-three years and hand it over to me on a trip I made to Hobart, Australia, where he was living, in 2011.
The image of Clark’s little face turned up to Stephen’s as they made music will always be with me.
AFTER our recording sessions, Stephen and I made love at his apartment not far from the Malibu beach. While the candles burned, we explored each other’s hands and then each other’s throats and then each other’s hearts. We told each other our dreams and let our passions consume us. I felt safe in Stephen’s arms, saved. The anxiety that I usually treated with alcohol was tossed overboard like so much ballast. It was a passionate and lovely love affair.
When Stephen and I had a day off in those early weeks of our romance, we might make love somewhere, my place or his, and then go house hunting—in Malibu, in Laurel Canyon—thinking that one day, perhaps, we would move in together. We would find a beach and gaze at the great Pacific Ocean, basking, dreaming, and planning. On the way back to L.A., Stephen would drive, holding my hand, going too fast, as I sat with my heart in my mouth. But I don’t think I ever told him to slow down! We talked about everything: our futures, our love of music, how we would change the world, stop the war, make a difference.
One day we were shown some properties by a beautiful, articulate, deeply tanned real estate agent. While she failed to find a house that we really liked, she decided on a different tack and taught us a mantra that she said would heal our lives and bring us wealth and abundance, joy and happiness. It was Chinese, she said, Buddhist.
“Repeat after me,” she said. “Nam myoho renge kyo.”
We repeated, over and over, “Nam myoho renge kyo.”
I repeated the chant while the ocean rolled by and killer whales breached the surface. I said it over and over when things were really good with Stephen and me: “Nam myoho renge kyo.”
I learned that “Nam myoho renge kyo” is a Buddhist prayer, or sutra, said to contain the ultimate wisdom. It was created in the thirteenth century by a monk who saw in the prayer a path to spiritual peace.
Stephen and I never settled on a house on the beach that we wanted to buy, but we hoped that if we said the mantra enough times, it might bring us that peace that was promised and help our romance last. We were both in need of peace—me to survive my drinking, and both of us to endure the pace of our fast-moving careers, which would exact a toll on our lives. I found that prayers of some kind for inner and outer peace would have to be renewed every day, every year.
“Nam myoho renge kyo,” I chanted, while the whales leapt and the sun shone and then it rained. I knew there was something to that chant.
I still do.