Inside Job

by Levinson, Len

  Walter Zacharius, President of Kensington Publishing Corporation, took me to dinner at the Palm restaurant near the UN and said he expected my The Sergeant series by Gordon Davis, nine novels (Zebra and Bantam), to make a million dollars. But Lady Luck had other plans.

  Then came The Rat Bastards by John Mackie (Jove), 16 novels about a platoon of American soldiers fighting the Japanese Imperial Army in the South Pacific during World War II. This unquestionably was one of the most freaked-out, violent literary projects ever devised by a sick mind. Soldiers constantly were stabbing each other with bayonets, or blowing up each other with hand grenades, or machine-gunning each other to smithereens. Blood, guts, profanity and occasional heads flew through the air. How could such novels, spiced with gallows humor, possibly fail in the gutbucket action-adventure marketplace? They didn’t exactly fail, but didn’t set sales records either.

  I felt certain that my Western series The Pecos Kid, six novels by Jack Bodine (Harper), would soar to the top of the Western market, becoming worthy successors to Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and Max Brand. Pecos contained huge dollops of all possible melodramatic elements such as gunfights, fistfights, knife fights, romance, intrigue, suspense, treachery, deeply researched Apache lore, gags, quips, paradoxes, puns, even a cynical horse named Nestor providing his own unique viewpoint. But the Western market wasn’t very impressed.

  My final series, The Apache Wars Saga, six novels by Frank Burleson (Signet), achieved the status of “important historical fiction” in my estimation, comparable to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy or Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Again the market didn’t agree.

  My so-called literary career crashed totally in 1997. My last editor, Todd Keithley at Signet, said: “They don’t want little profits. They want BIG profits.”

  I didn’t take it personally. Many action-adventure writers got dumped during the 1990s, due to hot new policies implemented by rapidly conglomerating publishing houses. Advances usually paid to low profit writers like us got redirected to possibly profitable new authors, especially in the bestselling category, women’s romances.

  Between 1997 and now, four of my manuscripts failed to find publishers. Obviously, based on cold, cruel reality, my big gamble ultimately flopped. Not everyone’s dream comes true forever, evidently. Just because you place your offerings on the altar of pulp fiction, doesn’t mean every one will be accepted.

  But my so-called literary career wasn’t 100% mistaken, I don’t think. At least I needn’t torment myself on my deathbed for not attempting to become a novelist.

  Moreover, I must confess that I enjoyed writing those 83 nutty novels. They allowed me to explore my bottomless imagination, always best destination for an introvert, instead of daily brush-offs by journalists, plus insults from temperamental clients.

  Sometimes when you lose—you also might win. Perhaps the novelist’s life is its own reward. And punishment.

  My so-called literary career isn’t over yet. Every morning I look forward to sitting at my computer. I’m working on a new novel which I consider my best achievement ever, based on the greatest love affair of my life, played for laughs. It probably won’t be published because I’ve relocated to rural Illinois and lost contact with the NYC literary scene. But even that doesn’t stop me.

  In the words of Janis Joplin, as written by Kris Kristoffersen: “Freedom’s just another word—for nothin’ left to lose.”

  Since the above, I’ve discovered that bloggers have been writing about me. Joe Kenney in his blog GLORIOUS TRASH referred to me as a “trash genius”. People are buying and selling my old books. Can it be—is it possible—is it conceivable that my new e-books suddenly will go viral, and I’ll become a zillionaire, appear on the Jay Leno Show, relocate to Paris, and marry a dancer from the Follies Bergere? Like I said, my so-called literary career isn’t over yet.

  John Lennon and Me

  by Len Levinson

  Circumstances leading to my encounter with John Lennon began one morning during winter of 1969-1970, at the height of the Vietnam War. I was a 34-year-old press agent sitting at my desk at Solters and Sabinson, a show biz PR agency on West 45th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues near Times Square.

  One of our most important clients was Allen Klein, talent agent and manager whose most famous client was John Lennon. Suddenly that morning my boss Sheldon Roskin appeared before my desk and announced that he and I were leaving for Toronto that afternoon, to manage publicity for John’s and Yoko’s latest Peace-In. Sheldon said: “Go home and pack.”

  A chauffeured limousine was waiting at the curb. I was driven home to my East Village pad, packed, returned to the office, picked up Sheldon, we were driven to the airport, arrived in Toronto around 5pm, checked into the Hilton, and cabbed to a university auditorium.

  Inside was tremendous hullabaloo. At the podium, someone delivered an emotional antiwar speech. Sheldon and I attempted to acquaint ourselves with reporters and photographers during simmering chaos.

  Three or four additional antiwar speeches were made, then John was introduced. Enthusiastic applause accompanied him as he approached the podium. I’d never seen him in person before. Approximately 5 feet 7 inches, slim, longhaired, long-bearded, wearing loose-fitting plain sweater and slacks in earth tones, he projected no glitz, didn’t wave to the audience like a star, and if I didn’t know better, I’d guess an English major or wannabe poet.

  Standing at the podium, gazing levelly at the audience, not reading from a prepared statement, he spoke simply and sincerely, not like a stand-up comic or politician. Essentially, he implored the world to give peace a chance, like his song. His talk lasted around fifteen minutes and received wild applause.

  Afterwards, Sheldon and I limousined to the outskirts of Toronto, finally stopping at a three-story mansion in an affluent suburb, where everyone owned several acres, massive lawns, stands of trees, and country chic.

  The mansion was home to American rockabilly star Rockin’ Ronnie Hawkins and his family. John, Yoko and their entourage were living and hanging out at Ronnie’s during their Toronto peace campaign.

  Sheldon and I entered through the kitchen, and Sheldon kept truckin’ to the next room, a large combination dining/living area, where a sizable schmooze-type party was underway. Sheldon needed to report to John, and I should accompany him like a faithful underling, but got distracted by the male and female cooks working before a restaurant-style range.

  I’d seen both before: husband and wife cooks at The Cauldron, arguably the East Village’s most popular macrobiotic restaurant, Sixth Street between Second and First Avenues.

  “Hey - I know you people! I eat in your restaurant two-three times a week.”

  We shook hands and fell into our favorite subject: “the diet.” In that long ago era, many thoroughly progressive and quite hip individuals were subsisting on the macrobiotic diet, popularized in the West by Georges Ohsawa, based on Zen Buddhist principles, believed to prevent or cure all physical and mental ills. The diet consisted mainly of brown rice, beans, certain vegetables, seaweed, sesame sauce, miso, tahini, sea salt and a bit of fish now and then, but don’t overdo it. I’d been on the diet around three months and expected my breakthrough to total enlightenment any moment.

  The cooks explained that John had hired them to fly to Toronto and cook for him, Yoko and the entourage. As we continued discussing “the diet,” John himself wandered into the kitchen. Evidently he’d been near the door, heard us talking and wanted to participate.

  I didn’t have a tape recorder and didn’t write notes. To the best of my recollection, face-to-face, John came across as amiable, bright, and very knowledgeable about “the diet”. Neither over-confident or diffident, seemingly at ease in his skin, a regular guy with odd Liverpool accent, John in the flesh was far different from his media image as temperamental genius.

  The cooks needed to return to dinner prep, so John and I proceeded to the dining/living area, where other people approached him, and we be
came separated. Like a good press agent, I worked the room, met many journalists and antiwar activists, including a lanky, white-haired, antiwar rabbi and his wraithlike, white-haired wife - minor celebrities recently returned from Hanoi after meeting Ho Chi Minh. The rabbi showed me a cane that good Uncle Ho had given him. He seemed quite proud of meeting Uncle Ho, who at that moment was busily killing as many American soldiers and Marines as possible.

  I schmoozed around the gathering, bumped into John again and we resumed discussing “the diet”. Standing nearby, the rabbi’s wife interrupted: “Don’t believe him, John. He’s probably not really on the diet. “

  I couldn’t imagine how to respond, after being insulted flagrantly by a total stranger - in front of a major client no less - and she the Rebbetzin no less!

  Christians probably are unaware of the majestic figure of the Rebbetzin in Jewish life and literature. Usually the Rebbetzin managed her community’s day-to-day practical affairs, while the Rebbe studied Torah, taught classes and experienced visions.

  As a Jew, I felt overawed by this Rebbetzin. How could I prove that I really was on “the diet”? I stared at her in disbelief, and she returned my stare triumphantly, as if seeing right through me, knowing I was a cheap con artist, and she thoroughly justified in exposing me.

  Perhaps she worried about me gaining undue influence over John, since press agents generally were considered dishonest, saying anything necessary to ingratiate ourselves with clients and the press. Or she considered me a rival to be knocked out with one punch.

  John appeared amused by this interaction. Smiling broadly, he slapped me on the shoulder. “Oh - I know he’s on the diet.”

  Because he’d heard me rapping with his macrobiotic cooks - he knew I was legit. He could’ve kept quiet, not getting involved, but instead supported me. Based on his response, I concluded that John Lennon was a decent human being.

  Next morning, Sheldon and I returned to the suburban castle, my first assignment to sit alone in a den-type room, phoning journalists and disk jockeys across North America, setting up phone interviews with John, not strenuous effort because journalists and disk jockeys would sell their grandmothers into slavery for an opportunity to speak with John Lennon directly.

  While dialing a disk jockey from some major market, I was surprised by John walking in, carrying an acoustic guitar. He sat on a nearby sofa and proceeded to strum or pick experimentally, the identical John Lennon who’d performed before 80,000 screaming fans at Shea Stadium in Queens, and now his audience consisted of one person: moi.

  It was surreal. There sat one of the most famous human beings on the planet. But he looked like an ordinary person. It didn’t make sense.

  I noticed John becoming uncomfortable, perhaps because I ogled him like a rabid fan. How could I make phone calls while he performed? Without a word, he arose and calmly left the room.

  What did he have? Was it the aura of incredible fame? If I saw him plunking a guitar in a corner of an East Village tenement party, another bearded face in the smoky crowd, would I be so moved?

  I think so. Because he projected that peculiar attribute called charisma. What is charisma? Perhaps some kind of truth communicated by accomplished artists - in contrast to plunkers.

  The Beatles were not your average white cover band. An original artistic vision propelled them to international fame. But what is fame? Is it baloney? John couldn’t even walk around downtown Toronto without besiegement by wild-eyed fans, so hid in a mansion at the edge of town. Perhaps fame really is the booby prize.

  John and Yoko spent most of every day alone together in their wing of the massive structure. Perhaps they wrote songs or poetry, sketched, engaged in philosophical or spiritual conversations, or listened to music. In Albert Goldman’s biography of John, he and Yono were retailed as heroin addicts, but they never nodded out or appeared befuddled in my presence.

  Yoko came across as loyal, quiet, alert wife, although the media spun her as the dragon lady. She and John entered rooms hand in hand, appearing deeply connected.

  One afternoon, wandering around the top floor of the massive structure, and getting lost, I opened a door and found a small room with approximately six young dudes sitting on the floor, passing a pipe and listening to a rock and roll tape I’d never heard before, the pungent fragrance of hashish in the air. I apologized for intruding, and they invited me to join them.

  They informed me that the music was the new “Big Pink” album soon to be released, performed by a group called “The Band”, which was Ronnie Hawkins1usual touring and recording band. The same musicians also backed Bob Dylan on occasion. Someone put away the pipe, someone else opened a window, and we listened to “Big Pink” for what seemed several hours, but actually around 10 minutes.

  Suddenly knuckles rapped the door; a member of the entourage opened up. In walked my boss Sheldon, who glanced at me sternly. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Just taking a rest.”

  “You’re not being paid to rest. Don’t ever hide from me this way again. Come with me - I want you to handle an interview.”

  In a living room on the ground floor, Sheldon introduced me to Howard Smith, thirty-something reporter for NYC’s influential “Village Voice”, plus Howard’s tall, slender, blonde, twenty-something female assistant.

  Sheldon departed. Howard fiddled with recording equipment; his assistant set up photo lights. Both appeared deeply serious, as if careers depended on the interview. My functions would be: (1) help resolve possible difficulties, and (2) take notes for possible column items.

  John arrived, shook hands with Howard and his assistant, nodded to me, and sat. The interview commenced and seemed to turn adversarial quickly, although fairly cordial on the surface. For example, Howard asked John to comment on the contention in some quarters that the Beatles really were nothing special, but had been “made” by Brian Epstein, Derek Taylor, George Martin and various other movers and shakers.

  John replied emphatically: “They didn’t make us - we made them!”

  Egomania? Nowadays virtually all rock historians agree that John, Paul, George and Ringo revolutionized rock and roll, admittedly with a little help from their friends.

  Maybe I’m way over the top with the Beatles. At first I’d considered them mostly hype, then listened to the just-released “Revolver” vinyl album at a friend’s apartment during summer of 1966. In the terminology of the day - it blew my mind. Totally. Because it sounded completely new, even thrilling, not a series of rock and roll songs but a symphony of human experience from sorrow to glory to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Their next release “Sergeant Pepper” explored an entirely different dimension of poetry and magic. Sometimes I considered John an avatar of art.

  No one would laugh harder at such a suggestion than John himself. Based on my first-hand observations, he didn’t appear dazzled by fame in the least, probably considering it a torrent of mixed blessings suddenly dumping upon him through the fickle plumbing of fate.

  After three nights in Toronto, Sheldon and I returned to our offices in NYC. But I never forgot my encounter with John Lennon. In retrospect, it seemed the pinnacle of my press agent career, except possibly for a few days with Sophia Loren, who also was of heavenly origin, or a few days with Charleton Heston, who in real life was none other than Moses, or speaking briefly with the absolutely stunning Julie Andrews at the world premiere of “The Sound of Music”, or standing around ten feet from Frank Sinatra at the world premiere of “Von Ryan’s Express”, or meeting twenty-something Raquel Welch at JFK, and escorting her in a chauffeured limo to a hotel no longer extant on 5th Avenue and 59th Street, first trip of her life to NYC, for the world premiere of “Fantastic Voyage” - plus my association with other celebrities of the soaring sixties.

  In early 1971 I resigned PR to take a fling at becoming a novelist. Around six months later, banging away on my typewriter, I received a call from Sheldon. He’d been speaking with John, who asked: “How’s my macrobiot
ic press agent?”

  Awhile later, strolling on 8th Street in west Greenwich Village, I happened to glance through a jewelry store window, and spotted John and Yoko standing at the counter, examining trinkets. My first impulse was to walk inside, slap John on the back, and say: “How’re ya doin’, John? It’s me - your former macrobiotic press agent.”

  But hangers-on and glad-handers irritate celebrities. So I kept on walking.

  On December 8, 1980, I absent-mindedly turned on my television. An emergency newscast reported that John Lennon had just been shot in front of the Dakota apartment building on Central Park West and 72nd Street, only 17 blocks uptown from my pad on West 55th. He died in the Roosevelt Hospital emergency room, three blocks away. Coincidentally, I’d been a patient in that very emergency room, perhaps in the cubicle where John passed on.

  The Age of Aquarius ended for me when John Lennon got gunned down at the entrance to the Dakota. Evidently, our philosophy of peace, love, mind-altering chemicals, and rock and roll hadn’t eradicated evil as we’d all hoped. Mentally disturbed characters still walked the face of the earth, and some yearned to become celebrities, although possessing zilch talent.

  Actually, it’s not that difficult to become a celebrity. All you need do is murder a celebrity. Guaranteed your face will be on the front page of every newspaper next day, and telecast around the globe as you climb the steps of the courthouse. You can wave to the crowd like a real star. You might even get a book contract!

  Sometimes I felt partially responsible for the murder of John Lennon. As former press agent, I’d helped manipulate gears and levers of celebrity, creating illusions vastly different from reality, perhaps influencing certain psychotics adversely.

  But violent individuals have walked this planet long before press agents existed. The decision to kill seems to come primarily from within, if you believe in free will. But insane people by definition don’t have normal mental processes. Did unbalanced brain chemicals induced by organic dysfunction, or psychological trauma - kill John Lennon?