Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  Much of what was happening involved mind-altering substances of one kind or another. Whitten and his cohorts had already begun smoking cheap Mexican pot back at Mark Manor. “It was garbage,” recalls Molina. “We used to put it in strainers and strain the shit out of it. It was like smoking dirt. We were so naïve back then.” Said Talbot, “It was nothin’, but we’d get high—and we’d sing a lot more then.”

  The boys quickly lost their naïveté in San Francisco, getting heavily into pot and LSD, although psychedelics didn’t sit well with Ralph. One night the gang hung out with Margo St. James, soon to be infamous for founding COYOTE, the hookers-rights organization. Everybody dropped acid, then Danny, Billy and Rocco split, leaving Ralph to navigate his one and only acid trip alone. As he recalls, “Margo’s naked on the floor, getting her pussy sucked by this guy in a suit who looks like a cop, right? Then all of a sudden she’s throwin’ fuckin’ flowerpots out the fuckin’ window, screaming, ‘Let’s call Khrushchev and tell him we love him.’ That was one of the worst experiences of my life, man.”

  Despite Ralph’s abstention, acid opened the group up, as did the new wave of sixties music. Ironically, it was the band of confirmed Horse-hater David Crosby that inspired Whitten and crew to move beyond a cappella. The Byrds played a North Beach club called Mother’s, and as Talbot reported, “We went, ‘Whoa—what’s goin’ on?’ So we decided to play instruments.” Ben Rocco, who had done a brief stint in the Marine Corps before heading to San Francisco, remembers how his friends started mutating. “Danny and Billy and Ralph had long hair now—Billy especially—and it was real strange, because there weren’t a lot of longhairs. Danny had a guitar. I thought, ‘Well, this is a new era.’”

  The group began writing their own material and called themselves the Psyrcle, aka the Circle. “It was a play on psychedelic,” said Rocco. “We thought it would be commercial, but at that time people in the record business did not want to be associated with drugs. Of course, we were associated with drugs, so it was all right with us. We were hippies before the word was used.”

  The Psyrcle recorded one single, “Baby, Don’t Do That,” produced by San Francisco deejay Sly Stone. Written by Whitten and Talbot, the song captures a metamorphosis in progress—vocal hepcats being thrust into the psychedelic sixties at the speed of light. “Baby Don’t Do That” was the only release on Lorna Records, named after Barbara “Lorna” Maitland, an exotic dancer and actress whose spectacular chassis was central to two of Russ Meyer’s infamous flesh melodramas, Mudhoney and Lorna. Maitland was married to Ben Rocco and bankrolled the group’s effort. Unfortunately, the record lopped, and Maitland would soon become one of the first acid casualties. “Lorna fuckin’ flipped,” said Molina glumly. “I heard she ran through the courtyard completely naked.”

  Broke as usual, the Psyrcle returned to Los Angeles, moving into the San Ramone, another low-rent complex run by Verna Talbot. Whitten moved into a tiny L-shaped basement apartment and, according to cohort Willie B. Hinds, “locked himself in there for six months and came out a guitar player.” Molina started drumming on cardboard boxes and phone books with spaghetti strainers. Somehow Billy got ahold of a bass.

  Neighbors Pat and Lolly Vegas—later famous as seventies Native American funk curiosities Redbone—gave them lessons. “They couldn’t play a lick,” said Pat. “Redbone has always been tom-tom rock, we never strayed from that. We taught ’em the basics of a feel—just hold the pocket, and if you get a good groove, hold it. We showed ’em some scales and a couple of runs—man, when they got ahold of those scales, you can forget it—they wouldn’t let go. Twenty-four hours a day—dum-dit-dit-dit-dum.”

  Around this time Ben Rocco quit the group, disenchanted with the decidedly nonshowbiz turn the former vocal band had taken. He said his bandmates blew many opportunities and he grew tired of the endless pontification and procrastination. The addition of mind-altering substances into the equation only made things worse. “Our association with drugs was the demise of our group, no question about it,” said Rocco. “Too much pot.”

  For a brief time the entire band fell apart. Whitten headed out to Topanga Canyon and became half of a duo called Bonnett and Mountjoy. Talbot also relocated, to a house in Laurel Canyon where a scene started to congeal around a couple of oddball musicians he had met.

  The son of Russian-Polish immigrants, Bobby Notkoff was a violinist who would perform with the L.A. Philharmonic, then jump into his smoke-belching ’41 Ford and head for Talbot’s to rip into screeching rock and roll runs on his fiddle. “He was an incredible musician, just incredible,” said Talbot, shaking his head in awe. “He could play anything. Bobby was like a reborn Paganini—the consummate emotional, crazy violin player. He told me, ‘There’s only eight notes in music. Don’t be afraid.’”

  The mysterious Leon Whitsell was a guitar player with a mystical bent. “Leon was into sitars, Eastern music and bein’ alone,” said Molina, who remembers how the reclusive guitarist would set his amp in the room with the other musicians, then take his guitar into another room to play. “You didn’t see Leon. You just heard his amp.”

  Talbot began organizing wild, psychedelic jam sessions with Molina, Whitsell, Notkoff and any other weirdos who happened by. “Some of the jams were monumental,” said Willie B. Hinds. “I remember this guy walked in once in a suit and whipped out a harmonica—he made Sonny Boy Williamson sound like a kid. He came in with this big six-foot-five guy called the Monster who played blues guitar like crazy. Things like this happened all the time.”

  Talbot recalls it was at one of these jams that “Danny came walkin’ in, and that’s how the Rockets started.” Their name was copped from the “rockets’ red glare” line in “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The band’s lineup grew to seven members after Leon quit in a huff as recording began on their only album and his brother, George—an &-styled guitarist—came in to replace him. “After a day or two, Leon wanted to come back and they said, ‘We’ll keep you, too, George,’” recalls George Whitsell, who would contribute what some consider to be the Rockets’ theme song, “Pills Blues”: “I wake up in the mornin’, can’t find my mind / Drop a little pill, baby, and I wash it down with wine.”

  The band was now three guitars, bass, drums and electric violin. Notkoff and the Whitsells were accomplished musicians; Whitten, Talbot and Molina were anything but. Together they made a heavy sound. “Everybody was layin’ down the rock,” said George Whitsell. “It was screamin’ stuff. Some people were callin’ us the American Stones, because the raw energy was there.”

  Billy Talbot’s house was christened Rockets Headquarters, and the Rockets became a true garage band, playing mostly in Billy’s. The house was located on a sharp bend of busy Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and the garage where their jams took place was so close to the street that Notkoff almost fell into the traffic more than once while leaning into a solo with his eyes closed. Traffic backups provided the Rockets with a captive audience. “Everytime you drove by that corner, there’d be this music that was so loud,” recalls Robin Lane. “I went there to visit and never left.”

  Rockets Headquarters was notorious. “We’d go over, hang out, drop acid and jam on blues for twelve hours,” said George Whitsell. The standard hippie crash pad, crawling with musicians, their girlfriends and countless dogs. A pile of & 45s like Betty Wright’s “Clean-up Woman” provided a soundtrack. “I prided myself on my old records,” said George Whitsell. “I’d put on two or three of the right singles, get everybody dancin’ and we’d go for a day or two. It was hot times for sure.” Pot was sold out of the house and undercover cops were forever trying to bust the joint. “We were really just a bunch of crazy psychedelic guys,” said Talbot innocently.

  The Rockets played some gigs at the Shrine Auditorium, opening for the likes of Jeff Beck as well as their old crony Sly Stone, but their reputation far exceeded their exposure. “They weren’t popular—it wasn’t even like they had a clique they were so underground,” said Danny H
utton. “They were professionally self-destructive, ’cause they didn’t care—‘Go and do that gig? No man, don’t wanna—going out to eat.’” Hutton was so impressed with Whitten that he briefly considered him for one of the lead-singer slots when he was putting together Three Dog Night, who would cover Danny’s song “Let Me Go” on their 1969 debut album (along with Young’s “The Loner”). “We were workin’ to pay the rent,” said Hutton. “They were a real band—one that actually sits and plays and doesn’t make any money at it.”

  Former Electric Flag member and Dylan sideman Barry Goldberg was equally awestruck. To him, the Rockets “were the cognoscente, the inner hip, the cool guys,” and as a West Coast talent scout for Atlantic Records, he talked Ahmet Ertegun into letting him produce the band—until, Goldberg claims, Ertegun attended one of the sessions and heard the lyrics to Whitten’s “Mr. Chips,” which concerned “a dirty old man” with “a shiny head” who “washed his hands in money.”

  Although the song was not about him, the band believed the lyrics alienated Ertegun, who withdrew his support. The Rockets’ self-titled debut was eventually released in the summer of 1968 by a much smaller independent, White Whale, known primarily as the home of the Turtles. The company was at a loss as to how to promote such psychedelic crazies; Willie B. Hinds said the Rockets “scared White Whale outta their pants.” The one time they did a local radio interview was a typical disaster. The deejay warned them not to say the two words deemed obscene by the station. “Now, we’re on the air, and this was the first time I’d taken downers,” said George Whitsell. “I said, ‘What were those words—shit and fuck?’ We were outthere.”

  Out there they remained. Their greatest commercial success would come when Goldberg’s cover of Whitten’s “Hole in My Pocket” reached number thirty on the L.A. charts. Today The Rockets is nearly forgotten, despite being a great psychedelic & record and—in terms of Young and the Horse—a revealing landmark. Listening to Whitten’s “Let Me Go,” with its minimal, evocative lyrics and long, extended jam built around Notkoff’s incendiary fiddle, one can hear the roots of Young’s own “Down by the River”—although he would drain out the & and slow everything down to sixteen rpm.

  Danny Whitten was the band’s spark. “Danny brought up a band any time he was in one,” said Hinds. “Everybody around him got raised up.” In the Rockets, Whitten really came into his own. “I got a hole in my pocket / I had a dime but I lost it,” he sings, wailing like a deep-soul singer, his songwriting sly, sad and funny. “Danny didn’t say a lot, but he was a colorful guy with language,” said Talbot. “He had a knack for putting things in street terms and saying it just right. He was sarcastic in such a beautiful way.”

  The Rockets and Crosby, Stills and Nash were at opposite ends of the spectrum. Young would walk into both outfits and take over. He destroyed one band in the process and forever disrupted the chemistry of the other, but also pushed each group to some of their highest musical achievements. Elliot Roberts would orchestrate CSNY’s superstardom, David Briggs would corral the Horse into creating “group art.” For Neil Young it all caught fire in Topanga Canyon.

  *Elliot Roberts on the CSNY boxed set: “They had made a shit deal for themselves and wanted us to be part of the shit deal and it was too late to change their deal, so we were in for a quarter of a piece of shit. Then they were totally using Neil, putting ‘and Young’ on the box cover prominently, and Neil would end up having the bulk of unreleased material … I denied permission, even though Neil had given it to Graham. I said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have gone to Neil—that’s why he pays me big fuckin’ bucks.’ Graham was never close to me again.”

  *Some dispute Kurzon’s story. Said Nash, “I don’t believe we had a meeting with Albert Grossman, nor did we ever want to. This is all clouded in the history of marijuana…. Larry did have a shot at managing us and was blown out of the water by Elliot and Geffen.”

  *When I asked Roberts where he thought Young got this vibe of doom, he had a one-word answer: “Rassy.”

  *Crosby would actually join the Horse onstage during the 1996 Farm Aid. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

  more real

  I’m waiting for Louie Kelly, “the canyon reprobate,” as Shannon Forbes, the one-time companion of David Briggs, puts it. Louie’s ramshackle two-story house sits nestled in the trees just a few yards from Topanga Canyon Boulevard, one of two main roads that bisect the canyon’s rocky terrain. Beer cans litter the front porch, and on an old picnic table is a copy of Playboy, its glossy pages flipping in the wind.

  After awhile a white van sputters around the corner, its side emblazoned with Louie’s logo: IF IT’S SMELLY, CALL KELLY. Louie now works as a plumber. He wisely toned down his first motto, YOUR SHIT IS OUR GOLD. Out of the van jumps a tall, skinny fellow with long, stringy hair and—under a rather sizable nose—a fading mustache. Giddy, almost manic, he could’ve popped off the pages of some old underground comic.

  Kelly didn’t know Neil Young all that well—few in Topanga did—but Louie was a part of the canyon spirit. His parties were infamous, and he remains a charter member of the Topanga All-Stars, a loose congregation of fifteen or so roughnecks who functioned as Topanga’s answer to the James Gang.

  Louie Kelly is an endangered species in Topanga Canyon. Skyrocketing real-estate values and changing times have driven many of the old-timers out, leaving an influx of humorless professionals in their place. “I have to pay to have a party now—get a permit or be arrested,” Kelly says with a snort.

  He cracks open a beer. “My greatest memory of Neil is watchin’ him feel free. He was just gettin’ into ridin’ motorcycles, and I tell you, it was the funniest thing I ever seen in my life.”

  At some point, another musician pulled up alongside Young and grabbed his throttle. “It scared the fuck out of Neil.” He putted away into the wilderness. “Everybody was worried,” says Kelly. “He was lost. It was ‘Where’s Neil?’” Louie, alone on a hill having a smoke, spied Young down below, riding around in circles. “He forgot which way to go,” says Kelly. Young finally managed to climb the hill. “He rode right up to me and said ‘Wow!’ To me that was ‘I did it!’ We smoked, watchin’ everybody lookin’ for him.”

  Topanga Canyon is a mere twenty-five minute drive from Hollywood and, in the late sixties, was a universe apart from the glitz of Sunset Strip. “I hated it,” said writer Eve Babitz. “It was like I was on speed and everybody there was on downers. People wore capes in Topanga.”

  Situated in an isolated stretch of the Santa Monica Mountains between Los Angeles and Malibu, Topanga has long been a hideaway for outcasts. Its original inhabitants were Indians and Spanish settlers, and during the fifties, McCarthy-accused communists hid out there from the FBI. “Topanga has always had a very liberal faction and a very conservative faction,” said longtime resident Max Penner. “The neat thing about it is they live together in harmony.”

  Not in the beginning, said David Briggs. When he first moved there in the mid-sixties, “you couldn’t go out without being arrested. I got rousted every day for years.” Floods and fires brought rednecks and hippies together, and the concentration of longhairs would earn Topanga the moniker “Haight Ashbury South.” “It just exploded,” said actor Dean Stockwell, who claimed Topanga’s geographical limitations protected it from getting too overrun. “It’s inaccessible except for one road, so it became a microcosm of the best of the sixties.”

  There were theater groups, nudist colonies and communes, plus a small but thriving music scene centered around the Corral. Originally a country/western hole in the wall called Mickey’s Hideaway, the Corral was revamped by architect Ral Curran into a hippie nightclub, complete with a large painting of a naked couple, entitled Pisces Dancing, hanging over the dance floor. Canned Heat, Taj Mahal, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Joni Mitchell all played the Corral, along with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Biker gang Satan’s Slaves also called the Corral home, as did & great Big Joe Turner, who was
booked into the club by beatnik “Topanga” Dick Ludwig, infamous for his T-shirt proclaiming TOPANGA DICK IS NOT A SOCIAL DISEASE.

  “There were times we had to lock the door to keep people from comin’ in,” said Topanga local Jimmy Dehr. “People would walk out into the parking lot with pitchers of beer, there’d be drug connections up the street, people screwin’ in the bushes. It was just nuts.” But if Neil Young was at the Corral, he was probably onstage. For the most part he would remain an invisible man in Topanga. “Everybody’s goin’ out and havin’ fun / I’m a fool for stayin’ home and havin’ none,” Young states in his morose version of Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me,” a cut from his archetypal Topanga album, After the Gold Rush. “Neil was real,” said neighbor, friend and occasional art director Tom Wilkes. “He didn’t have that music-star crap goin’ for him at all … the guy was real private. He just seemed very lonely and withdrawn a lotta the time.”

  “Neil didn’t play with the boys,” said Elliot Roberts. “He seemed much more adult. Neil had a vision of what being a man was—he was more responsible, moved out to Topanga alone, got married very early.” Despite his seclusion, or maybe because of it, Young remained eerily in touch with the times. As Max Penner put it, “Neil watched us all go crazy and wrote about it.”

  Another Neil emerged in Topanga. No longer as exposed or vulnerable as he was in the Springfield, he had a manager and a producer, and within months a wife and home were added. His paranoia subsided, as would his seizures, which became so infrequent Young was able to jest about them after one light-show-induced attack during a dance at the Topanga shopping center. “We kidded him forever,” said Shannon Forbes. “Two beers and a strobe light and he’s out.”