During the time it was open, I met Christopher Rocancourt, a conman who went by the name of Christopher de Laurentiis, Christopher de la Renta and many other fake names in his day. If he were speaking with Hollywood or music industry people he’d claim to be the son or nephew of famed film producer Dino De Laurentiis, if he were speaking with fashion industry people he would claim to be the nephew of famed designer Oscar de la Renta, and eventually when he fled to the East Coast and began to swindle socialites, old monied families and Wall Street financiers, he referred to himself as Christopher Rockefeller, claiming to be an heir to the most powerful family of industrial, political and banking magnates in American history. When I heard about that I found it hilarious that none of those people who believed him to be a Rockefeller ever questioned the fact that he was French and spoke with a thick French accent.
By the time I met him, when he was in his twenties, Christopher was already a successful lifelong conman. From what I understand he had made over a million by forging the deed to a building and then selling it to someone illegally in France. He then came to the United States where he used that money and dozens of aliases to create a mirage to swindle countless people out of a tremendous amount of money, before he was caught and thrown in jail.
He would convince rich people to invest with him, promising them a quick return and double their investment, by spending tons of money on lavish dinners and cocktail parties for them. He always paid in cash, was very likable and charming and was always very well appointed so everyone believed the lie.
We met him at the restaurant, and soon he was serenading my parters and I, saying he wanted to buy the place and save it so that we could get our liquor license under a new corporate entity. He was residing at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in the most unbelievable suite and was driven around in a succession of Rolls Royce limousines. Whenever we would go by the hotel to see him, we’d find him entertaining all manner of high profile actors and directors at the bar, having meetings about various projects of theirs he was interested in producing. My partners and I got completely stung–we even asked after him with the maitre d’ and manager of the hotel all of whom verified that he was Dino de Laurentiis’ son. After that we never questioned him.
Eventually it all came out but to the end, the guy always had a story. At the time I wasn’t very well off, after my divorce from Sara and two bankruptcies, so I wanted to believe all that he promised me. Christopher would tell me,‘Mickey, you’re going to have everything you want. You’ll have a big apartment. I have one on Wilshire Boulevard–you can live there until you can buy your own.’
He took me down there in his big Rolls Royce to show me the place, and it was gorgeous, so I told him that Lynn and I would love to move in. I even met the people who were moving out of the apartment, but of course nothing ever came of it.
The entire time, until Christopher fled LA for the East Coast, I was schmoozing him, believing that he was going to save the restaurant and my financial situation as well. He and I became friends and spent a lot of time together, going shopping and having dinner and as you do when you want to woo someone in business, I picked up the tab more often than not, to show him my good intentions. This of course was all part of his plan and how he got things from people. One day we were out in a shop and I saw that he loved this eel skin briefcase and so to gain good favor I bought it for him. The amount of money he was planning to put in the restaurant was massive, so this was a trifle–although for me at the time, it was an issue. I could hardly afford to be buying eel skin briefcases at the drop of a hat but anything he wanted I got for him.
I also ended up paying for a trip to Austin, Texas that he and Joe and I took, ostensibly to scout locations for a second branch of Fleetwood’s once he bought it. When we got down there he had a helicopter on stand by and a few real estate agents present to show us spaces and then afterwards, farms and mansions since he insisted that I’d need to live down there during the opening. So off we went to tour these mansions and see a few massive farms outside of town from the comfort of the helicopter. One of them was absolutely stunning and Christopher said he’d buy it and just let me live on it as long as I liked. I thought I was in like Flynn.
As these things do, his con came apart eventually. My partners at the restaurant tired of the endless excuses as to why the money we needed to keep going wasn’t arriving from him. Christopher was always about to get the cheque, waiting for it to be approved by a bank in Switzerland or waiting for his father to sign off on it. We’d get concerned, have a meeting with him and he’d tell us it was just a small delay and that he’d bring us some cash to float us in the meantime. This went on for months. One time, Joe McNulty was supposed to receive a large brown bag full of money, and waited literally ten hours for it to arrive. Christopher’s con was very extensive and I don’t know how he did it, but he had Joe on the phone with all manner of people in Switzerland supposedly at his bank, confirming everything he was saying. It was unbelievably clever.
That bank scam is how he got his operating money I’m quite sure. He was duping loads of wealthy people and then using their money to live on and keep the scam going. One of the last times I saw him, when I began to suspect that it was all over and that he’d never invest with us, I was driving him back to the Beverly Wilshire and he picked up these Armani sunglasses that I’d bought for Lynn who had left them in my car. At this point I still believed that Christopher was who he said he was, but didn’t believe that he wanted to invest anymore. Lynn really loved those glasses and they were a present from me but I was such a whore, holding out that we may still have a chance through Christopher. So when he picked up the glasses and said he liked them and that they looked good on him, I told him he could have them. I figured I’d just buy Lynn another pair.
Lynn wasn’t okay with that, she loved the glasses primarily because they were a gift from me, and she said that if I bought her another pair it wouldn’t be the same. So to make amends I promised her that I’d get them back. It had begun to get a little strange with Christopher, not just with us but with other people around town from what we were hearing but he was still keeping up appearances. When I got to the hotel and went up to his suite however, he had a guy sitting outside that looked like a Mafia hit man. He was there alone in the hallway and I could see that he had a gun in his jacket, which wasn’t quite a garden-variety thing in the Beverly Wilshire. The thuggish guard let me into the suite, which was this marble Scarface type ordeal. I couldn’t see Christopher so I called out and from the bathroom he beckoned me to come in. I entered to find him in a bubble bath, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of champagne like Marilyn Monroe. He hopped out completely naked, got into a robe, went into the living room and launched into a maniacal rant about my partners. They had threatened him, and having the connections that they had, I’m quite sure Christopher was taking it very, very seriously. He blamed me for it and kept saying, ‘Mickey I thought you loved me.’ Then his tone switched like a light and he began to tell me that he wasn’t afraid of them or of anyone because of all of the guns he had and how tough he was. I tried to be like a father figure and calm him down but it didn’t work. All I wanted was the sunglasses back, but there I was with Christopher going mad, raving on about this gang war he intended to have with my partners. Before I knew it he’d pulled out a .357 Magnum from the top drawer of the dresser, and I glimpsed a collection of other guns in there as well.
‘I’ve got the shit, too, I’m not afraid of them,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to hear shit from anybody! All of you can shut up and leave me alone!’
That was my cue to exit, and for the record I never got the sunglasses back. Christopher went to jail of course, but he was the kind of guy that if I saw him again I’d probably forgive him. What he did was so out there that it bordered on genius the way he had everyone going. I got what I deserved. I believed that money was going to drop out of the sky for me in my time of need, so I was the fool. I was ripe for the picking.
While the restaurant was open we also met some of the first Russians with money to come over to LA and get into business. It’s debatable which side of the line they were on but Joe and I were interested in talking to anyone that might be able to help us save the restaurant. One was a business man who invited us over to Russia to meet his people in Moscow and to be involved in a few ventures they had going, the primary one being the import of pure bottled glacier water from the mountains of Tajikistan. Another was to start a club and restaurant for the well-to-do in Moscow because there wasn’t anything like that there at the time. That is where we came in because we had a degree of expertise in that area. Expertise wasn’t exactly necessary for the various transactions we were being offered, however. The Russians we met asked us to broker all manner of deals. They wanted us to sell military submarines to a few of their South American contacts. Not exactly a continent known for it’s military power, I can only surmise that such vessels would have been used for, shall we say, clandestine transport of goods. We were also offered tanks, jets, and just about anything else that a carpet bagger businessman with money to spend might want.
Before I knew it I was in Moscow. In those days the Russian government allowed American currency to be used there so the dollar was king and many entrepreneurs went over to test the waters at that time, Joe and I being two of them. We spent weeks in Moscow and had incredible adventures just when the place had opened itself to the rest of the world. A lot of it felt like spy stuff because most of the businessmen we met were ex-KGB. It’s a well known fact that Putin is one of them, because all of those guys still run the country and it’s no different than it was before.
Back then there was at least an aspiration to do things differently. Every business plan was a joint venture, as they called them, with the Russians providing the markets and the foreign entrepreneurs providing the products and experience. One of the businesses we were made moves to start was a Tajik airline. We even found a 747 up in moth balls in Santa Barbara for the Russians to buy. We had Tajik Airlines printed on the side but that was as far as it went. Neither the plane nor the business ever left the ground but we had that plane for a while because we believed we were going to start an airline there in Tajikistan.
I remember going down back streets in Moscow to meet people who could ‘make things happen’ who took us to see properties that would become a club where foreign and local businessmen could meet. Of course it’s now common knowledge that doing business in Russia is treacherous. They tend to do business with foreign partners and then tell them to fuck off, keeping their money and shared assets. It’s still happening; there are very few people who survive doing business with Russians.
But there we were, in some kind of Klondike Gold Rush, this one just as dangerous, though we didn’t realise it to the extent we should of. I remember on one occasion being in one of the few existing businessmen’s discotheques and that place was wild. There were women of the night everywhere, whatever you wanted was available for purchase, and there was a tangibly present criminal element. Joe and I were sitting at a table with our guide who warned us to keep to ourselves no matter what happened.
Joe got really drunk and I did too and he is the most friendly person in the world, even more so after a few rounds. We were sitting near these girls and one of them told Joe her handbag had been stolen. Joe rightly figured it was the guy next to her, and was about to intervene. I told him not to get involved, but he wasn’t about to listen. Before he said anything, the girl got a better look at the guy and realised she should just leave it. She told Joe not to ask for it back but he wasn’t listening to her either. I took a long look at the guy and could immediately tell he was pretty fucking heavy, plus I had a clear view of the gun in his belt. I nearly leapt across the table, got in Joe’s ear and told him he’d better back the fuck off because the guy had a gun. That sobered Joe up and he let it go. But the guy had noticed us talking about him and began to get pissed off. He made a scene giving the bag back to the girl, and stood there boldly as she opened it and found it completely empty. No one said a word. Mick and Joe, welcome to Moscow.
One thing I intended to do on that trip was visit an antiques market I’d heard of because at the time the Russians were selling valuable art work and ancient religious icons to anyone interested. These were pieces that had been taken from churches and at first that wasn’t considered a crime by the government. I found out where to go and a cab driver from our hotel brought me there and waited for me while I did my shopping. We had been advised to always keep our valuables close, including our passports and visas, so I put all of those documents plus about five thousand dollars in cash in my rucksack and went down in my full length fur coat to buy some art, hardly fitting in, looking like a rockstar I’m sure. I found a stall full of antiques in this open air flea market manned by all these young dudes. I thought it was a bit weird that this group of young guys had collected all of this great art, and even weirder that they all spoke perfect English.
I started talking to them about the religious icons in their collection and the next thing I knew they recognised me, saying, ‘You’re Fleetwood Mac!’ They were all about 22, so it was pretty wild that they even knew the band, having grown up when the country was Communist and entirely closed to the West. It was even more awesome and bizarre when they began referencing the Peter Green years. I was amazed and thrilled and really taken in–which I suppose is what they wanted–because as I now know, while I was distracted and talking, one of them was relieving me of the contents of my rucksack.
I can only assume that my driver had tipped them off as to who I was, but I still don’t know how they knew about Peter Green, because they really knew their stuff, naming songs and albums and everything. In any case, I bought a couple of icons from them which I still have, and I’m lucky that I got them when I did because soon afterwards the government shut that down and made the possession and export of such objects punishable by jail time.
I wandered around a bit more, and by the time I was ready to leave, finally realised that the load in my sack had gotten much lighter. I was like a lorry driver in a cartoon who doesn’t realise that his cargo is falling off with each and every turn until he arrives at his destination. That was me, blissfully parading around, losing precious possessions with each passing minute. For the sake of security I’d brought all those things with me, only to have them pilfered inside of an hour right under my nose. I can’t say with certainty that the cab driver was in on it, but when I told him what had happened, he went into the market and got my passport and visa back quite quickly. Well, at least I got my icons.
I’d learned to travel young and obviously I don’t like to ever be bored. I was used to a high level of drama being in and running the band, so to me, stories like these explain who I am. I was never frightened to go on the craziest of adventures. I don’t know what the motivation is exactly, but it’s there within me and it certainly is poetic at its best, foolish at its worst. I consider it akin to going on hunting expeditions, or mountaineering, my drive has the same adventurous spirit. I’ve just always liked to pick up and go on trips that no one in their right mind would go on.
When we were first together, Lynn and I lived in a home in Encino. She worked for Orion Pictures, but in reality she spent more time looking after me and my life, and eventually she left her job to do just that. We were very much equal partners, because while I paid the rent, Lynn was paying her own way. I was still in the process of being divorced from Sara, but it wasn’t complete. There was a time when Sara harassed Lynn by calling our home, leaving messages for me from ‘your wife’, and saying cruel things about Lynn on our answering machine. Sara was hurt and felt betrayed, after she found out that Lynn and I had been together when she and I were separated. It was hard for me; I understood Sara’s distress and out of guilt, I let the calls happen. Eventually, Sara stopped lashing out and the calls ceased.
Lynn started to wonder if our relationship would ever grow or if it wo
uld simply remain in this type of limbo. She didn’t think I was emotionally through with Sara, so she broke it off with me.
‘I don’t know what it is, Mick,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s that Sara got sober and you didn’t, and now you are, but you’re hanging on to something. You’re not even divorced. I can’t be with you until you’ve figured that out.’
I was in Las Vegas playing a show with the Blue Whale, my blues band with guitarist Ron Thompson, bassist Bill Campbell and percussionist Oliver Brown, when I made up my mind and called her.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Lynn Frankel,’ I said. ‘I want to marry you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long silence.
‘There’s something we have to do first,’ she said. ‘Anything.’
‘We have to date.’
‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’
‘We have to date. We never dated. You have to pick me up and take me out, then take me home and go back to your hotel. We never had a courtship, we spent it all in my apartment. You have to date me and I have to date you.’
‘Well, then let’s do it.’
So that’s what we did: I’d pick her up and drop her off and sometimes not even go inside. We had a lovely, formal courtship. It lasted only a few weeks, but it was important and it was a lot of fun. Our relationship deserved it and things felt different between us immediately. It erased whatever trust issues Lynn had about my feelings for her and allowed us to begin anew.
Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography Page 27
