(part 92) SHARON TATE AND DIANE LINKLETTER GONE

Sharon Tate



In the early part of August 1969 we woke to the Murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and a number of others. At the time it was not known who committed the act, but it none the less ran through Hollywood and surrounding area like ice water on a cold day.

This slaughter was followed, a short time later, by another equally morbid multiple homicide of innocents. There was a mind set, in late 1969, that pervaded every part of the town we lived in, as a result of this tragedy. In fact all of Southern California, and for that matter most of the world, was equally shocked by the grisly front page news. There was a totally negative view of Hollywood and L.A. in general.

You couldn't escape the sense of dread, it was everywhere. It hung in the air for a long and persistent period of time. In my mind it summed up the way I felt about life itself: That at any moment, you could just fold up and die. I am not trying to be morbid, or unnecessarily grim, I am telling you exactly how it was at the time following both killings.

As stated earlier, I was already on my own downhill slide into a personal hell. So this occurrence, as you might imagine, just added to my degenerating outlook. I knew by then that everything in my life was caving in, and that Nancy and I couldn't afford to live in the apartment on Horn Ave. any longer.

I wasn't getting paid and Nancy wasn't working. Up until then she didn't have to, but all of a sudden we were forced to scramble, and that's what we did. We had about a month or so left in the apartment, but after that we didn't know. Fact was, we were piss poor at dealing with reality on a day to day basis. Our choice for coping with this mess was to get extremely loaded, and act as if everything was gonna be fine, which it wasn't.

So that was how we dealt with the sinking ship. We moved the deck chairs to the upper deck and ordered cocktails. Unfortunately, the process of refusing to take responsibility for my own life, and that of those around me who were affected by my choices, led to an overwhelming sense of defeat deep within me that was lethal in the long run.

I just couldn't find what I'd always used in the past. The attitude of "Fuck it! I'll just make another record and get on with it." This time was different. I just didn't care. I couldn't get it going, because the nagging sense of "What's the use" had for the first time in my life taken refuge in my thinking.

It was the most debilitating sense of hopelessness I had ever encountered, and was magnified by current events, and the abuse of drugs and alcohol. The only relief at the time was more drugs and more alcohol to blot out reality, which of course made it worse.

I have no recollection whatsoever of Diane Linkletter being a big drug user. To the contrary. She was around all of us when we were fucked up, but she was not fucked up. I am not saying she never got loaded, but what I am saying is that she was not excessive.

We respected her for that, because she kept her shit together. That's how I remember her, as dignified and together, within a framework of utter distraction perpetrated by the rest of us. Nancy was not chaotic either, but indulged more than Diane.

I knew Diane was prone to becoming depressed and forlorn over problems with her father, but I never thought it was something to get overly concerned about. Right before Nancy and I left the apartment on Horn Ave., for good, I spoke with Diane privately for the last time.

She had just inherited a quarter of a million dollars for her 21st birthday and told me it didn't mean shit to her, and that she really didn't want to take it, because it just made her feel more controlled by her father, Art. I told her, "Fuck it! Take the money Diane, and then go do what you wanna do." She agreed that that made sense, and I believed she was OK when I left her. I had no idea how wrong I was going to be.

Nancy and I moved into an apartment on Sweetzer Ave. in West Hollywood. I agreed to be the gardener for an a apartment building, managed by a guy named Joe Steck and his wife Judy, who had once been a dancer at the Whiskey. Joe wrote the screenplay for Waterhole #3, a movie with James Coburn. I don't remember how I met Joe, or why I agreed to be the gardener, but Nancy and I needed a place to go, and that's where we ended up in late 1969.

The Stecks said we could give their telephone number to a few people so they could contact us. I still remember the day I got the call from Timmy Rooney. "Hey Tim," I said, "How's it goin?" "Not so good," he answered, "I guess you didn't hear." "Hear what?" I asked. "Diane," he said, "Diane what?" I asked. "Diane, she committed suicide." There was dead silence on the phone. I couldn't make my brain incorporate what I'd just heard.

(part 91) "WORKING" AND NOT WORKING

1969 sucked! It drug along like a carcass looking for life. GRT Records released "Working," but no one even knew it. It was just like it didn't exist at all. No promotion of any kind, no nothing. It just got pressed up as a piece of vinyl, and put into a jacket, and that was that.

As the reality of this drained into my consciousness, I started giving up as a person way down deep inside. I began to realize at depth, the pathetic nature of my time in the record business. With limited exceptions, pretty much everything I'd done had been a dismal failure.

I'm not talking about what people ultimately felt and thought about my work 40 years later, I'm talking about the sixties when all this happened. At one point I got Bobby Darin to listen to "Working" so I could get his opinion about it. After listening to the album he began chopping it to bits, and telling me why it was bad here, and why this didn't work, etc. I left even more deflated than ever.

All I wanted to do was get loaded and stay loaded. I was tired of my life and trying to fit into a business, and town, that didn't want me on any level. I remember the day Bob Ross announced he would not continue to pay me the $100 a week for writing songs for his company.

My response to this was to go to Bob Ross Music, and grab the 24 track master to "Working," and start to walk out the door with it. I was stopped by a guy named Howard, a Bob Ross lackey, and questioned by him.

"What are you doing with that tape?" he asked, "I'm taking it!" I said. "I can't let you do that Bobby, it belongs to the company," Howard said. "Fuck you and the company," I replied, "And get the fuck outta my way." Howard knew about me and was not too eager to get into a direct conflict, because everybody pretty much thought I was nuts by that time, and were afraid of me.

Howard let me by, and I left with the tape, which I still have in my possession today. The only thing I regret is not getting both tapes. I have half of the entire "Working" master on 24 track.

I was busted for grand theft auto in 1969 in Benedict Canyon by the LAPD Valley Division, along with Ed Durston, and Harvey Dareff, Diane Linkletter's boyfriend. We didn't steal a car or anything; we were in a rental car that no one had paid the rent on, but we didn't know that at the time we were stopped.

I was the driver. It was a Cadillac, and I'd gone up to Benedict Canyon to show those guys where I used to live in 1964, with Lois Johston. I continued to drive up through the canyon, when we were stopped by the police and arrested. Three days later they got the story straight and let us all go.

The reason I tell you this is, because Benedict Canyon is where the Tate Murders occurred some time later, which is why I'm mentioned on the Manson site, along with Harvey Dareff. We'd been in the vicinity prior to that event. The two things were not connected, but the record of our having been nearby caused us to be looked at by the police.

I in no way believe my explanation will satisfy you, but I offer it forth anyway as factually accurate. After going through the previous year of my life, I no longer believe in the good intentions of human beings. Some people are fine, but many more are looking for every crappy thing they can dig up on me. This has been the case for decades.

This is my story, and I have to expect the worst, but hope for the best in telling it. I need to reiterate my dismay at the human condition which has not improved at all since I dropped out of sight 23 years ago and returned last year. Things are pretty much the same as before, maybe worse.

(PART 90) REV-OLA'S USE OF DIANE LINKLETTER'S DEATH

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The issues discussed in the piece below pertaining to Steve Stanley have been resolved in a positive and constructive manner since the posting of this part.

In my hands is the paper fold out from Rev-Ola Records reissue of the Chris Lucey album-cd "Songs Of Protest" from 2002. This paperwork is in every Rev-Ola Chris Lucey cd issued. The text herein was written by Steve Stanley and published, manufactured, and distributed by Rev-Ola Records, Cherry Red Records, and ACE Records UK, who licensed, without my permission or knowledge, Chris Lucey "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest" to Rev-Ola Records UK.

The entire deal, between these entities, is legally questionable, but what is significant here, and downright pathetic, is Rev-Ola's use of the Linkletter suicide, and my connection to Diane's untimely death in 1969.

I will quote verbatim what is printed here, and what I became aware of in my first reading of this text, when I was sent a single used copy of the cd by Steve Stanley in 2003.

"Art Linkletter had a television program entitled "Kids Do The Damndest Things" and he couldn't have been more right about that on the night of October 5th 1969. On this date, his own daughter, Diane Linkletter (originally turned on to LSD by none other than Bobby Jameson) apparently took her own drug-induced leap into infinity.

Diane jumped out of the sixth floor kitchen window of her Shoreham Drive apartment in West Hollywood. This event occurred around the same time that Bobby made his own infamous leap off the Continental Hyatt House.

Interestingly, an autopsy report later revealed no traces of LSD in her system. It's likely that Linkletter was experiencing a flashback as she was famously known as the "mother of all acid trips."

Minutes before her leap, she complained to her brother, Robert, that her "brain was being destroyed" and she "had to kill herself."

What is exasperating about this, is even within the lines of what is written here, it states that an autopsy report showed no signs of LSD in Diane's body, yet the freewheeling use of my name, and the assertion that Bobby Jameson had provided the drug to a dead girl, was printed here anyway.

This was done purely for effect, by those responsible for making this publicly available at my expense, as well as Diane Linkletter.

The business decision, by certain individuals, that juicy tidbits make fore good publicity, whether true or not, and help sales, will forever be on the backs of Joe Foster, Rev-Ola Records, Steve Stanley, Cherry Red Records, and ACE Records UK, who claim to own outright the rights to my work, and have benefitted financially as a result of the reissue, along with the rest I have named here.

Oh by the way, the one person who did not benefit from the release of the Chris Lucey cd was Chris Lucey himself, otherwise known as Bobby Jameson.

The information written into Rev-Ola's reissue package, was attributed to Kim Fowley, the source, according to Steve Stanley, when I asked him where this crap came from. Kim Fowley is the last person that should be asked about the facts of this incident.

Some of you wonder why I bring this up, so I will tell you: Rev-Ola Records used the linkletter suicide to help promote their product and increase sales of the Chris Lucey cd. I am at the point in my own story, where the Linkletter suicide is currently being written about by me, from the period of 1969 in my life. Because of that, the use of her death by Rev-Ola, is relevant to my telling of my own story on this blog.

I did not make the decision to use Diane Linkletter's suicide as a promotional gimmick to sell records. Rev-Ola Uk, and everyone connected to Rev-Ola's reissue of my work made that particular choice.

I am sure that friends of Joe Foster, Steve Stanley, Kim Fowley, and others, will all be up in arms at what I am writing here, and will scold me for talking about how what they did effects my life. It is clear to me, that my welfare is completely unimportant to these people, as it was in the past. Their feelings, and their good names, will possibly be tarnished by my words, but in fact mine have been tarnished as well.

This post was left in tact to preserve the original narrative of the overall blog. See Steve Stanley's posted email in (part 93), and my response in (part 94) of this blog.

(part 89) ART LINKLETTER CONTROL FREAK

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Shoreham Towers home of Diane Linkletter

This is a picture of the Shoreham Towers, the building where Diane Linkletter lived. Across the street on Horn Ave., is where Nancy and I lived with Ed Durston. As I mentioned earlier, Diane had a major problem with her dad, Art Linkletter. He was a control freak, and successfully intervened in every single attempt by Diane to have a boyfriend.

When I got to know Diane, she'd met, and was extremely happy about it, a guy name Harvey Dareff, who I found out in the long run was a pretty good guy who saw more in Diane than her famous name and bank account. When her dad found out about Harvey, he pulled his usual bullshit, and appeared on the scene to carry out his dirty work.

Art Linkletter showed up to meet Harvey one day, and shoved a $10,000 check in Harvey's face, and told him to take the money and stay away from Diane. Harvey took the check and tore it into little pieces and threw it in Art's face and said, "No!" To Art Linkletter, this act by Harvey cancelled out the theory that all any guy wanted from Diane was her money. It also infuriated Art.

When I found this out about Harvey, I accepted him as a friend and as someone who cared more about Diane as a person, and not just a meal ticket. I never changed my opinion of Harvey. On the street we would call him a "righteous dude" implying that there was more to old Harvey than met the eye.

Art Linkletter was incensed that his crappy little game had backfired. He set out to get rid of Harvey one way or another, which again, he was successful in doing. Art liked control. He would go to any length to get his way, period. More than anything else in Diane Linkletter's life, this incident proved to be the final straw, and catalyst that pushed Diane over the edge.

In conversations with me, she complained that her life was not worth living, unless she could get her father to stop screwing up every relationship she attempted to have. She told me she had even started having relationships with other women, because she was so lonely. That too proved to be another ticket to more of Diane's sorrow.

The trouble with people like Art Linkletter, is that they have constructed a false image of goodness around themselves, and use it to manipulate the world around them to their own satisfaction. Prior to Diane's death, Linkletter's oldest daughter's husband also committed suicide by shooting himself.

Maybe someone ought to ask what the fuck was going on in that family that caused two young people to end their lives in rapid succession. Art Linkletter used his daughter's death to blame all things on drugs, in an attempt to remove himself as the possible cause for the tragedy. My experience in 1969 with Diane, was that her father Art had more to do with her death than any other single factor there was.

(part 88) THE CRAP ON THE INTERNET

Below is an excerpt from a discussion group I have since quit. I assume that the person who left the comment about the Charles Manson site, and the fact that my name was mentioned, is after the same kind of garbage that this little prick was when he asked his questions and made his remarks below.

Rev-Ola Records used Diane's death, and my connection to her, in their release of the Chris Lucey cd "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest." The author of that questionable strategy is Steve Stanley. I asked Steve, Rev-Ola, and ACE Records to retract the remarks in Rev-Ola's release of my album over 5 years ago.

To this day Joe Foster and Rev-Ola have not offered any clarification regarding the remarks written and printed in their release about Diane Linkletter, and my relationship to her, even though the true facts are available. To use this kind of shit to sell cd's is bad enough, adding it to the fact that I have been paid nothing by them, makes it all that much worse. It is hard for me, even as cynic, to grasp the coldness of Rev-Ola's choice to use this garbage to sell some records.



> --- nerdalert333 wrote:
>
Rather than whining about Rev-ola, sounds like your beef's with Kim
Fowley and your hair stylist. Dude...you look like a demonic trucker.
I was always wondering who the unseen trucker was in the movie
DUEL...Now I know...It was Bobby Jameson!

--- In westcoastpsychedeliaandacidrock@..., Bobby
Jameson wrote:
>
> nerdalert333,
> Ok! Diane Linkletter was my friend. She committed
> suicide and I was said to have given her drugs. This
> is printed on the paper pullout of the Chris Lucey cd
> that Revola released. It was attributed to Kim Fowley
> as the source of information. Noboby ever asked me. It
> is not true now and was not true then. My roommate, Ed
> Dursten, was in the apartment at the Shoreham Towers
> with Diane when she jumped out her kitchen window 6
> stories up. Ed said he had a hold of her ankle when
> she went out but he couldn't hold her. My friend Jimmy
> George, another musician, was across the street at the
> time and saw her fall, he was the first one to reach
> her. All of us, including Diane's family have had to
> live with this for 40 years. Diane was my friend
> nerdalert333. She was a real human being, as am I. She
> is not a juicy story, nor am I, for consumption by
> juvenile music buffs who think cruelty is sport. As
> far as whining about a cd that only sold a few hundred
> copies, maybe if I could get an accounting from the
> people who released it, I would know for sure then,
> now wouldn't I. As for the deleting of my messages I
> feel that was the same process by which well meaning
> individuals have always controlled people like me, You
> know, the one's who whine. It is obvious at this
> point, that I have upset your nice little safe place
> with my ridiculous complaints about my cd and rights
> as an artist/writer/composer, so I am doing you all a
> favor and quitting the group,which should ease your
> mind. It will be interesting to see what you do with
> that which I have thus far posted as a member.
>
> Bobby Jameson(aka)The Whiner
> --- nerdalert333 wrote:
>
> > Question for Bobby Jameson or Chris Lucey. Since
> > you're not a big fan
> > of censorship, rather than blather on about some cd
> > that sold a few
> > hundred copies, we'd like to know more about your
> > relationaship with
> > Art Linklatter's daughter Diane.

(part 87) DIANE LINKLETTER, TIMMY ROONEY AND HOLLYWOOD PARK

Diane Linkletter


Timmy Rooney

Our apartment was at 1211 Horn Ave., directly across the street from the Shoreham Towers where Diane Linkletter lived. As I said, Nancy and I became friends with her. We thought she was one of the least screwed up people we knew in Hollywood. Timmy Rooney was the other one who seemed to have his head on straight in a town where just about everyone and everything was bent to one degree or another.

Diane would talk to me about her father Art Linkletter quite a lot. Her main problem with him, according to Diane, was that he was always trying to control her life and who was in it. Every time she'd get involved with somebody, Art would show up and give the guy money to leave, and then say to Diane, "See honey, he just wanted money, and I proved it to you by giving him some, and now he's gone. Don't you see that's all they want from you, your money and your name..?"

Diane would get real depressed over this and say, "If he'd only stop invading my privacy, and let me live my own life everything would be OK. If he'd just let me pick my own friends and have a boy friend I'd be fine."

As 1968 rolled into 1969, "Working" was finished. At that point there wasn't a hint that a label was interested and going to release it. Bob Ross had fronted the entire cost of the recording, so he was out that money until a deal was made. He was also paying me the $100 a week to write songs ever since I'd moved to his publishing company, Teresa Music, from Steve Clark's company, Since Music.

In reality I hadn't gone anywhere, it was just a change on paper, and a matter of who was signing my check. Bob wasn't rich or anything, but I guess he was comfortable. All in all there was still the need to get everything wrapped up with "Working," and get it signed to a label, so he could hope to recoup some, or all, of his investment. Fortunately for Bob the studio time was done at Harmony Recorders which he owned.

Bob Ross Music was a music copying service that had been in Hollywood for decades. He had a good reputation and a good business. It was located next door to the Vine Tower, where Steve Clark's office was, at Vine and Sunset Blvd. Bob's business was in an old Hollywood frame house that had been there for a long time. It was the old versus the new. The little frame house next to a 25 or 30 story highrise.

It symbolized the ever changing nature of old Hollywood and the go-getter bullshit-artists, like Steve, and the new Hollywood. Where once your word was your bond, as with Bob Ross, your word was now a matter of convenience for the moment, like with Steve, who was the king of bullshit and one-liners. Steve was the master of deception, and he always seemed to stay one foot in front of everybody else. But in the end this would prove to be fatal for him.

"Working" was finally acquired by General Recorded Tape, or GRT Records, as it was called. The head honcho, on the west coast, was another murky individual named Ron Cramer, who was one of the worst record company executives I ever met. Steve and Ron Cramer worked out some sort of deal in the dark over "Working," and to this day, I have no idea what actually transpired.

I do know, that on the day I accidently found out that the contract was being signed with GRT, without me being there, I hauled ass up to the 9000 Building on Sunset Blvd., and caught Steve just as he was leaving the building, with a dark character named Tony, who was his "bookie." I got directly in front of him and said, "If you don't pay me this time for cutting that Goddamn record Steve, I'm gonna kill you."

Right there in broad daylight, on the steps of the 9000 building, I told him that to his face. Steve and Tony stared at me in kind of a numb disbelief. We all just stopped there for a minute looking at each other, and I said again, "I'm not fucking around with you Steve. I'm tired of getting screwed by you and working for free!"

I would not move from my spot in front of Steve. He seemed worried and confused by my direct assault on him. He looked over at Tony who was equally surprised. "Well how much do you want?" he asked. I said, "A $1000." He stared at me a moment an then said, "OK! I guess I can manage that."

He looked at Tony again, and Tony nodded his approval. At that point we all went back into the 9000 building where there was a bank, and walked out minutes later like buddies. From there, Steve, Tony, and I all went to Hollywood Park race track together and got drunk.

Looking back I can see why Steve was so easily persuaded to pay me $1000..... That's all it ever cost him..... and all I ever got...