(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...

(part 86) NANCY, ME, AND THE ALBUM

Nancy Harwood

As I fought through the making of "Working," Nancy Harwood and I ended up subletting an apartment from Timmy Rooney, one of Mickey Rooney's sons. It was located across the street from the Shoreham Towers, where Diane Linkletter lived on the 6th floor.

I'd moved out of Howard Gilliam's house after he found out he couldn't make me do what he wanted. I had argued with him about performing solo at the Whiskey A Go Go, and he'd lost his patience with me over my final position. I told him that if he'd help me put a band together I'd do it. Howard's position was I didn't need a band, which had also been the position of Tony Alamo, and one that I'd rejected.

Anyway, that led to a break between Howard and me, so Nancy and I moved on. We ended up with a roommate in the new place, because he already lived in the apartment. His named was Ed Durston. I didn't want another roommate, but it was the only way Nancy and I could afford to live there.

The apartment was on the second floor of the building. Below us lived another musician named Jimmy George. Over the next few months I would get to know these people pretty well, plus a number of others, and they would all play a major role in another turning point in my life.

Ed Durston was a shady dude to say the least, but he was highly intelligent and quick witted, so if nothing else, he was fun to spar with mentally and verbally. I had to keep an eye on him though, because his interest in Nancy was obvious. Along with just about everybody else during those times, Ed was a loady, and to some extent that was more of a convenience than a problem. Ed always knew where to get drugs, so he did serve a purpose in the long run.

Both Timmy Rooney, and his brother Mickey Jr, were always dropping by the apartment to see how we were doing. They were well acquainted with Diane Linkletter, and within a short period of time, Nancy and I would get to know Diane as well.

As far as the album went, parts of "Working" had been heavily affected by the constant drugging and drinking that had become synonymous with the personality of Bobby Jameson. Some of the album's odder points are the vocals which were perfomed by me while drunk.

"Singin The Blues," "Ain't That Lovin You Baby," and "Norwegian Wood" are the most notable choices. There is no other way to say it except that I was "fucked up" when I recorded these songs. As well, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "Don't Think Twice It's Alright" were affected as well.

This may all seem repetitive and boring to some, but it is indicative of the physical and psychological slide I was on. There is, and was, a reason for everything, and what I am relating here is important, as fact, to the overall story as it truly unfolded at the time.

Each successive decline contributed to the next decline, etc. So the making of "Working," it's strengths and weaknesses, became a reflection of my life and visa versa. As the album went, so went I, and as I went, so went the album. They were never separate from each other. They were one thing.

This is why I ultimately crashed and burned as a human being. I had no ability to put each in it's own place. If one failed the other failed right along with it, and that was the case with "Working."

Both "Palo Alto" and "Bout Being Young" were solid performances, which is not to say you should like them or not, they were just handled with a lot more care than some of the others. If in fact the whole album was a piece of garbage, as some seem to think it was, and is, then I would have crashed even sooner than I ultimately did.

It was my hope that there was enough good about the album to override it's apparent weaknesses, and that is what kept me hanging on by a long thin thread. Nancy was always by my side during these times, reenforcing my value as an artist, and person, even when I was not capable of doing the same for myself.

She knew how important she was to me, and I knew how important I was to her. We were connected together by some invisible bond that was impenetrable by the world around us. Nancy saw the absolute best in me, no matter what anyone else said or thought, it was absolute.

There was no question for her about me, and likewise was my reliance on her. We walked through some very heavy shit together, and to this day I have nothing but the highest of praise to offer her. If the world had more people like Nancy Harwood it would just be a far better place for everyone, period.

She gave far more to me than she ever tried to get for herself, and I was extremely lucky to have known her and to have had her with me during those times. When the world came crashing down on top of me, and it always did and still does, Nancy was there to help scoop me up off the pavement, that's just the way it was then, and it never changed.

(part 85) BROKEN WINDOWS Written and sung by Bobby Jameson "WORKING"

"Working" is the most obscure of the 3 Jameson albums. Because of that, far less attention has been paid to this work, and that continues to be the case. Other than my friend at "Echoes In The Wind," and a couple of other music blogs, almost no one has ever heard this recording until now.

There is no built in interest for this album, like there was for "Color Him In" and Chris Lucey's "Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest." As well, the other two recordings have been reissued as cd's while "Working" has not.

As I move into this particular segment of the Bobby Jameson story, possibly some of the interest has fallen off, proving there is more curiosity for certain specific parts, than there is interest in the whole story. Like a buffet, people stop in to sample what they have a taste for, and then leave with a doggy bag of scraps for later.

Unfortunately for me, I am stuck with the whole story. Not only the telling of it, but having to relive it once again. I struggle through my emotions and the past, trying to remember it all in some detail. But as I continue, I am aware that there is less interest in "Working," and what is contained musically between the grooves, as it were.

Because of this, I assume there may be some surprise at hearing a country song like "Broken Windows" on the record, which is one of 3 songs I wrote for this album. But I am confident as well, that if you take the time to listen to the music from "Working," you just might find what my friend Whiteray, from the blog "Echoes In The Wind" found: That "Working" is a highly personal creation by an artist, and is an album recorded in 1968 by the same person who made "Color Him In" in 1966, and "Songs Of Protest" in 1965.

This blog is the only complete and accurate source of information and music on the planet regarding the musical career and life of Bobby Jameson (aka) Chis Lucey that exists. It is not here to make you like me, or agree with me. It is here as an ongoing historical record of factual information regarding the specific subject matter of the history of Bobby Jameson. It is more like a human museum than a blog for passers by.

If you hear clicks and scratchy noises on all of the recordings from "WORKING" posted here, it's because they have been taken directly off 40 year old vinyl.

Once again I must thank Red Rhodes, James Burton, Jerry Scheff, Ben Benay, and Toxi French for their wonderful work...