Vol. I, Clip 3: The Vampyres Of New York
December 28, 2015
Book I, Clip 3
The Vampyres Of New York
A Novel
by
R.E. Prindle
If you haven’t experienced that kind of mental agony you don’t know. I tossed and turned all afternoon and into the night. My brain was racked but not with pain. It was like all the connections had come loose and I had no control of my mental processes. There was no way to concentrate, to organize my thoughts to possibly think or be rational. It was like three fevers without temperature racking around in my brain.
I was exhausted and then possibly at one in the morning I heard a knocking. I sat up in bed wondering who in the world it could be. Then I heard Gaines again: Hello, I’m back. Let’s talk.
Well, Gaines! Of course I knew what was happening then. I was at that level of experience and conditioning between the birth process and more conscious experience. I had already cleared out the most compelling of my childhood fixations at forty-two when I integrated my personality. That freed me from compulsions and inhibitions but I gradually learned that there was another layer of control or influence yet beyond my reach. Gaines had now shown up so it was possible to free myself from that psychological layer. Small comfort at eighty but then few if any become so clear. Freud and Jung certainly never attained it. I flattered myself that I could be unique. The first of the New Men. Don’t smile, it was a pleasant thought.
This wasn’t the first incident of interior dialogue my mind had spoken to itself. I heard what they call voices back in my early teens. Of course like St. Augustine I had been convinced that one could talk to God. Unlike Augustine I wasn’t crazy enough to persist when God couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know when I asked.
And then back then I heard voices telling me to do inappropriate things like Kill your mother and Chuckles but I shut them up; I wasn’t to going to jail for any reason. And now, here was Gaines a more or less rational entity who would try to convince me to do evil I was certain. As in primeval days I was attached to the God Principle while Gaines was representing the Satanic Principle.
He seemed to be lodged in the right hemisphere just behind and above that ear. This puzzled me somewhat as I would have thought he would have been part of my Animus or Ego that being the male side of the brain; instead he was on my female side.
Then I realized that when Gaines had taken up a primal position in my consciousness I was sitting on the back steps of the Orphanage. When my mother had put me in the Orphanage and had walked away she had created this space in my mind, this psychological layer. Gaines and his evil comic books was therefore associated with my mother. Oh yes, my mother. Sometimes I wish I had heeded those early voices and offed both her and Chuckles. Chuckles, that mean assed bastard, was her second husband. They married when I was ten and I then came out of the Orphanage.
Well, you know, as I always told myself, you have to play the hand you’re dealt. I think I can say without comment that I played that lousy hand well. Here I was in New York City, the capital of the world, in a thirty million dollar apartment. Gaines wasn’t going to be a problem, after all, he was me and I was him. I had the upper hand with the God Principle on my side while Gaines might as well have been Abe Goldbladder of the Satanic Principle. I will discuss that more in my presentation to the New Serapion Brethren.
I was inside my skull with Gaines but my mind had cleared up, I might as well get started.
‘So, Gaines, what brings you here?’ A silly question because I already knew the answer. Still, in order to extinguish him I had to play along. However I did think it necessary to call in my old psycho-analyst Dr. Anton Polarion as an assist.
Who is Dr. Anton? I’m embarrassed to say this because then you might think I really am crazy. But that’s alright, I may be.
Dr. Anton Polarion came around several years ago when I was deep in my psychological studies. I was working a number of fields of study and I needed someone to handle the psychology for me when I was working another field. It was then I thought up Dr. Anton giving him the responsibility for memorizing and developing psychology.
I know it sounds kind of crazy but it’s not. Dr. Anton was and is a memory aide. If you read up on the art of memory you will learn that in Greek and Roman times people constructed memory palaces of many rooms extensively furnished and then assigned memories to various rooms and objects in order to more conveniently record them, prodigious feats of memory are recorded. Oh alright, but I wasn’t going to wander around a Memory Palace trying to find various rooms and objects with their assigned memories so I just handed the job to an imagined Dr. Anton rather than a Memory Palace. You can understand that can’t you? Seems reasonable enough to me but you never know what other people will think. Anyway Dr. Anton knows whereof he speaks. So when it comes to hearing voices it was now two to one against Gaines and I had another Ace or two up my sleeve.
I was loaded for bear and I was sure I could kick Gaines’ ass. Still, I had to hear Gaines out.
‘So Gaines, as I said, what brings you here?’
‘I’ve got some good advice for you,’ said Gaines.
‘Knowing who you are Gaines I doubt it could be good.’
‘Oh ho, you think you know who I am do you? Who am I?’
‘This will take some time Gaines but you’ve got as much as I do. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Your showing up here, now, puts things in place. I’m going to call in Dr. Anton for support. You know who he is don’t you Gaines?’
‘Of course, of course. I know as well as you know me. Hello Anton, welcome to the conversation.’
Anton: Hello Gaines. Well, let’s get started.
Partly: The key here is the Orphanage and me sitting on the back step reading Tales From The Crypt. That was one sado-masochistic piece Gaines with a certain portrayal of women. Strangely that portrayal was reminiscent of my mother. It is between you and my mother that this psychology revolves around.
Anton: Yes, your mother transferred her hatred of your father to you after she had put him away and tried to destroy any happiness for you. It is no coincidence that after she had your father committed to the asylum she committed you to the Orphanage. Of course, she had ‘good reasons’ for doing so but they weren’t the real reasons. When you turned eighteen she thought she had you again, enlisting you in the Navy and having you shipped off somewhere where she would never have to see you to remind her of her crime against your father. Thus the association of your mother, sado-masochism and Gaines.
Gaines also provides your connection to the Jews although that application came later in life. The content of Gaines’ comics, the sado-masochism, is part of the Jewish Weltanschauung that Freud expressed so well and it is that that Judaicized you, making the Jewish culture part of your own. It is that part, this Satanic consciousness that drags your spirit down causing your chronic low depression. We’ll try to shake it here but it may now be integral to your mentality.
Leaving Gaines for a moment the pre-Gaines component was your mother’s extreme selfishness. Of course your mother was three months gone when she married your father. This didn’t create so much guilt as anger. She held your father responsible preventing her from doing whatever she thought she would be doing later. You were born in 1938 in the depths of the Great Depression.
Jobs were not easy to come by and although your father was a good provider, that is you had a roof over your head and a shack to live in, even so your father ran out of jobs so he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and went to work planting forests. He was a good man; he sent most of his money to your mother. She unfortunately as you would learn was not a good woman.
It is difficult at this point to retrieve her motivation but she got laid in the back of a Chevrolet in the parking lot of a grocery store as you know well, Perry. She became pregnant with the little bastard palmed off to you as your brother. A child of sin he has always remained so. A point came where the pregnancy could no longer be concealed.
Needless to say the realization made your father angry. In an attempt to learn the culprit he began to punch her out. In the way of women she was stout refusing to give up his name. Your father said things like ‘I am out working CCC to provide for you and you’re out, words that were unintelligible to you. Do you remember that Partly?
Partly: Yes I do.
Anton: Less than two and half and you remember! What a memory Perry. The bastard was born, your father left and you saw him only once more several months later. Do you know what happened to him?
Me: No. Never saw him again after that last time.
Dr. Anton: Your mother had him committed to the insane asylum and he lived there all his life and died there.
Gaines: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You can’t know anything he doesn’t Anton. Where’s this coming from?
Dr. Anton: Just as you have been suppressed until now Gaines so has the knowledge I’m now revealing. It came in bits and pieces and I have put it all together. Partly is just now realizing it.
Where was I? Yes, committing him was a sadistic act on the part of a guilty woman. But it didn’t stop there Partly. To assuage her guilt while indulging her sadism she had removed her husband but you, a reminder of her crime, remained. She transferred her affection to her bastard and set out to torture and frustrate you. You remember the nightmares you had in high school where your mother was constantly betraying you? That was a subconscious recognition of what you wouldn’t allow yourself to acknowledge but still you knew.
The Orphanage was just four blocks from your grandparents house where you were living. She had to know the effect it would have on your mentality, you certainly did, but just as she had put her husband away in an asylum she put his memory away in another institution, the Orphanage.
Do you remember this Partly?
Me: Sure Anton, I remember but not as clearly and well organized as you do.
Dr. Anton: You’d be a better man for learning it although at eighty who gives a shit. You’ll take it to your grave soon enough.
Me: That’s alright Anton, I’ll die, as you say, a better man.
Anton: So your mother dropped you off and you were led away just like in prison or the asylum but with slightly better conditions. And thus you began to become who you used to be before your personality integration that introduced this current phase of your life at forty-two.
You became quite independent in that harrowing situation of the Orphanage. Fate left that copy of Tales From The Crypt lying on that little porch and a pain equal to your being abandoned seared your soul again striking through your subconscious to the structural level here. You were no longer a free man but controlled from, for lack of a better term, your subconscious. I don’t know how you made it through but here you are.
Your mother’s remarriage to the maniac Chuckles who was a match for your mother’s sadism nearly destroyed you during those eight long years until graduation. Enough of that for now. Let’s deal with Gaines here.
Me: Can we get rid of him?
Gaines: Hell no!
Dr. Anton: He is unfortunately part of the warp and woof of your personality but I’m pretty certain we can modify it and reduce his Satanic level considerably.
Gaines: Over my dead body.
Dr. Anton: Preferably Gaines, that is what we’re shooting for.
With that I collapsed back into my pillow exhausted but calmer with less of a feverish feeling. I was breathing somewhat heavily. I knew that this was a significant psychological event that had not yet achieved resolution and I was afraid to lose the thread. After about an hour Dr. Polarion returned. Anton was not an alter ego as Gaines but functioned more as a guardian angel, a good spirit so I welcomed him.
‘We’ve got to handle Gaines Partly.’
‘Yes. What is your suggestion Anton?’
‘This. It seems that Gaines is functioning as a node for a constellation of similar events. The two obvious strands of the constellation are he, that is your Jewish experience, and your mother. The first step must be to disentangle your mother and put her into her own constellation to be dealt with later. You already have a decent handle on her.
That leaves Gaines and your Jewish experience which is a distinct constellation which when knowledgeable about it you’ve done a lot a preparatory groundwork but certain resolutions are still necessary. That constellation has to be distended into its planetary elements so that each can be identified and dispensed with.
In addition there may be other elements concealed within or behind the constellation of which we have yet no knowledge. Time will tell.
And then there is what Gaines wants you to do which is why he’s made his appearance now. We’ll have to listen and go from there. You and I do understand that what he wants is going to be ridiculous and dangerous.
Me: OK Anton, your analysis is good and I do have a good idea what Gaines wants; I’ve also got my arguments ready and can direct him. But, God, this is painful.
Anton: Yes Partly, self-realization can be trying and I’m sure you’re in agony. You remember Hubert Selby the fellow who wrote his novel Last Exit To Brooklyn?
Me: Oh sure, Anton. Very interesting story. He was probing his mind to write his story. That once when he came up against a particularly painful remembrance it shattered him so that he had to take to his bed for a week writhing in agony. I can’t afford the time for that now. I have things to do and fields to plow.
Anton: You may have more than you think Partly. Get some rest and I’ll get Gaines back here in an hour or so. Control your feelings.
With images of Jekyll and Hyde in my fitful dreams was the titanic struggle of the Shadow with evil and the images of Superman and Clark Kent. Good must triumph over evil although it might not be as clear cut a victory as one might hope.
Just before dawn Dr. Polarion returned and shortly thereafter I heard Gaines’ Hello, I’m here.
Me: Alright Gaines. I’m ready.
Anton had already disentangled my mother from the constellational complex so he and I were dealing with just the Gaines/Jewish constellation. In that obscured constellation other traumas wouldn’t be clear at this time.
‘What’s up Gaines?’ Anton asked quietly with an implied menace that he wasn’t going to listen to nonsense.
Gaines: Why so hostile Doctor Polarion.
Anton: We know what you’re up to Gaines. I have to tell you that we know who you are and where you’ve come from so your Satanic power is negated.
Gaines: Oh, aren’t we clever. What is my pedigree Dr. Polarion?
Anton: Simply this: You infected Partly’s mind on that stoop of the Orphanage with your sado-masochistic claptrap. Partly only semi-consciously took in the sado-masochistic sexuality without knowledge of sex, he had to repress your Satanic influence and with some few exceptions he did. As he knew nothing of Jews and your own Jewishness that puzzling aspect of your Satanity was filed away for future reference. In the meantime following Jewish propaganda he was conditioned to revere Jews and did so.
Then in winter of nineteen fifty-eight in a fit of sado-masochistic lunacy the Jews pre-empted all TV channels at the same time on Saturday prime time and broadcast the most incredible pornographic sado-masochistic program imaginable. An hour of graphic snuff films depicting naked dead bodies being pushed about by bulldozers. The sexual implications were horrendous. While secretly fascinated Partly was resentful of the Jews for pushing this atrocity on him. Without articulating it to himself he was fatally disgusted. Also without noticing it he associated the ‘entertainment’ with you Gaines.
Gaines: I’m disgusting?
Anton: Eminently. Now, there comes an incident that was let slip by almost without recognition. Partly’s wife, now deceased, came from a Jewish background on her mother’s side; the father was nominally Catholic. The mother wanted a Jewish wedding while fearing that Partly would object. The venue was unimportant to Partly, in fact, with his Jewish conditioning he got a little thrill from it.
However to the Jews the notion that a Jewish girl would marry a, what they considered Christian boy, was anathema to them. Her parents approached all the synagogues in the East Bay but there was only one Rabbi in the East Bay that would consent to marry the couple. This was brought about by the intervention of his wife’s mother’s sister whose family was a prominent supporter of the synagogue. Even so the rabbi insisted on an interview with Partly.
As I say, Gaines, Partly had no religious scruples to marrying into a religious family, not quite true, he would never have married Catholic, and thought to be amiable with the rabbi. Both Partly and his wife were above religion despising them as relics from a primitive age. While Partly tried to be amiable the rabbi didn’t. Partly talked to the rabbi man to man while the rabbi as all rabbis do exalted his position believing as a Talmudic scholar that that worthless information placed him not only above Partly or his fellow Jews but all humanity and most of the angels. Resenting Partly’s familiarity he insulted Partly grievously as not worthy of a Jewish girl while being a Christian dog or words to that effect. At that point his respect for the Jews, intense conditioning or no, vanished.
This event was constellated with you Gaines and the TV atrocity to negate any positive feeling he had for the Jews. A couple decades of propaganda was wiped out in an instant. Partly’s future unpleasant relations with Jews will appear subsequently.
So that’s who you are Gaines. Satan on a stick.
Gaines: Yeah, well Dr. Polarion I know where Partly lives. I know he has suffered insults, injuries and indignities from many quarters including the ones you mentioned and I know this: He wants revenge. Who do you go to when you want revenge? Satan, baby, Satan. And here I am.
Anton: True, Partly?
Me: No. It’s true I have a lot of resentments but they’re from assholes and assholes can’t help being assholes; if they could they wouldn’t be assholes so one has to ignore them. It’s their cross to bear and I enjoy watching them be assholes. If Gaines thinks he’s going to lure me into criminal activity he’s not here.
Gaines: Kiss my ass Partly. Social unrest is developing rapidly, exponentially day to day. There are hundreds of racial and religious, what the authorities are pleased to call murders rather than the acts of war they are happening every week.
I know Partly that you were trained by your experiences to be a serial killer. You know it. I don’t know how you’ve resisted up to this time but now is the time to indulge those resentments. Not only are the cops overburdened trying to deal with all the killing and raping going on but they’re afraid to leave the station. Whole cities are no go zones for them. They’ll never identify you, never track you down. Come on buddy, let your inner Mr. Hyde see some light. Now’s the time for your revenge.
Me: I think you’re right about the time being the right time Gaines but remember that Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. I’ve learned that it is true.
Gaines: Vengeance is mine saith the Lord? Listen to this guy. Are you putting me on Partly?
Me: Certainly not Gaines, certainly not. Remember you were kicked out of heaven for the religious offence of chutzpah. God stuck his boot up your ass and down you came. You always tempt men to their destruction by exploiting their own weaknesses. If I were to act in revenge I would surely be caught. Even at eighty I don’t want to be thought of as a criminal.
Gaines: No, you don’t want to be thought of as a criminal. Here’s a tip for you Partly…
Anton: I…
Gaines: You stay out of this Anton, this is between Partly and me.
As above, so below, right Partly? God’s will is supposed to prevail on earth as in heaven, right?
Me: I’m not religious but the Bible does say so. What’s your point?
Gaines: As a lawbreaker I was kicked out of heaven, right. If so, then it is God’s will that I be persecuted on earth also, isn’t it?
Me: Well, you have to believe the Bible.
Gaines: No, you don’t. Freud replaced the Bible but as a Jew he follows the Bible’s rhetoric. Freud and I are one and not only am I part of your mind but Freud is too. That’s one of my attributes that Anton the so-called psychologist forgot to mention. So, if it is God’s will that it is to be on earth as it is in heaven then it is permissible to punish Satanic practices as he punished me isn’t it? As a God fearing person it is imperative that you do so.
Well, there was a thought. The Jews consider themselves God’s viceroys on Earth and that they are doing God’s will by forcing his, or theirs really on the rest of mankind, punishing those who resist, that is anti-Semites. It was a tough argument to counter while Gaines had cleverly appealed to my suppressed desires. Anton was no help at this point.
Me: To punish is vengeance Gaines and as I say Vengeance is the Lord’s. Therefore I cannot punish Gaines, however there is the question of justice, lawbreakers should not be allowed the fruit of their crimes with impunity.
As we know God has no temporal means to effect his will on earth so he must use intermediaries as his chosen vessels hence the Jews claim to be that vessel. However if God spoke to the Jews then he can speak to me. Thus if like Saint Augustine I were to hear his voice enjoining me to administer His justice on earth as he does in heaven, that is kicking Satan off the earth then I could obey his will and be judge, jury and executioner here on earth as the Jews consider themselves. Well, Gaines, that is a thought I will have to give consideration.
Gaines: Yes it is. Further…
Anton: Hold, hold it, stop Gaines. Be gone. Hold up Partly, we have to think about this. Later Gaines, later. Go.
And with a sly wink at me Gaines wandered away. He would be back, of course. But he had given me something to think about. I knew I was going to think about it too and as Gaines knew I would rationalize his suggestion into reality but only in a ‘legal’ manner.
Anton just looked at me and shook his head. He knew what was coming. So did I but neither of us could as yet admit it.
-IV-
Once again I lay back exhausted. Still I had to get to work. In an agitated state of mind I reviewed the correcting of my piece for the New Serapion Brethren that I was titling The Vampyres Of New York. I had put some preliminary thoughts up on the internet so I was searching Vampyres Of New York when I was startled to find that there was an actual group called The Vampyres Of New York that claimed to be a worldwide organization. Its spokesman was some guy calling himself Father Sebastian. He was a young guy who would have been further ahead claiming to be Brother Sebastian; in another thirty years he might pass for a father.
Anything associating itself with vampirism had to be Satanic while the guy was absolutely touting himself as a religion. The crude Satanism of the nineteen sixties was obviously morphing into an attempt at a universal religion. This was a far cry from the historian Arnold Toynbee’s cry for a new universal religion to replace Christianity. Gaines was obviously right about the Satanism in Freud being a part of me but apparently the drive was to make Freudianism the basis of a new religion. Thus as Christianity as a Jewish based religion had represented the Godly Principle so Freud as a Jewish based religion would represent the Satanic Principle.
This was a revelation to me that while new I would have to try to work into my essay. I had to think about it a little so while I was thinking I tinkered around working out disguises. Having seen street activity for a couple weeks now I was uneasy walking around in my own skin; I didn’t want to become that well known.
So, as I thought I tried out mustaches, wigs, glasses, different outfits, so I could walk the streets so as not to become obvious. But, time was passing and I was driven back to my writing desk. I wanted to avoid Gaines as long as possible so I put in some long sessions hoping I would be so tired when I went to sleep that that bastard Gaines wouldn’t be called up. I was successful for the week left before going to Farquhar’s.
I was a day ahead of the deadline so I went out to get a couple two or three bottles of wine to take along. Wanted to show I was a regular guy. I am a regular guy but usually not that regular. Boy, NYC is an alkie’s paradise. What a fabulous selection of spirits. I don’t drink much but in my earlier days I could do a limited justice to the bottle. In those days I favored brandy. Really good stuff if you’re going to drink. Oh lord, if I had known then what New York showed my now I might have been the man who never returned.
I wasn’t after liquor though I wanted wine so I asked for and got bottles of Ramey’s Claret. Ramey is a good Napa Valley vintner while his claret is moderately priced and more than good enough, excellent in fact. The vintage was 2014 that particularly dry year and of small berries. Excellent, I thought it should go over. I’d had it before and it really is a great vintage.
For dress I wore a 1960 vintage sport coat I bought at a second hand store. Nothing was ready at James Carter and I had tried Lord and Taylor and other stores but none was showing other than those idiotic short jackets cut small and I thought I looked a heck of a lot better. Charles Tyrwhitt shirt, one of their higher priced dark blue and white mini stripes, black in a low light. So what’s a boy to do? Ralph Lauren had turned ludicrous after he left.
Ragnar drove me and my bottles of wine up to fifty-second street off Madison to Farquhar’s condo, very good, twelfth floor. As I entered the building an explosion went off maybe three blocks away in some direction I couldn’t determine. Somebody was acting up, hard to tell who. It was beginning to happen fairly regularly. Cops weren’t catching anybody. So many people and organizations were claiming credit for these things it must have been a nightmare investigating these things using only electronics.
As these things were getting more frequent they didn’t even make the headlines in New York while except for certain sites on the internet the rest of the country was totally ignorant of them. The permanent Obama administration was still trying to explain them away as the work of domestic terrorists, actually by now the terrorists were domestic although not so-called White Supremacists. If by Global terrorists it was only just that we should be bombed as was said and that brought the thought of Gaines back as Lessing was rattling the locks on the other side of the door.
Once that ritual was completed I was admitted into a small foyer with a second door and a number of locks which were only locked at night or when Lessing was away. The door was now open for which I was grateful.
Through the second door one entered directly into a large living room, perhaps eight hundred square feet cutting straight through the apartment to the floor to ceiling windows that looked into the windows across the street unfortunately.
The room was comfortably decorated with expensive furniture but not the costliest. The usual New York abstracts, tasteful, were on the wall facing lovely floor to ceiling bookshelves admirably stocked. Books do furnish a room, don’t they?
I was the last to arrive. Seated, looking at me with expectant bemused expressions were Max Savings, Mark Giusty and Baron Cammell the other members of the New Serapion Brethren. Lessing was apparently a bachelor or, as I was to find, a widower.
As I could see I was the oldest of the four. Lessing was seventy-two but still in his prime. How well I remember being fourteen and finding the age of seventy incomprehensible as young people still do. While even people in their thirties and forties expect people of seventy or eighty to be decrepit. Most of us aren’t. Certainly Lessing and I were in full vigor. Diet helps, three or four years earlier I had been compelled to give up my sugar diet, and I mean I love sugar, and that and an improved diet recharged me considerably.
Lessing was more robust than I being taller, probably six-two and bigger boned. He was filled out but not fat or even heavy looking, his face like mine was unlined while he had a full head of white hair as did I although mine was removable and his wasn’t. He showed a little surprise as I was nearly bald at our two previous encounters.
Lessing introduced me to Max Savings who was small, perhaps five-six, and slight. Max was the youngest at sixty-two. He was dressed like an undertaker, had a slightly weasely face with a pointed nose. He had a sharp intelligence.
Marc Giusty was Italian standing a half inch or so below me, seventy years old, still athletic looking, spent a couple hours a day in the gym as I was to learn, lean and long headed in the Italian manner, thin mustache and good features.
Last to be introduced was Baron Cammell. Baron was his first name and not a title. He would prove to be the most difficult member of the group for me.
By the time I was finished with the introductions Max had a bottle of claret open and the glasses filled. Well, you know, two fingers. One sips, this was a cultured group no full water glasses at one gulp. We accepted our glasses and looking at each other took a sip.
Lessing: Oh, very nice.
Marc: Yes. Haven’t seen the label before.
Baron: (Sniffing slightly.) Yes, quite distinctive.
Max: (Smiling.) Enough said.
Me: Yes, well, Ramey apprenticed for many years in France before setting up in Napa. I like Bordeaux style blend and claret hits the spot for me after reading all those old English novels where claret and wine were synonymous. I like this one. So, we’re all ETA Hoffmann admirers, um?
Lessing: Yes, we are that. By way of curiosity Perry, how did you come to Hoffmann.
Me: Oh, you want my origin story as the comic books say? OK Lessing, I’ve got one. I’ll do this in the best comic book style. It was a dark and stormy day back in the middle of the last century when a thirty-six year man shoulders hunched against the cold and rain looked into a shop window. Perceiving it was a book store he being a bibliophile pushed the door open. A blast of warm air hit him as heads turned to look at the stranger. The man glanced casually about at the few inside, mostly help, with no particular object in mind. His attention was caught by a slip cased set of two. Always a sucker for so-called special editions he picked it up to examine it. ‘Hmm…’ he mused to himself, ‘Selected Writings Of Hoffmann? Hoffmann who?’ Extracted, Vol. I read from the title page, E.T.A. Hoffmann The Tales. The man had heard of ETA Hoffmann spoken of most highly and of course he knew of Offenbach’s opera Tales Of Hoffmann. Twelve dollars and fifty cents. OK.
Tucking the parcel under his arm under his coat and lowering his head against the blast he proceeded down the street. I was that man.
Me: There you go Lessing and an identical copy can be found on your bookshelf right over there.
Ha, ha, ha came as a chorus from the four men: Nicely done, Perry, nicely done.
‘The lad shows promise, doesn’t he?’ said Lessing.
Max Savings: This could prove interesting.
Me: And since then then I’ve added a dozen volumes filling out, I think, what’s available in English except for that magnificent nineteenth century volume you have on your shelf.’
Lessing: That one. I’m quite proud of that find. I tramped London looking for that one. But you have never reviewed Hoffmann on your site Perry, how come?
Me. I don’t feel adequately prepared Lessing. I have added a number of Romantic writers to my library in the last four years, Kleist, Tieck and like that but nothing in the way of critical reviews so I don’t think I’m prepared to speak authoritatively. And I still have to read Goethe, the key Romantic. If you’ve read my stuff you probably are aware that I speak without concern of contradiction. I can’t do that with Hoffmann yet. So, if I may ask, give me a thumbnail of yourselves.
Lessing: I’m host so I might as well go first. The salient point is that I spent my career practicing law, mainly real estate and financial issues. That is an area where much of the money sticks to the lawyer and I am in a comfortable situation as you can see having made my share or more of the money stick to me. Although remunerative I found the law and its cases fairly loathsome so as soon as I felt financially independent I left all that behind and turned my attention to what I loved much as you have Perry. Much more rewarding.
Max Savings: I’m not quite so financially independent as Lessing and still at my desk at Chase. I certainly am not so accomplished literarily as you and Lessing but I squeeze in time in an effort to keep up.
Marc Giusty: I was a university prof all my working life, loved it at Columbia uptown here. History was my subject. Unfortunately I was just a yeoman and not a star. I wrote a few papers for academic publications and a couple slim volumes that disappeared down the memory hole but allowed me to keep my position. By the way, this is a nice wine.
Me: Glad I chose to your taste. And you Baron.
Baron: I’m somewhat of a polymath, expert in several fields. I’m working on a unified field theory to arrange the liberal arts in a chronology with commentary. That’s all you need know of me.
Me: Quite so, quite so. Now that we’ve been introduced and had a little wine what say I begin my presentation? I’m anxious for your opinion and hope to please.
Lessing: That sounds right. What is the title of your presentation Perry?
Me: I call it The Vampyres Of New York.
I noticed a little uneasiness in the Brethren at the title. Lessing spoke:
Is this a vampire story, Perry? I thought the understanding was that we present historical essays.
Me: Exactly Lessing. But lesser known aspects, other sides so to speak and that is what mine is. Don’t let the title throw you. By the way as you’re not looking at the paper I spell vampire v-a-m-p-y-r-e. I chose the spelling to indicate a difference from a Dracula type blood vampire. My essay will concern what is known as psychic vampires. When I was searching Vampyres Of New York on the internet to see if my first couple of posts had registered yet I was surprised to find that there is actually an organization called The Vampyres Of New York, spelled with a Y.
I was further astonished that it claims to be worldwide although the claim seems a little dubious. At any rate the possible leader is a guy calling himself Father Sebastian who divides his time between New York and Paris.
As you know since the first Disney version of Star Wars a recent religion has sprung up based on the concept of the Force and whatever. It seems probable that the Vampyre organization is a type of Satanic religion too. This brings to mind that after the challenge to the Jewish religion in the West after the Scientific Revolution following the Enlightenment the Western Jewish religion under the Scientific challenge dissolved into a number of splinter religions seeking a center. The center of course came from the East and was called Zionism so that Judaism with some atavism and Zion are one.
Christianity has taken longer to find a new center but under the influence of nineteenth and twentieth century Satanism we may be seeing a jelling into some form of a universal Satanic religion. It is something to bear in mind. So my historical investigation is concerned with the Jewish and Christian religious disintegration of the previous two centuries under some sort of vampiric influence. Is that alright? It won’t offend any sensibilities?
Lessing: If it is historical we have no objections.
Me: Alright. I’m pretty sure this will be a different approach to what you’re used to so I have a prologue explaining the difference between a Dracula type Vampirism and psychic Vampyrism which will concern us. This is longish but not hugely long so fill your glasses and sit back. It is written out so feel free to interrupt at any time for explanations or comments, discussions or whatever.
OK? I begin: The Vampyres Of New York.
Clip 4 following contains the text of Vampyres Of New York.
Bob Dylan: Livin’ Life On The Fly
September 11, 2015
Bob Dylan: Livin’ Life On The Fly
by
R.E. Prindle
-I-
Bob Dylan created the character of Bob the Drifter back at the beginning of the Sixties. He has since done his best to live the life of the ultimate drifter. Early influences on the persona were probably Hank Williams musical alter ego Luke the Drifter and possibly Simon Crumb the alter ego the country singer Ferlin Husky. His immediate role model was definitely Ramblin’ Jack Elliot who was born Elliot Adnopos making his adopted goyish name a cover for his Jewish identity much as Bob Dylan was doing. Thus these two very Jewish guys have lived out their lives under assumed goyish identities.
Like Ramblin’ Jack Bob Dylan further patterned his life on the life of the goy drifter Woody Guthrie.
Bob learned Jack’s style when both men lived in the early sixties folk environment of Greenwich Village in New York City. When that particular bubble burst in the mid-sixties partly through the machinations of Dylan himself who introduced electricity into the Greenwich Village folk scene a dispersion took place.
I say partly because seemingly unnoticed by everyone while being completely overlooked today The Lovin’ Spoonful with the really legendary John Sebastian and Sol Yanovsky had used an electric guitar since early 1965 while also writing their own songs.
After leaving recording for a year or two after 1966 Dylan led a sedentary life in Woodstock New York with his wife Sara and a growing family. The call of his destiny on the road was too strong with Dylan gradually edging back to the role of the roving hobo.
Mentally adrift for most of the seventies and eighties Bob then devised the perfect drifter life. He became a drifting troubadour. He not only roved but he made it pay to the tune of a billion dollars or more. He got himself a couple buses and phased through several identity crises. He styled his drifting as The Never Ending Tour.
While living his early years in Hibbing Negro music appears to have made no impression on him. He does say that he listened to Black music over the radio on stations blasting up over the central plain from locations such as Shreveport but I don’t detect that influence in his music too much. Of course, once in New York he saw the necessity for Negro roots and reacted socially.
Dylan does however know all the great C&W tunes and artists. His first great plagiarism was from Hank Snow one of the absolute greats. C&W was however not mainstream. In the peculiar White mentality C&W was rejected as ignorant White hillbilly music and I mean rejected. You had to cover up your liking of C&W as though it was the original sin. On the other hand with that peculiar mentality of Whites they were able to embrace equally ignorant Negro ghetto music as their own. I could never figure it out.
Dylan didn’t try. Sometime before he got to UMinnesota in the Fall of ’59 he realized he wasn’t he wasn’t going to make it as a rocker so he switched to Folk from Fall ’59 to January of ’61 when he left for NYC. At UMinnesota he had listened to a few Folk records while someone gave him Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound For Glory so that in some mad burst of teen infatuation he came to the conclusion that he was the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie. He adopted the persona to the best of his ability beginning to create a hokey Oklahoma drifter’s accent and vocal style.
One gets the impression that his folk act in Minnesota was raw enough that he was merely tolerated. Bob, himself, knew he was a genius so he took his half-digested act East to New York City in that January of ’61. But he was wary. Cagey then as now he decided to scope the scene before he burst upon it.
While arriving in NYC in January he didn’t make his official appearance on the Village scene until late February. Dylan himself explains that missing period by claiming to have been hustling his buns in Times Square. People have refused to take him at his word but why would he say it if it wasn’t true? Why would he say it even if it were? Dylan had very low self-esteem at the time while being a very serious drunkard. At UMinnesota he had blottoed out and spread out on the ground at full noon in the main crossroads at the U. You have to glory in your shame to do that.
We don’t know how much money Dylan had when he stepped out of the car in NYC although he was never really broke when he buskered on the street; his Ace In The Hole was the folks back home. They did send him money.
Perhaps though Dylan was so down so low that he needed to debase himself in the worst possible way. He probably did stroll 42nd St. looking to be picked up. Perhaps receiving money picked him up a little; gave him value.
As he scoped the Folk scene and picked up the odd dollar he was devising a persona to splash into the scene. His persona was totally absurd and his Ten Weeks With The Circus story would be, or should have been, seen through before he got it out of his mouth. This was sophisticated NYC for Christ’s save, New Yorkers have seen and heard every hustle ever devised. You couldn’t fool them so they must have been humoring Dylan.
Nobody could have done all the things he said he’d done and graduated from high school two years or less earlier. He also tried to conceal that he was Jewish which seems ridiculous to me, but then Dylan didn’t see the obvious Jewishness of Jack Elliot so maybe it’s just me. Anyway it took these sharp New Yorkers a year or more to figure Dylan was a little Jewish kid.
Dylan had analyzed the scene well. He realized he couldn’t go in and do what everyone else was doing. Besides there were a lot of good guitarists in the Village and Dylan wasn’t one of them. He had to shake the scene up a little. At the time the Village Folk scene was a bore. Folk was on the down trend. The New Lost City Ramblers, one of the more formidable Village folk groups were so trite they were unlistenable. While not on the Village scene I was aware of the phonograph records made by the artists and quite frankly I was amazed that anyone would record those people. I mean, like Dylan, I was a hillbilly. There were many amazing records being made by real folk artists like the Carter Family. These pale Village imitations by middle class Jews aping the mountain people were far less than authentic.
So Dylan practiced this garish voice, blew harmonica in an incomprehensible way and banged the guitar in an equally noisy and unmusical way. Bud and Travis couldn’t play guitar either. It boggles your mind to watch them flail the instrument.
People that say they liked his first couple records may very well be telling the truth but the truth is virtually no one bought them. Fortunately Dylan soon learned to write songs. They too made little impression as sung by him; sung by others, such as Peter Paul and Mary they sounded good enough to become hits. Of course, Peter Paul and Mary had that religious sounding name and earnest style that opened a lot of doors for them.
Nevertheless by 1964 Dylan was beginning to make a name for himself as a songwriter so that people were more willing to accept his bizarre performances. Andy Warhol said that Dylan began by singing political protest songs then shifted to singing personal protest songs. That change began about 1964 with his Another Side Of Bob Dylan LP.
His friend and sometime road manager Victor Maymudes said that all Dylan’s songs were about his girl friends. If you read his lyics with that in mind they will make more sense. You still have to work at it though. The language he uses really obscures the content.
It was at this point that Dylan went electric and moved out from his folk cover (Dylan said that his folk music years were just a shuck.) and began his conversion to rock and roll. Dylan began performing in high school as a Little Richard clone so the move should come as no surprise knowing what we do today. When his rock and roll phase ended in 1966 Dylan then returned to his basal influence C&W.
As he shifted to personal protest on a rock and roll frame he made his impact as ‘a spokesman for his generation.’
Dylan was never a spokesman for the generation but he was a spokesman for people with the same psychosis as his. Dylan was unbalanced as were all the people who took his message. I was one of those who Dylan characterized as ‘abused, misused, strung out ones or worse.’ Dylan converted his angst into sexual frustration and his sexual frustration into lyrics. We weren’t able to understand the lyrics because we were looking in the wrong place but we understood the songs perfectly on the subliminal level. Dylan’s psychology matched ours.
Dylan’s last album as a New York folk singer, Blonde On Blonde, also expanded his audience while also confusing those who weren’t on his wavelength. That is, people who hated him, and largely for psychological reasons, were forced to acknowledge him. At the time the LP was so far outside our musical experience that we literally had heard nothing like it before. Little Richard redux.
On the other hand I realized that he had peaked in that style and would no longer be able to continue in the same vein. At the same time the pressures of the previous five years on Dylan were such that his mind was at the breaking point and actually broke. He probably had what was called a nervous breakdown. Shortly we heard that Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident and might be dead. He wasn’t, of course, and it has never been reliably determined that there ever had been an accident. His brother David just laughs it off while many others reduce it to the equivalent of a mere scratch. Dylan himself says that his manager Albert Grossman was driving him so hard that it was killing him. He had to stop and catch his breath or die.
Dylan hadn’t yet learned to live on the road; he would master that later.
At any rate he had married his Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, Sara in 1965 and needed time out to raise a family. He did do that.
Regardless of whether he had been hurt or not he was not musically idle. About a year and a half later in December of 1967 he released the awaited new LP John Wesley Harding. The LP was a total rejection of his first incarnation. He used a crooning voice backed by a C&W band. He returned, as they used to say, to his roots. He was no longer a trailblazer, just a C&W singer. While I knew he would not follow up in the same style I was stunned by the reversion to a conventional country style. At that time no one knew that his roots were C&W.
I loved the instrumental backing of his three big albums but had no interest in what seemed to be pseudo-country with rather ordinary lyrics. (Let Me Be Your Baby Tonight.) I abandoned him completely and never have gone back. This was 1967. The next wave of the British Invasion was in progress and it was astonishing. The music was all fresh and picked up where Dylan had left off. The sounds were all new like you’d never heard before. The lyrics were nearly as inscrutable as Dylan’s. Dylan was not missed by me nor a lot of his former fans.
As I said Dylan was not idle; he was busy. The evidence of that appeared six months after John Wesley Harding. Music From Big Pink by the Band. This was relatively sensational music and lyrics. Of course The Band was Dylan’s back up and his association with Big Pink buttressed his reputation a lot. And then the legend of the Basement Tapes appeared that was even more tantalizing than the actual music although the songs from it that appeared by other artists were remarkably good.
So while Dylan left the Sixties with a much diminished reputation it was on a positive note.
-II-
The Never Ending Tour
While talent such as Dylan’s was is important, talent will not out without good luck and a helping hand. Dylan undoubtedly had both. There has always been some mystery about how a half skilled musician could show up in Greenwich Village in March 1961 and be signed to a record contract with Columbia Records seven months later in October.
People who had been around the Village were just blown away when the news got out. Dylan’s talent was not that obvious to everyone. Many could not see it at all. He couldn’t play guitar and he couldn’t blow the harp. His voice, at the time, was so raw it grated, and still does for me. He hadn’t written a song in those seven months so his much vaunted songwriting skills weren’t in evidence. Yet Robert Shelton, the music reviewer for the ultra-prestigious New York Times gave him a rave review that amazed everyone. John Hammond of CBS signed him virtually without hearing him. Other CBS staffers had such a low opinion of Dylan’s talent that they called him Hammond’s Folly. Was there something going on behind the scenes, was something happening here that the Village couldn’t understand? Listen to Positively Fourth Street and Something Happening again closely.
Well, you know, I’ve thought about this and studied this and I’ve put together the following scenarios for your delectation. Granted it is highly conjectural yet based on facts.
Remember that Dylan is Jewish and New York City including the Village was and is a Jewish colony. Being Jewish in the Village did and does count.
Back in Hibbing Minnesota the Jewish community was three or four hundred strong while Dylan’s, or Bobby Zimmerman’s, as he then was, family was chief among them.
Both Dylan’s father, Abram Zimmerman, and his mother, Beatty Zimmerman were of the Frankish sect of Judaism. Dylan’s Jewish name, Sabtai, was derived from the last acknowledged human Jewish messiah. This undoubtedly indicated the high hopes Abram had for his son as a deliverer of the Jews; in other words, a messiah.
Father Abe was the Anti-Defamation League representative in Hibbing. That may have caused some friction between himself and the goy townsmen. There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment both to Abe and Bobby Zimmerman in Hibbing. As an Orthodox Jew Abram had connections back in New York probably with the Chabad Lubavitcher sect led by its chief rabbi, Menachem Schneerson. Abram traveled frequently on religious business including to NYC.
Abram wanted son Bobby to also embrace the Lubavitcher sect. Thus, as Bobby approached thirteen and his Bar Mitzvah Abram sent back to New York for a Lubavitcher Rabbi to come to Hibbing specifically to educate Bobby in the Lubavitcher belief system. This was the rabbi Reuben Meier. In full Lubavitcher gear he was an anomaly in Hibbing where according to Dylan he embarrassed the Jewish community.
As Dylan tells it he got off the bus one day, spent a year teaching Bobby ‘what he had to learn’ then got back on the bus presumably returning to NYC his mission accomplished.
Dylan has or had a messiah complex. Still, as he observed the fate of Jesus (look what they done to him, he said) he was unwilling to pick up the cross thus never declaring himself. Still Abe had connections in NYC that could be and probably were useful bumping Dylan’s career along.
I haven’t found any evidence that Dylan ever contacted the Lubavitchers once in NYC but then it can’t be ruled out and he didn’t have to. His father could have worked with them unknown to Dylan. Still, Dylan later in life did associate himself with the Lubavitchers. Could be coincidence, of course.
Shelton who wrote his glowing review of Dylan worked for the New York Times which was and is owned by the Jewish Sulzberger family. Thus in all probability Abram called in some favors from the Lubavitchers to forward Dylan’s career. Among them Abram had some position, and asked them to make sure that Dylan wasn’t overlooked. Thus within the synagogue, so to speak, Shelton wrote his actually preposterous review of Dylan.
Now, Shelton came to New York from Chicago in the late fifties. Dylan’s future Jewish manager Albert Grossman also came from Chicago where he had owned the seminal folk club The Gate Of Horn. Shelton knew Grossman in Chicago where he wrote reviews of the folk acts.
When Grossman went East for whatever reasons in 1959 he helped found the Newport Folk Festival with the Jew George Wein. Thus the Newport Folk Festival was a Jewish organization giving them the control over who could and could not make it. Grossman hung around the Village analyzing the talent as he had plans. He didn’t necessarily let the acts come to him but he went out and created them as in Peter Paul and Mary which was his total conception. Sensing the direction of things he realized that a trio of two men and a woman with the right lineup would succeed and spread the message. His final choices were two male Jews, Noel Stookey who became Paul and Peter Yarrow and a woman Mary Travers. He chose well.
Prodded by Shelton Grossman took a look at Dylan but could see no use for him until Dylan began to write. At that point he fit into Grossman’s plans who then created Bob Dylan as a commercial entity. Dylan justified the confidence in himself when he scored with the puerile Blowin’ In The Wind. Dylan was still unlistenable to most people but with the voices of the more musical Peter Paul And Mary he began to establish his reputation as a song writer.
The Synagogue was behind him so that coupled with his talent he was given maximum and incredible exposure. Now, Peter Yarrow who was very close to Grossman, one might say almost a collaborator, said that without Grossman there would have been no Peter Paul And Mary and more importantly no Bob Dylan. Yarrow believed that Dylan’s success was due to Grossman. Luck was with Dylan then when Grossman came to town a couple years before he did while Shelton was there at the Times. You must have that luck. Grossman definitely nurtured Dylan as a songwriter and put his career on track. Whether Grossman was connected to the Lubavitchers isn’t clear but I’m sure the religious connection was there. It was all within the Synagogue; strictly a Jewish affair.
Those who closely analyze Dylan’s songs love to point out the Biblical references with which his songs have always been replete. Indeed, when Dylan was writing John Wesley Harding his mother who was visiting him during the period says that he kept a large Bible open in his living room that he would jump up to consult it from time to time. Obviously the Bible informed his lyrics as he dealt with his injunction to be the new messiah, if I am correct in my analysis.
His religious training would surface in the seventies when he explored Jesus’ relationship to the Jews. Contrary to what people believe Dylan never turned to Christianity, he was interested in the Jewish Jesus cult. At the same time he was getting the Christian take on Jesus through the Vinyard Fellowship he was studying with the Jews For Jesus cult. Indeed, when he came out as a Jesus freak at the Warwick Theatre in San Francisco Jews For Jesus people were used to proselytize outside the theatre but not the Vinyard Fellowship.
Having satisfied his curiosity about Jesus he next showed up in full Lubavitcher gear in Jerusalem. The Christians were stunned at the seeming turnabout. Rabbi Reuben Meier had not failed the Lubavitchers back in the fifties in Hibbing. Dylan came home.
-III-
On The Barricades
Jewish self-confidence was ruined in the wake of WWII but began to resume with the establishment of Israel in 1948. A feeling of power began to revive after the 1956 war; then after the Six Day War of 1967 a feeling of invincibility seized the Jewish mind. Born in 1941 Dylan was 26 in 1967. In 1968 the aborted Paris insurrection took place.
As a result of the Six Day War the New York Rabbi Meir Kahane organized the Jewish Defense League (JDC) as a terrorist organization from which came the JDO or Jewish Defense Organization. The JDO was murderous. Both were terrorist groups who engaged in serious bomb attacks in NYC and assassinations. It was pretty nutty.
At roughly the same time the Weatherman group was formed that was a combined Goy and Jewish affair designed to bring down the US government. That group was headed by the Chicago terrorist nutcake Bomber Billy Ayers. The JDL, JDO and Weathermen traced their origins back to Dylan while including Dylan as one of them. Dylan had JDL members as bodyguards and possibly JDO so at one time he seems to have been a member. More regular Jews warned him to dissociate himself publicly from the JDL and JDO so that he did disassociate them from himself at least as far as one can see.
Dylan’s association with the Weathermen if it existed was more tenuous. It would be interesting to know if through Greil Marcus Dylan knew Ayers. All groups considered Dylan a revolutionary. This could easily be inferred from songs like Subterranean Homesick Blues and Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie’s Farm No More plus many of his Negro protest songs.
Now, when Dylan was awarded the French decoration, The Legion Of Honor, in 2015 he was commended for his contributions to the Paris insurrection of ’68. What those contribution were weren’t specified; it may only have been the moral support of his songs that the revolutionaries heard as a call to arms. Or perhaps Dylan functioned as a courier during his tours throughout the world. It wouldn’t be the first time entertainers were used as covers.
In 2007 when Sarkozy had been elected President of France one of the first things he did was to call a number of people to Paris to receive awards. Three relevant Americans made the trip, Dylan, Greil Marcus and David Lynch the filmmaker.
As it turns out Dylan and Greil Marcus are or were fairly closely associated. Marcus was ostensibly a music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine, another Jewish set up, but he was also a member of the French Jewish revolutionary group, the Situationist International led by Guy Debord. Debord and his SI claim to have been the moving force behind the Paris revolt thus tightening the connection between Marcus, Dylan, the SI and the Paris insurrection. Dylan was also associated with the revolutionary group centered around John Lennon and his widow Yoko Ono.
Now, in 2001 Dylan, Marcus and future president of the United States Barack Obama were in Chicago as associates at the time of 9/11. Dylan’s LP Love And Theft was released on that date that has references that seem applicable to the destruction while Marcus published an article shortly thereafter that seemed to celebrate the attack. So Dylan’s actions seem to point to revolutionary ends.
Now, as Dylan was touring the world from the Sixties through the present he may have been a courier connecting global revolutionary activity. It would not have been wise to communicate by phone or internet in later years as phones and electronics are easily tapped so it would be necessary to communicate by hand delivered messages. Such services would have been invaluable while coded messages in songs or interviews on radio and television appearances are possible. Eric Burdon formerly of the Animals was arrested by the German authorities on that suspicion.
You don’t get awards just for being cute.
Wolf Hitler Under The Microscope
August 25, 2015
Wolf Hitler Under The Microscope
by
R.E. Prindle
After nearly a century since Adolf Hitler was made chancellor of Germany his role in the events of his times has never been clarified. The victors, as is said, write the histories to their advantage. The victors were the Judaeo-Communists and in their version of history Wolf Hitler is the supreme villain, the scapegoat to bear their own sins into the desert. But does a review of the period from a more objective viewpoint demonstrate this to be true? I think not. I think the perpetrators, the real aggressors, the Judaeo-Communists, project their own villainy unto Hitler and the Nazis.
Hitler operated within the framework postulated by the Jews who were over fifty percent of every national Communist Party, the remainder have to be viewed as their confederates. Let us review what the Jews and Communists did and what they would have done had not Nazi Germany stood between them and the total destruction of civilization.
-1-
Contrary to all expectations the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded first in Russia rather than in Germany as was supposed. Having seized the government of Russia in 1917 there was a large question as to whether they could keep it. Resistance to their rule was fierce if futile in the end. Armed resistance continued for at least three years in what the West considered a civil war but which the combatants believed was a continuation of the World War. Indeed, the English, French, Japanese and Americans maintained forces within Russia for those years.
The world justifiably feared a Bolshevik victory, for in fact the Bolsheviks utterly destroyed civilization in Russia returning the country to a state of barbarity. Perhaps the barbarity was of such a quality that it wasn’t a return but a new thing, unseen in the history of the world before. It certainly burst upon European sensibilities in that way.
Europeans watched aghast as all the appurtenances of civilization were stripped away leaving a desolate starving people to exist as they might as Soviet hounds murdered and arrested filling concentration camps with the least of the dissenters and critics.
In addition to Lenin proclaiming the world wide Bolshevik Revolution he created the Communist International sending agents to every country in the world to create discord. Revolutionary attempts were fomented in Germany in several places as in Hungary, Poland and Vienna. At the same time soviets were organized in England, France, the US, everywhere. It truly looked as though the Bolsheviks would triumph worldwide.
Screaming their war cry of expropriate the expropriators, loot the looters, the Bolshevik government stole anything of value from private citizens while looting the public treasury and the churches. They took priceless artefacts and whatever gold they could find. Hitler was a mere piker compared to the Soviets.
Having completely ruined the ample Czarist economic basis in the mad orgy of looting the Bolsheviks learned that without production there was nothing to tax. The revolution found itself penniless except for the expendable wealth accumulated under the Czars. But once that was gone and it went fast when everything including food had to be purchased from outside the country so that the Bolsheviks were reduced to bartering diamonds, jewels, old paintings, furs, the Church icons. Nor did the income go to feeding the people, the leaders had fleets or Rolls Royces, also looted, that had to be maintained.
One good thing about the impoverishment of the people is that there were no other cars on the road to interfere with Lenin’s and Trotsky’s driving pleasure.
As I say, the Europeans viewed this folly aghast as they desperately put down all the revolutionary attempts. They could imagine the purges of tens even hundreds of millions murdered or gathered into concentration camps as slaves to be worked to death.
But, what if the Bolsheviks had succeeded in conquering Europe which they would have done except for one shining knight who arose in Germany, Adolf Hitler. Hitler formed a barrier to keep Soviet armies from overrunning the West but he couldn’t defend against ideological encirclement.
The struggle then is not between countries but between ideologies. How many ideologies were involved? There
was Communism and its variants, of course, Fascism which incorporates Nazism. Nazism itself was a form of German nationalism not differing from Jewish nationalism. There was the International Money Trust that sought domination through banking and currencies. They today are in the saddle. Most in importance was international Jewry. All these ideologies were competing for world dominion. A common thread among all was the interpenetration of International Jewry.
Some might object to treating Jewry as an independent political entity. Some might call such an inclusion anti-Semitism. Both depictions would be wrong. The Jews do and have always considered themselves an independent, that is, autonomous people merely residing among the gentile nations. They are and always have worked for their own paramount interest over all others. Thus the real effect of their working within the other ideologies is to bend them toward their own objectives. They imagine that when the smoke has cleared they will be atop the heap.
Wolf Hitler discerned this quite clearly and he perceived that if the continuing European Holocaust of the Judaeo-Communists was not stopped the terrifying destruction of European civilization as in Russia would be repeated in Western Europe, thus he courageously interposed Germany between the Soviets and West in an attempt to save Civilization. It is on this basis that many people consider him a religious savior on the order of Jesus the Christ. Whether true or not it was at the sacrifice of his own life and that of the German people that the West was spared the worst of the Bolshevik Revolution although still involved in the European Holocaust caused by the Judaeo-Communists, the war was more than terrifying.
In the absence of Hitler’s heroic leadership let us extrapolate the events in Russia throughout the whole of Europe. Let us suppose as the Jews fantasize that they had succeeded in assassinating Hitler in 1922 and the Communist revolution instead of failing in the West had succeeded. This is kind Ray Bradburyish but this cis-science fiction.
There would have been no US intervention in the twenties so that the US based International Money Trust would have been in a position to nearly seize the European remains. Fascism would have ceased to exist so that in the temporal sense the Communist victory would have been complete.
In terms of ideology it is important to understand the Jewish relationship to Europe. It was, is and remains antagonistic to Europe. One only has to examine Barbara Spectre’s current Paideia Organization to determine that. The antagonism was both to Europe as a civilization and its customs and mores. When one of the leading lights of the Jewish revolution Sigmund Freud writes that then current morality revolted him he means European customs and morality as opposed to those of Judaea. He further says that he intends to eradicate European morality. There is no reason to doubt him or that he was very successful. He was a leading agent of the Jewish revolution although his role has been well concealed.
The Jewish revolution itself is well explained by the American rabbi Abba Hillel Silver in his book History Of Messianic Speculation In Israel. He writes that after the failure of the messiah Sabbatai Zevi in the Seventeenth Century the elders decided to never rely on a single messiah again but the Jewish people as a whole would work for their own redemption. God was thus melded into the Jewish mentality and Judaism became wholly secular. All this chat about ‘secular’ Jews as opposed to religious Jews is utter nonsense. Trotsky, for instance, was a Jew, period. The years 1913 to 1928 were designated as the time of redemption. These dates would have been remarkably accurate except for the interposition of Wolf Hitler. He was a real spoiler.
While events can never be exactly planned if one is alert one seizes one’s chances. Having begun the World War that nearly destroyed European civilization a remarkable piece of good fortune for the Bolsheviks occurred when the Germans transported them from Switzerland to the Finland Station in 1917 put the Jewish triumph within its reach between 1917 and 1928.
Having murdered their three hundred and some odd year enemy the Czar the Jewish revolution roared back into the West from Russia in the early twenties and could have succeeded except for the fact that German nationalists led by Hitler were capable of seizing the State, although legally and democratically elected, and smashing the Judaeo-Communist conspiracy within Germany. Miraculously foiled as it were the Jewish revolution was able to adapt to circumstances and prosper.
Now, how demonic was Hitler in relation to the society created by Judaeo-Communists after 1917. The Reds, for a convenient inclusive term, developed the notion of mass murder or genocide after seizing power in Russia. They created concentration camps and slave labor well before Hitler became chancellor in 1933. Hitler was merely acting according to the political mores introduced by the Judaeo-Communists.
And so, at great cost to the German people he prevented the realization of the Jewish Thousand Year Reich or Millennium from occurring. Let us suppose for moment he hadn’t and after 1922 the Jews had realized their two age long dream of establishing themselves as the Princes of the Earth. What would have happened in Western Europe?
-II-
The final Jewish goal is denationalization, is sowing confusion by the bastardization of other nations, lowering the racial level of the highest, and dominating this racial stew by exterminating the volkish intelligentsia and replacing it with its own race.
Hitler, quoted by Anthony Cave Brown and
Charles B. MacDonald, On A Field Of Red, p. 282
Hitler was living within history, hence was able to analyze and extrapolate historical trends. He dealt in realities and not inner wishful thinking. Therefore the Jews and allies have portrayed him as stupid and demented. Judging from current realities in Europe and North America Hitler’s quoted analysis above is beyond prescience. Those with less acumen find the above quote ‘nutty.’ I have to confess that I wouldn’t have understood what he was talking about a few years ago. It now appears Wolf understood the Semitic mind perfectly.
There can be no other purpose in flooding Europe and the US with racial ideological peoples who have nothing in common with the West except perhaps a nebulous and inconsequential ‘humanity.’
Understanding, then, Jewish goals Hitler moved to abort them. In this he was temporarily successful. Having now recovered the Jews have once again moved to the offensive. They now disclaim any affiliation with what they call Whites proclaiming in their recently formulated mantra: I’m not White, I’m Jewish.
But, what if Germany had not interposed its body and the Jewish led Bolshevik assault on Europe had succeeded? The riches of two thousand years of European civilization would have been at the feet of assembled Judaea.
The accumulated wealth of Russia had seemed vast but it was as nothing compared to the rest of Europe which was a real Aladdin’s cave. As in Russia the Jews would have destroyed the economic structure that created wealth. Once they had done so the Communists belatedly realizing that they had destroyed the productivity of the country and the need for money to rebuild it did the only thing they could do, they turned to West and said: Come. Make us whole.
While after the conquest of Central and Western Europe that economy would have been destroyed, the waste land would have stretched from the British Isles to the Pacific shore. Of course there was still the simple minded United States although in the twenties not yet under Judaeo-Communist control. Normalcy ruled there. Still both American and Jewish bankers in the US actually were eager to invest in destroyed Russia and they would have been just as eager in destroyed Europe.
The Jews, then, would have occupied the castles, villas and stately houses amassing estates, jewelry, tens of thousands of fine paintings, the big automobiles as was done in Russia. Huge amounts of Russian jewelry, paintings and artefacts had been delivered to Vienna for the delectation of wealthy Jews. How many of those stolen paintings were later appropriated by the Nazis isn’t clear. But none were returned to their former Russian owners.
And as was done in Russia to the Russian Orthodox Church the Jewel of the West the Roman Catholic Church would have been vandalized to the great satisfaction of the Jews, gratifying their hatred for Christianity to the point of satiety. For two thousand years the Catholic Church had contained the Jews defining their place in the European polity.
When the French Revolution mistakenly dissolved the restraints releasing the Jews as an army of asymmetrical warriors the misguided but benevolent Europeans were doomed. In their ridiculous altruism they didn’t even know a war was going on except for the besmirched ‘anti-Semites’ such as Wolf Hitler.
The Europeans fancied that the Jews accepted and were playing by the rules Europeans had devised. They weren’t, that’s the essence of asymmetrical war. Hey, they were playing by a different set of rules dissembling the Europeans. Thus, after the Bolshevik assault the Europeans failed to recognize that the Bolsheviks were essentially operating under Jewish rules so they failed to adapt their rules to fit the ‘new paradigm’, that setting the new rules for how the game was played.
As Darwin pointed out, in evolutionary terms when one species fails to adapt to new circumstances it is doomed to extinction. Darwin uses as an example the invasion of the small Asian cockroach into Russia that drove the larger but less aggressive Russian cockroach to extinction. So the Bolsheviks manhandled the Europeans.
The West was presented with no choice but to do what the Judeo-Communists and Nazis did: establish concentration camps and toss the enemies of civilization into them. Yes, the state of affairs had come to that. Adapt or perish.
Thus, had the Bolshevik assault on Europe succeeded in the first rush millions upon tens of millions would have been either murdered outright or sent as slaves to Siberian concentration camps to be worked to death under the most deplorable starvation conditions. To hear the Jews complain that they lost a couple million in their war of conquest merely raises a smile. There are risks in any enterprise.
Was Wolf Hitler the most evil person the world had ever seen? Not hardly. Within the new mores established by the Bolsheviks his response was, shall we say, normal. To say Hitler was demented is to unjustly single him out from even worse in the asylum.
And then there was the Roman Catholic Church, the supreme Jewish bete noire- Christianity. The Vatican the greatest treasure trove in existence. Killing the Czar would be meaningless next to killing the Pope and the whole College of Cardinals. You think it wouldn’t have happened? Look at how the Jews have compelled the simpleton on the Papal throne to crawl before them now. See how they have forced him to endorse the bastardization of Europe by the invasion from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Moslem world. True, the Jews don’t have the manpower to do actual battle with the Europeans but they can import untold millions who can just as in the US the Jews are using the Negroes and immigration to dominate he Aryans. They’re not White, they’re Jews.
-III-
Wolf Hitler did not start the war with the Jews that became WWII. That war officially began in 1933 when the Jews declared war on Hitler. Once again, the Jews had no means of waging war except through the virtual control of Western governments especially the US and USSR. Thus, if the Jews paid the supreme penalty of having lost a few million, if that many were, the fault was none but theirs. No guilt accrues to the Aryans.
If the Jews did lose a few million that was as nothing compared to the tens of millions of dead Europeans and the near utter destruction of Europe and its civilization. Freudian fantasies realized.
There is no need to shed tears for the Jews, we should look to ourselves. We should reexamine the roles played by the Jews, the Bolsheviks and Germans and, I might add, the US itself.
This reevaluation has actually been going on more or less clandestinely for a few decades increasing dramatically recently but so far making no dent on the public consciousness. Jewish propaganda is preponderant.
There can be no question but that Wolf Hitler was a great Aryan hero. If some consider him a god there is reason to do so. Perhaps the Jewish Revolution was a time of heroes. There are those who consider Leon Trotsky to be the greatest Jew since Jesus which is to say a god. Stalin himself wielded power as a god murdering at will and not just one or two people but tens of millions, the whole intelligentsia of Russia, the most productive and intelligent cultivators of the soil, anybody who did not embrace the Red religion. Roosevelt to some was a supreme hero while, I’m sure, a god unto himself.
Wolf’s role was to defeat the Jews and Bolsheviks which at great cost to his people he did. The end result of WWII was that the Bolsheviks were contained as what the Jews considered to be Fascists seized the US and Western Europe dividing the world into ‘Fascist’ and Communist spheres. But, that’s the way Jews and Communists think. There are only two sides, us and them.
Of course the war did not end with Hitler’s death but continues to this day in what appears to be more than a hundred years war. The Jews are waging asymmetrical war, a propaganda war, a psychological war. Having enlisted the Negroes on their US battlefield they direct their antagonism toward ‘Whites’ who they say have no place on Earth. Thus in preparation to protecting themselves from Negro antagonism they are projecting themselves as not White but Jews. ‘I’m not White, I’m Jewish.’ A new propaganda device has been developed in the fanciful belief that by declaring the words of the song that the Negroes will disregard their skin color and lose their hatred of the Jews qua Jews earned because of long Jewish exploitation of them.
As Einstein said that a definition of lunacy was doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, so the Jews are once again creating a disaster for themselves.
Wolf was no more evil than Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin and, If I may so, Roosevelt. Wolf adapted to the mores of his times created by the Jews and Bolsheviks themselves. It is important to remember that they set the tone of the times, all others followed their lead in one way or another.
The other White governments refused to adapt, preferring to follow what were ineffective superseded mores that could only have led to their ruin. In the twenties there would have been no US intervention in the Bolshevik takeover of all Europe and the destruction of its civilization and mores. The Freudian game plan would have been completely successful. The Jewish conquest of Europe and Christianity would have ushered in their so-called Millennium.
Wolf Hitler was a hero. I’m not Jewish, I’m Aryan.
A Review: The Life And Times Of Andrew Loog Oldham
August 4, 2015
A Review
The Life And Times Of
Andrew Loog Oldham
Of The Rolling Stones
by
R.E. Prindle
Oldham, Andrew Loog: Stoned, 2001, Vintage
Oldham, Andrew Loog: 2Stoned, 2003, Vintage
Oldham, Andrew Log: Stone Free, 2012, Escargot Books
Oldham, Andrew Loog: Rolling Stoned, 2013, Because Entertainment
-1-
Who Is Andrew Loog Oldham
For those who know this introduction will be superfluous, but for those who don’t know this essay will be an introduction to a man who through his exploitation of the Rolling Stones was an important influence on that memorable Sixties decade. Perhaps moreso than is commonly thought.
Out on the consuming edge of the record industry in those days the name Andrew Loog Oldham seemed to be displayed as prominently on the record covers as The Rolling Stones themselves. In the early days Andrew Loog Oldham might be known before Mick or Keith and certainly the other members of the band. Yet Oldham wasn’t in the band so who was he? And then records were issued bearing the name The Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra. Where did he get that name Loog anyway? And just as suddenly the name Andrew Loog Oldham disappeared but the Stones remained. Who was this guy anyway?
In those days when information could be gathered, if at all, at the proverbial snail’s pace, things have changed today when I can make a few clicks and see Andrew moving and hear him speaking; actually see his fabulous style of dressing as he described it. In addition he has written two thousand pages describing himself more or less in full. Now we can know who Andrew Loog Oldham is and what his relationship to the Rolling Stones was.
Andrew’s, we’ll take a familiar approach throughout, great tragedy is that his fated life opportunity showed up too early. He was only nineteen in 1963 when the opportunity that few ever get a chance to grasp showed up on his front doorstep, so to speak. That was the appearance of the London music group The Rolling Stones. In order to come into his inheritance as he was under twenty-one and couldn’t legally act in his own name, Andrew had to find a surrogate to act in his stead. Chance provided an old reprobate by the name of Eric Easton. Eric was a plodder who had served as an organist at the resort town of Blackpool while representing two or three nondescript acts of which one was the redoubtable Mrs. Miller. While not a household name at the present time Mrs. Miller whose act consisted of being an amusingly terrible singer, had her moment in the spotlight both in England and the US. She did have records released and they did sell no matter how modestly.
Easton was slow on the uptake not realizing the cultural shift that was taking place with the arrival of the Beatles and would have been incapable of managing the Stones without Andrew’s grasp of the changing cultural situation of the Sixties. However he was not too slow to understand money in the bank of which he made off with a fortune or two much to the chagrin of both Andrew and the Rolling Stones.
Andrew’s four volumes are records of his vicissitudes being a young Lancelot reaching for the Grail. Andrew was green, he was. In ordinary times he would have been cleaned and discarded never to be heard of again but these were the Sixties and not normal times. Even in failure the times conspired to make Andrew comfortable by luxury standards, perhaps even rich, but not filthy rich. The marvelous Sixties did that for so many people most of them undeserving. By undeserving I mean takers with nothing to offer.
Well, this isn’t a tale about justice but one of the Sixties in which the whole concept of justice disappeared like the vapor from a nuclear plant. As an extra special gift of the times to Andrew he is today still alive and kicking having passed the seventh decade barrier at 71 years of age. The good didn’t necessarily die young just the unlucky. Andy is lucky.
He can be seen introducing his third book, Stone Free, at his Face Book site for those interested. Always the fashion plate he is a dapper impression of his hero Phil Spector, pointy nose and all. His hair is becomingly combed back on the sides making for a very presentable 71 year old young at heart gentleman. He wears a mint green light jacket and shirt, something of a cross between a butch femme and an effete hommy, but altogether passable. He projects a pleasant aura indicating little brain damage from his very legendary drug use. A look at him shows how Alex, the chief Droog of A Clockwork Orange may have looked as he made the passage from rough youth to a more dignified mature, the word ‘old’ does not apply to one like Andrew, or I might vainly say, myself.
-II-
Andrew Finds That Life Has It Hazards
I don’t really envy the English kids that came along after my birth year of 1938. The war years were tough enough but then the long years of national poverty after 1945 must have been grating. I can’t imagine a life without candy that the lads and lasses had to endure for nine long years. In my paradise in the US candy bars in those days at a nickel were monstrous. I couldn’t eat a whole one at one sitting. Stuffed at less than a half. Andrew must have known hardship and suffered horribly.
The war babies, mostly from ’42 and ’43 can have no memory of the war but the long ten years of rationed everything gave a cast to their psyches. When the war babies grew up and became rockers they laid out long tables of delicacies and then ignored them letting them go to waste. The pain was forgotten but lived on in the subconscious. Andrew was conceived in ’43 and popped out in ’44. Tragic for Andy, he should have born in ’42 and been 21 in ’63.
His was a special case. In a country in which the majority of men were US soldiers, normality had flown out the door in ’43; his mother not unnaturally took up with one. It was a tough time. Andrew’s father, Andrew Loog, was a soldier from Texas. He had a wife and son back there. As a younger man I applied my moral training to people in Andrew Loog’s situation and condemned them but now hopefully wiser and certainly older I understand. As a soldier in an active war Andrew Loog could die at any time so why not a little happiness? Perhaps he cringed at violating his peacetime morals. In any event as a member of a bomber crew he didn’t even make it across the Channel just after impregnating Andrew’s mother with his future self. Big Andy hoped he’d dodge the bullets but as it didn’t happen at least it resolved what would have been a difficult emotional situation.
Big Andy hadn’t married Little Andy’s mother so that made little Andy the bastard son of a bigamous father. Having been in the orphanage myself being a bastard means nothing to me. But society is unkind to bastards and orphans. Having read all four of Little Andy’s reminiscences more than once it seems clear that his bastardy left its mark on Andy. He had stormy relationship with his mother, perhaps beating her frequently while in his late teens. She said he did but he says he can’t remember doing it while it would have been wholly outside his character, however, he definitely admits booting her out of a moving car while she was pregnant. Those temper tantrums he had!
Possibly Andrew blames his mother for bringing him into the world as a bastard. He shouldn’t, better a bastard than not at all. Now, Andy discusses this from different angles constantly in his memoirs so my purpose here is to try to put his mind at ease.
The war had a devastating effect on social life especially in England which was merely a staging area for US forces in those years. Churchill was merely a stooge of Roosevelt’s. Just as in WWI a million or English men died or were incapacitated meaning that just that many women were condemned to spinsterhood or whatever. Oh, I know that the dyke Gloria Steinem said a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle but Steinem was an unnatural woman. Andrew’s mother wasn’t.
As she gave Andy his father’s full name, that is Andrew Loog, I’m guessing that given the times and circumstances she really loved the guy so she named what surely must have been her darling Andrew, Loog, tacking on her name Oldham. Maybe I’m sentimental, but coming from the orphanage, I find that touching.
Now, Celia Oldham, for that was her name, was a Jewish girl. Andrew Loog I’m guessing from his name was probably of Dutch ancestry. Probably a Protestant but possibly a Sephardic Jew. Andy may know but I don’t.
So, here Celia Oldham is post-war with the little tyke, Andy, and no husband or father for his child. There is a massive shortage of men after the GIs clear out so while Celia is attractive the mating pool is small. Celia did the next best thing and probably with Andy in mind did it well; she became the mistress of a wealthy man while including Andy in the equation. Not only was he wealthy he was a decent man who maintained her and Andy as a second family. No kidding. He kept them in relative style while putting Andy through the public schools. (Public is private in England.)
What more could a single mother with no prospects do? Perhaps Andrew’s schoolmates were typical louts and ragged him continuously for being a bastard. I know that in the orphanage during and after was hell on wheels but that was the hand that was dealt and I had to play it; four deuces, trey high. Could have been worse. I’m not saying my psychology wasn’t affected and as Andy tells it his sure as hell was.
My point is that life being what it is he should be grateful for a loving mother who made the very best of a bad situation.
-III-
Lost In The Ozone Without A Parachute
As noted Celia Oldham was Jewish and while Andrew says that the religion didn’t play a big part in their lives nevertheless the mother is the culture bearer. The culture she passed on to Andrew must have been Jewish.
Judaism is an identitarian faith. To be Jewish is to separate oneself from the ‘gentiles’, from all others, the rest of mankind. As the US Zionist Samuel Untermyer was to proclaim on nationwide radio in opposition to Hitler’s claim that the Germans were the master race: We, the Jews, are the aristocrats of the earth. In other words, Drop this master race crap because you ain’t it.
Thus in a country nominally English, as Andrew describes his youth it was lived in an entirely Jewish community. As he describes it he associated with no one who wasn’t Jewish. Like the Jewish Bob Dylan he is always surrounded by Jews. As he set out to find his way in life he chose the record business as his métier. I think Andrew wanted to be where it was happening and as his antennae flickered about sensing for that taste of honey he perceived that his future lay in records. The entire music business if not the entertainment business was in the control of his fellow Jews.
Andy took his sense of reality from movies. There are a couple influential films he refers to frequently. One is the American film The Sweet Smell Of Success which however is about two Jews, the one based on the newspaper columnist Walter Winchell and the other his sidekick and the other is the British film Espresso Bongo. Naturally I obtained both movies and have checked them out. Also naturally at this age and distance I do not see them through nineteen year old eyes.
In Sweet Smell Andrew concentrates on the character Sidney Falco played by Tony Curtis. Andy identifies with Falco as a hustler in US terms and a Wide Boy in English terms. Thus Andrew identifies himself as a Wide Boy. Falco was an unsavory character, a stooge of his boss J.J. Hunsecker played by the repulsive Burt Lancaster. Curtis played the role well. One laments Andrew’s fascination with the character.
Espresso Bongo is a pretty decent rock film. It takes place I believe at the actual legendary 2i coffee house in which English rock was centered. The film puts you back in the day. The star is Andy’s all time hero Laurence Harvey who also turns in a stellar role. Harvey has that downtrodden hang dog look that carried David Janssen through the US The Fugitive TV series so well. As I lived in a constant depression until I was forty I knew the look and it suited me well. I identified with both Janssen and Harvey. Harvey was one of my favorite actors too. Depression and Laurence Harvey go together
In Espresso Bongo Harvey plays a role of a hapless manager of a singer who gets away from him much as Andrew himself would let the Stones slip away from him.
All the managers were Jewish and all exploited their ‘boys.’ Perhaps the most famous of these, what the English amusingly call manipulators, was Larry Parnes. As England emerged from rationing in the fifties and the rebuilding of the infrastructure destroyed by the bombing of WWII created a sort of false prosperity those young people who survived the bombing and rationing were coming of age. The war had caused a generational break. Young England began creating an England in their own image. They rejected the pre-war England of their elders. It was a world they never made. Of course neither had their elders.
Parnes sensing the direction began creating an image of recording stars to gratify youthful yearnings, especially of young girls. He found god looking boys giving them great stage names such Georgie Fame, Billy Fury, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager and my favorite, Lance Fortune. There can be but little question that he exploited, not to say cheated, his ‘boys.’ Parnes was both Jewish and homosexual, a killer combination that dominated the industry.
For instance this about Vince Eager from the Widipedia entry for Larry Parnes
Vince Eager began to wonder why he had never received any record royalties. ‘You’re not entitled to any.’ Larry Parnes told him. ‘But it says in my contract that I am.’ Eager protested. ‘It also says I have power of attorney over you, and I’ve decided you’re not getting any.’ Parnes replied.
Parnes was of course both Jewish and homosexual. As he had many of these performers on salary he was cleaning up. Of course he had merely plucked them off the streets and set them up designing their acts, teaching them stage presence, choosing repertoires etc., they may have been little more than employees. However they did have ‘contracts’ although as the above quote indicates they were more than one sided making the contractees little more than slaves
The whole record scene was exploitative and homosexual. When London’s leading criminals horned in on the record scene, the Kray brothers, Reg and Ron they were Jewish and homosexual while their older brother Charlie who was straight with no police record managed the business end of the record racket.
As Andrew was coming up through the years this was the situation he perceived. While he couldn’t have broken into the Parnes style star system once the Beatles hit and the emphasis switched to groups an opening appeared. Parnes who had his star system going disdained the group thing leaving that open so that the Beatles manager Brian Epstein slid through the opening developing his group and star roster dislodging Parnes.
The market had expanded exponentially since the fifties when Parnes developed his system. Andrew, then, aquiver with the possibilities had his eye out for the new Beatles. He was told about the group working in Richmond called The Rollin’ Stones. He went, he saw, he signed.
-IV-
A Clockwork Orange
As Andrew freely acknowledges by his late teens he was experiencing mental problems so I am merely discussing what he has disclosed. He says he was suffering from manic depression. Probably so, but he must also have blended in a little schizophrenia. The stresses of his childhood were taking possession of his mind. I know whereof I speak. This combined with his disastrous choices of role models that would be joined in 1962 by his reading of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange issued that year made him something of a phenom. Burgess, there’s another sicko.
A Clockwork Orange Boy, there was a Satanic book if there ever was one. The book took a certain mentality by storm, organized it and gave it expression. Its history is intimately connected with Jagger and Richards.
As influential in its limited sphere as the book was, Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 movie was perhaps the most destructive Satanic movie ever produced. It set the tone for the years that followed. The movie just tore a certain type of mind apart; Alexes by the dozen, nay, hundreds, thousands moved roved out every night after it was shown, snatching girls off the street. Clockwork was seconded by the movie The Collector that appeared about the same time. The book of Clockwork was less powerful but would still influence Andrew and through him Jagger and Richards. The other Stones led separate lives not involved with Mick, Keith and Andrew’s antics.
So Andrew’s brain is in a complete turmoil as he tries to find his way through the maze of life. Influenced by the real Larry Parnes and the fictional Johnny Jackson for a modus operandus he went in search of an act to manage and found his way to The Rolling Stones. Having discovered his mother lode, having a clear vision of what to do he was stymied by being only nineteen in shark infested waters without a cage.
Short of twenty-one he had to team up with a shark. As he was renting an office from an inoffensive appearing shark, Eric Easton, he convinced Eric to essentially through himself represent the Stones. Eric may have been a pretty sincere stodge but he was no fool when it came to his self-interest. He may have been close to a bottom feeder but that didn’t mean he hadn’t learned most of the tricks of the Great Whites. The ins and outs of contracts presented no problems to him while dizzy Andy and the naïve Mick and Keith probably hadn’t considered the existence of contracts. Give them a pen and dotted line under their name and they would sign. But, really, it was never a fair fight.
As Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw is alleged by Woody Guthrie to have said: Some will rob you with a six gun; some will use a fountain pen. Oh boy! Those contracts. The advantages are all on the side of the contractors; contractees beware. As Larry Parnes said: I’ve also got your Power Of Attorney and I say you don’t get anything. Revoking a Power Of Attorney is simple but how many amateurs think of it.
But legally contracts don’t really matter unless money is involved. There wouldn’t be a lot of money for a few years but when there was Andrew and the Stones not unsurprisingly got the bum’s rush.
Andrew’s brain was a regular pinwheel especially as in addition to his youth and mental condition he imbibed drugs freely. If your brain’s not already a mess drugs will certainly paint it black.
Even though Andrew chose poor role models he got the drift of what had to be done to make stars of random stones. Very few performers, they only become artists after success, know how to get from point A to point B and beyond. That’s where the manager, if he’s any good, comes in; he recognizes the possibilities of the raw talent and nurses them through the actual birth process. Believe me: this is worth a lot.
It is somewhat like Larry Parnes. He sensed what the teen public wanted and rather than wait for it to come to him, he created it from the rawest material and then took more than the lion’s share or the benefits. But then, he also inadvertently gave his ‘boys’ lives. There were actual careers awaiting them after Parnes had scraped off the cream.
The question then is were the Stones too talented to fail? I don’t think so. Not without Andrew to shape them and point the direction anyway. Andrew couldn’t sing or play but he could turn dross into gold not too much differently than what Larry Parnes had done with his ‘boys.’ The Stones were the evidence.
The key to the Stones’ success was when they learned to write songs. Would they have learned to write songs if Andrew hadn’t literally forced them into it? I would answer with a clear cut negative. The Stones playing nothing but crappy old Chicago blues and would have sank without a trace. In that sense Brian Jones insistence on playing ‘pure’ R&B would have led to dismal failure. But then, maybe that is what Brian wanted.
Let me point out here that in the US all this crappy old blues stuff was unlistened to but by a very small minority. Nor would the stuff ever have gained popularity without the English influence. Even today very few listen to that junk. ‘I woke up this morning, lordy, lordy…’
While Mick, Keith and Brian were boggling their minds concentrating on the ‘music’ Andrew realized that teen age girls (the Parnes influence again) weren’t going to get too enthused about grizzled old Negroes complaining about how their mama wouldn’t drop down. Does anyone think sprightly young teenagers looking for a good time are going to wallow in anybody else’s misery? Not likely.
So Andrew directed his ‘boys’ toward a more pop sound alienating the ever insistent ‘purist’ Brain from Mick and Keith. Bill and Charlie were pretty much just boys in the band.
Thus faced with the overwhelming competition of the Beatles, the lovable Mop Tops, Andrew made the fatal choice of turning Mick and Keith into his criminal Droogs, taking the low road and leaving the high road to the Beatles. Alex in A Clockwork Orange called the members of his gang Droogs. In a sense Andrew tried to make the Stones Andrew and the Droogs.
All very well but as Andrew got a little money his brain went from a pinwheel on a stick to real fireworks where pinwheels shoot flames. His brain was really in a whirl. He was passing out at parties. He became self-absorbed. He became interested in other projects that took his time, setting the Stones more or less adrift. His protégé Mick was no fool while being a quick learner. Why, Mick said to himself after becoming successful should I pay all these dufuses for what I can do myself. He couldn’t of course do it himself but it seemed like it at the time. He slammed the door in Andrew’s face.
-V-
Where’s Strength And Wisdom When You Need It?
The four years Andrew was with the Stones could have been a couple three or four lifetimes for the changes Andrew was forced through. Success is rightly called the bitch goddess. You’ll never know until you’ve said hello. The time from when he and Eric Easton signed the Stones to the time Andrew sold the Stones out to that Devil In Disguise Allen Klein nearly destroyed Andy. Allen Klein wasn’t in that much of a disguise either.
The trajectory of Andy’s career was so rapid it was hard to follow. It wasn’t so much that he bit off more than he could chew as that he tried to chew without biting it off. First things first, Andrew.
Obsessed with A Clockwork Orange he moved in with Mick and Keith where he gave them lessons in Droogism. Both were apt pupils. This is difficult to follow but his brain captured and sensing what seems to have been the book’s importance Andrew approached Burgess to buy the movie rights. Burgess told him the rights had already been sold but he wouldn’t tell Andy to whom.
It turns out that the rights had been sold to David Bailey the fashion photographer who had made Mick his ‘mate’ and possibly bought the rights jointly with Mick. If so, one wonders where Mick got the money. Sometime in 1963 the pair split with their rights to New York City to interest Andy Warhol in a film project. This also is rather remarkable because Andy was not yet that prominent while he hadn’t made any kind of stir with his puerile movies as yet. Somehow the rights passed to Warhol and finally to whoever acquired them to make Kubrick’s movie.
Warhol did make a film based on the book although the connection seems tenuous while not being worth watching. More importantly Alex and his Droogs had a profound effect on members of Warhol’s group. The group left Warhol’s atelier, the Factory, at night on their predations a la Alex and his Droogs. I believe Bob Dylan is referring to them in this lyric from his 1965 song Desolation Row:
Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and roundup everyone that knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the [F]actory were the heart attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders…
For some reason both Oldham and Bailey thought Mick was the perfect Alex while the Stones could be the Droogs. It didn’t work out but Mick and Warhol bonded like superglue. They would be very close friends until Andy died in 1987 when Mick flew to Pittsburgh for the funeral. Not only did the Stones practice Black and Blue at Warhol’s Montauk compound but Andy did two or three covers for them most notably Sticky Fingers. As a result of Mick and Warhol’s friendship the Stones always had the key to Greenwich Village.
So Andrew lost out on his bid for A Clockwork Orange. But then his brain racing a mile a minute and wanting to be a record magnate he founded Immediate Records. Not one for details Immediate stretched him pretty thin. I know we’re talking ancient history here, or at least ancient technology, so the reader will have to let go of the present to imagine the impact of Immediate Records on the cognoscenti of the time. I modestly include myself in that number.
Andrew was on the far edge of flamboyant; his ideal Larry Harvey who he met about this time thought him arch camp so Andy in his eye makeup and fey manners must have cut a startling figure. A lot of people thought he was queer and not just ambiguous. The Immediate label was an astounding pink, almost fluorescent seemingly confirming homosexual tendencies. It got your attention but in those days you almost had to apologize for buying a record with such a label. His covers were all good, in a class with the best and perhaps…. He signed and produced a lot of very good groups. The label’s production values may have prevented him from having any smashes, at least I don’t remember any.
I’m sure few will remember the Nice or even have heard of them but the first Nice was a pretty good record while the members went on to greater things. The sound wasn’t as immediate as it could have been. I worked it in my store but couldn’t get anywhere with it.
In those days British imports were all the rage on the West Coast while US records were despised. When I first went to England in the early seventies I was astounded to find the fans waiting for American pressings because they were thought better. Oh, I said, how strange. What makes them better? In so many words they said production values. In still other words they thought they had more immediacy. So Andy’s Immediate records lacked immediacy. I thought they were great anyway and they were always the first of the new releases I auditioned.
But, the devil is in the details, and Andrew wasn’t much on details so he went broke although he did hang in there until 1970. Not a bad record for an independent. He doesn’t tell us what happened to the masters but they must have been worth something.
By that time Andy was not only deep into drugs he was legendary. In Stoned and 2Stoned he has some great descriptions of being out of it if you like that sort of thing. His first two books were based on the oral biography method of Jean Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick called Edie. In that book acquaintances were interviewed and then cut and pasted to form a continuous narrative. Knocked out by ‘Edie’ Andrew did the same with the exception that he commented on the interviewees’ comments.
Rolling Stoned begins in a straight autobiographical style then begins to wander and meander. Andrew is always a good read but unless you want to read three different four hundred page books covering the same ground with variations I would recommend his most recent, Rolling Stoned, or perhaps 2Stoned. Still, I don’t mind…
Part V
Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones
And The Yobbo Revolution
by
R.E. Prindle
…they’re just war babies with the bell bottom blues.
==Robert Christgau
Along about 1968 Jagger among the Stones, at least, became disenchanted with his and their new manager Allen B. Klein of notorious fame.
By 1968, counting 1963 as the beginning of their labors the Stones had been working hard. Jagger and Richards had emerged as successful songwriters giving them a financial advantage over fellow stones, Jones, Wyman and Watts. By that time the band was said to have earned millions but had virtually nothing to show for it except for a heroin habit and several cases of VD. When one says heroin habit one reduces disposable income considerably.
The Stones last effort Their Satanic Majesties Request seemed to indicate a loss of direction. Their initial impetus had been expended. The impetus that began in 1963 had then played out. The good part of the Sixties was over and the bad part had begun with the ’66 release of the Doors first album containing the appropriately named song The End. The Rock scene had turned dark while turning the volume up.
The Stones knew dark so they quickly reinvented themselves as a Dark band turning out Beggar’s Banquet in 1968. Out there on the buying end of rock and roll I groaned. The new Stones were born as the Hounds of Hell emerging from a drug fueled Freudian unconscious. Just what the world didn’t need.
While Jagger and Richards engaged the world with their follies the other three members had to suffer enduring the ignominy in silence. Richards would go on to astound the world with his drug offenses. While Jagger himself descended into darkness as a Satanist carrying his inamorata Marianne Faithfull along with him.
While both deny other than a titillating passing interest in Satanism the facts imply a more serious involvement.
These years that should have been bright were the beginning of dark times, darker than the Communo-Nazi era for the world. Deny it if he can, Jagger was a leader on the downward path.
Undeniably the Fifties and Sixties were a trying period but which decade of the century hadn’t been? Fear of both Communism and the A-Bomb, not to mention the Neutron Bomb, kept people tense. There was a disturbing lack of balance in which TV, newspapers, and magazines presented developments. Nevertheless the beginning of the post-war period was one of astounding advances in knowledge both in Science and the Liberal Arts. Huge layers of ignorance were sheared away. For instance the knowledge of geological tectonic plates that demonstrated how the planet evolved was, shall I say, earth shaking.
In 1950 the highest an object had been was measured in feet; the atmosphere hadn’t been penetrated. Seven years later the Soviets put the Sputnik in orbit. Telstar went up in July 1962 to tremendous astonishment and acclaim opening the way to the future and the fabulous prosperity of the late Sixties and the Seventies.
Medicine cured syphilis and all venereal diseases, killing and disabling diseases were gone and even TB and polio were ended. At the beginning of the Fifties a child had to ponder being debilitated by both as a probable occurrence. The diet was improved immensely and made more varied. But, as life improved the psyche grew darker, dissatisfaction with virtual perfection was endemic. Murder and crime increased dramatically. Charlie Whiteman in his UT tower, Richard Speck’s ritual murder of the Chicago nurses. While the good genie let many good things out the bottle at the same time a cloud of darkness followed. The country chose to embrace the darkness rather than the light.
During the Sixties Satanism was on the rise. We all know there is no existing entity called Satan but Satanism is a fact of the psyche. First truly released by Freud in 1900 Satanism had been emerging as a social force. A 1966 cover of Time Magazine asked the question Is God Dead? This sparked a fair controversy at the time. That same year, less conspicuously and metaphorically saw the birth of the Son of Satan, Andy, in the book Rosemary’s Baby by the Jew Ira Levin followed by the movie of the same name directed by the Jew Roman Polanski. Rosemary’s Baby was followed by a spate of Satanic novels and movies. The shift from God’s Son, Jesus, to Andy was quite noticeable but we were slow to comprehend.
The Satanic movement had been building since the middle of the nineteenth century when the Frenchman, Eliphas Levy, reorganized the occult along modern lines. The Golden Dawn brought Satanism into prominence in the English speaking world. The Golden Dawn was captured by the pervert Aleister Crowley who guided Satanism through the first half of the century. He died in 1946. A druggie and sex fiend, his sex magic in the Sixties was joined by that of the Jewish sex madman, Wilhelm Reich, also a notable Freudian. Reich had even had his books burned by the US government but like a phoenix his sexual ideas rose from the flames during the Sixties. ( See the movie WR, The Mysteries Of The Organism, read organism as Orgasm. This movie is not for the weak of mind.)
The magical crowd had coalesced in the beginning of the Sixties. In England it was led by the Satanic Process Church that emigrated to the US, LA based, and back to England. In the US the chief Satanist was the San Francisco based Anton Lavey with his acolyte in Los Angeles, Kenneth Anger. It is to be noted that the sex magician Charles Manson was associated with all these people in one form or another.
Jagger and his consort Marianne Faithfull were drawn into the flames through their friend in London, Groovy Bob Fraser who seemed to be the clearing house for all strange in London. He introduced Mick and Marianne to Kenneth Anger while they found their own way to the Process Church. Mick was recruited by the Crowleyian Satanist and filmmaker Donald Cammell. Cammell’s father had been a Crowleyian having writing a biography of him. Cammell’s mind thus had been corrupted from childhood.
Cammell starred Jagger and Keith’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in his ’68 movie Performance. Pallenberg was a long gone cutie deeper into Satanism than probably anyone in the crew.
Mick had become acquainted with the fashion photographer David Bailey in late ’62 or early ’63. Anthony Burgess published his Satanic novel A Clockwork Orang in 1962.
In ’62 and ’63 Jagger was a nobody, a student at the London School of Economics while doubling as frontman for the unknown Rolling Stones, or Rollin’ for the purists. The two apparently bonded on sight as the two bought the movie rights to A Clockwork Orange. This strange situation has never been explored. As far as we know Mick had no money or anything really to recommend him to Bailey who was a very successful photographer and the model for Fellini’s movie Blowup. Yet while a student and singer for a grungy R&B band Bailey took him under his wing, or perhaps Andrew Loog Oldham that inveterate man about town introduced himself to Bailey, then introduced Bailey to Mick with whom he was palling. It would seem that Andrew first discovered A Clockwork Orange in mid-62 talking it up with Bailey and Mick. Andrew and Bailey saw Mick as the hero of the book, Alex, leader of his band called The Droogs. The idea of the Droogs exerted a fascination over the minds of Andrew, Bailey and Mick and through Bailey and Mick the Warhol crowd of NYC. As a photog for English Vogue Bailey would have had an intro to New York and the American Vogue.
For those who aren’t aware, Vogue Magazine is a huge global presence. There are many ‘local’ editions of the magazine published for Germany, France, Russia, Italy and even Japan. It is really extraordinary. I subscribe to the English edition and buy Italian, Parisian, German and the occasional Japanese copy from a news dealer in my own city. Globalism takes on a real meaning.
In reading Stone’s histories there is no mention of Jagger being absent from London in 1963 but Bailey scooped him up and took him to New York, presumably at his own expense or perhaps that of Vogue to shop for a movie maker for their book. Bailey who was very up on things may have thought that Andy Warhol would be interested; in fact Warhol did make a movie that purports to be based on Clockwork Orange but you couldn’t prove it by me. But, in 1963 Warhol was not yet that famous or his vacuous movies. Bailey must have had his nose to the ground with the sensitivity of a bloodhound. Where Mick got the money for his share of the rights and trip to what is now known as The Big Bagel isn’t clear.
In New York Mick met the Dark, if not Satanist, Andy Warhol with whom he banded as quickly and tightly as he had Bailey. Because of this the Stones would always be big in the Village.
Interestingly Mick’s girlfriend during this period was Bailey’s top model Jean Shrimpton’s sister, Chrissie Shrimpton.
Things fell out, Mick gravitated to the adultress, Marianne Faithfull. The two were arrested at the famous drug bust at Keith’s Redlands in 1967.
Apparently Mick et al. thought they were immune to the laws and mores of the time concerning drugs so that Mick took the arrest and subsequent conviction as a grievous insult. It confirmed and hardened his devotion to Satan while solidifying his revolutionary aims. He thought the ‘kids’ would be able to bring down the State.
Thus in 1967 they recorded and released the record album titled Their Satanic Majesties Request. Smarting horribly- for all practical purposes Marianne’s life was ruined. In combination with a succession of injurious events that would follow, Marianne’s psyche would never recover. She had been holding the burning match to see how close to her fingers it got before she was burned, she now knew.
Still in reaction to the arrest, following Satanic Majesties, Mick decided to make a film. This became the long lost Rock And Roll Circus. The movie only has historical significance as it was never released at the time. Rights were held by Allen Klein so after his death in 2009, under his son Jody’s direction ABKCO released it for the first time. Psychologically it places where Mick was in 1968.
The American Satanist Kenneth Anger had a huge shoulder to shoulder tattoo of the name L-U-C-I-F-E-R on his chest to show his dedication to the Commander In Chief. At the end of Rock And Roll Circus as the band plays Sympathy For The Devil we see Mick groveling on the stage as though to the Master. He wiggles out of his shirt rising to his knees to display a Lucifer tattoo on his bare chest. Whether real or a transfer isn’t clear. I hope the latter.
In 1968, at least, Jagger had dedicated himself to Satan. While Marianne has since repudiated Satanism claiming the fascination was a passing fancy it seems clearly to have been more than that.
That aside, to be borne in mind as we move along. Mick, who is no dummy, had been quickly learning the ropes of the record business since his introduction in 1963. As he wasn’t getting enough money to indulge his fantasies, finances became his chief concern.
The Stones were first managed and promoted by the nineteen year old Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was the right man to put the Stones on the road. Unfortunately for himself Andrew was at the flighty if not to say flaky stage of life so that he found it expedient to sign the Stones to the American desperado or operator, Allen Klein. Klein was the big talking type so endemic to the industry who promised the moon while actually being able to pry money from the labels not that much ever got back to the artists. While first being pleased with Klein’s services getting money out of him was a problem so that Jagger quickly became disaffected with him. In 1968 he began the search for a money man who would work in the Stones’ interests.
This was a critical period for Jagger and the band. Their first rush of creativity ended about 1966 as the songwriters went dry and the band quit touring. The transition from the sixties to the seventies actively took place between ’66 and ’67. In fact that was the Sixties, the rest of the decade was a long slow fade. The artists most identified with the sixties didn’t make the transition to the seventies and beyond. The Stones before ’68’s Beggar’s Banquet were a quintessential 60s’ band. Beggar’s Banquet eased them toward the seventies.
So at this transitional period that must have been cause for great anxiety the band had little to show for their sixties output other than a certain notoriety that was however global and second only to the Beatles.
In his search for a money man Jagger asked his friend Chrissie Gibbs for his help. Gibbs was a central figure in the Groovy Bob Fraser circle. Fraser’s place was a central gathering place for the crowd including the American Satanist Kenneth Anger and the Warhol crowd.
Fraser himself was an art dealer who associated himself with the upcoming Pop Art Movement. Thus he was the center of all that was hip and modern.
Gibbs knew of an investment banker by the name of Prince Rupert Loewenstein. Rupert was an actual hereditary Prince who prefaced his name with that title. According to Rupert’s memoirs, A Prince Among Stones, Rupert knew Gibbs in only the most casual manner, Gibbs was not exactly a member of the aristocracy as he is presented.
Rupert is a bit of an enigma. He says, in his memoir, that he had never heard of the Stones when Gibbs mentioned them. In the context of the times the Stones were rock musicians who are as a class not welcome in polite society and even some not so polite society, yet Rupert said to this very casual acquaintance that he would look into it. Then, as he tells it, he learned who or what the Rolling Stones were and that all three principals of the group had been arrested on drug charges a year earlier along with Robert Fraser the art dealer and a true member of the aristocracy although now declasse. Rupert even says that he agreed wholeheartedly with the judge.
Just as a point of reference, when I opened my record shop in 1967 the insurance agents would not even sell me insurance while the AAA agent cancelled my auto insurance. I could obtain no amenities and only grudgingly services. So, it is extremely strange that Rupert knowing the actual unsavory history of the Stones jeopardized his standing in respectable circles in the City and society to associate himself with them. And I mean associate, he actually toured with the band. If he didn’t know the kind of people he was with he certainly learned then.
Now, no one associated with rock and roll had any social standing especially the Stones as the bad boys of rock. Then all the creeps and drug dealers who being around the record scene especially attached themselves to the Stones and believe me that crowd was well beyond unsavory. Robert Greenfield’s book S.T.P. will give you some examples but the flavor of these people doesn’t come through in print.
As I read Rupert’s autobiography, he died a year or so ago, I find a distaste for Stones from beginning to end. Even the title of his memoir, A Prince Among Stones, is a put down of the Stones. Rupert obviously disdained the Stones. So, one asks why he would choose to represent them? And that’s only the beginning of the mystery.
Having accepted the assignment as they used to say on Mission Impossible he had to familiarize himself with bushels of documents and assorted records. Before he could even confront Klein he had to spend a year trying to understand the documentation. Klein was a tough cookie who didn’t play by any rules. You grappled with him. I’m not sure that the Stones to this day know what Rupert did for them.
Here’s the point: The Stones are said to have no money with which to pay him, we are told that they were stone broke. Didn’t mean that they didn’t have a great stash but, you know, they were broke. This was a serious time for the band. Get this: Rupert worked three years gratis with no guarantee of ever making a dime. That any of us should have luck of that kind. Further he learned that there was no way the Stones were going to get any money out of Klein without very expensive litigation. But, there were exceptions as we shall see. The Stones entire career from 1963 to the end of the contract in 1971 that Andrew had saddled them with belonged to Klein. Never fire your manager when he holds your life in his hands.
Any career they would have to make money would begin in 1971. The intellectual properties Jagger and Richards’ had created would provide them with an income apart from the band although the publishing was sold to Klein by Andrew. But the full intellectual properties would begin only with Exile On Main Street. And of course by then the big boom in record sales was underway. Even at the end of the sixties the record business was small potatoes. The stadium era was on the horizon.
From Rupert’s point of view the only real potential for money for him would come from the Stones’ touring. The Stones would do some non-stop touring beginning in 1971. The ’69 US tour was Rupert’s introductory tour during which he learned how inefficient and criminal touring was..
Until Rupert reorganized touring, the road had not been profitable for the Stones. No money at all. So Rupert began his management career on the off chance that the Stones would stay together, actually a fairly long shot, and he could mount some extravaganzas and monitor expense to make the road profitable. Little he knew that he was catching the really big one.
If you sit and think about this a little it will blow your mind the chances that Rupert was taking especially with a heroin addict of the status as Keith. I mean we’re talking the Master of Flake with Keith- no offense intended. The man blew millions that Rupert was setting up in recording contracts when Keith was arrested with a jug of heroin in Toronto. Keith was not in this alone, there were three other Stones plus Mick as well as Rupert who had bet his life on the Stones. Can you imagine how crushed Rupert was when he had to call all the bidders and advise them of Keith’s gaffe. Keith cost Rupert a couple million too.
This is amazing, the pre-’68 money had been so badly managed that the Stones owed more tax money that it appeared that the band could ever pay off; especially when every new dollar would be taxed at ninety percent. What were the Brits thinking? As I understand it the Stones have never paid the debt off, or tried. So Rupert compelled them to leave England for a more tax friendly climate. As we are repeatedly told they were broke one wonders how they expected to finance their life in France. Mick and Keith were OK because as Robert Greenfield tells us in his book Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones On The Road To Exile just before the Stones left England Klein sent Mick and Keith each a check for 800 and some odd thousand dollars. That is nearly a million each. I don’t know whether BMI paid royalties quarterly or half yearly but Mick and Keith should have gotten a check of comparable size quarterly, semi-annually or annually. For the next decade or two probably double that. No sympathy here.
Wyman and Watts both bought handsome residences on the Riviera so one wonders where that money came from while Exile was being recorded. They settled on the Riviera where they spent a fortune recording Exile On Main Street. Over half a million dollars. And while Exile sold well still only over seven hundred and some thousand copies on its first release; not enough copies to surpass recording costs so they received nothing for the LP initially. Still Rupert hung in there, drug stories or no.
As the only hope for the Stones to make money, apart from intellectual right for Mick and Keith, was touring and thereby justify Rupert’s decision to throw in his lot with them Rupert set about to make touring as profitable as possible. He was in for some surprises as he had to come into contact with the Underworld, Mafia to you and me. I don’t see how he or they ever thought that there would be the truly big money of the last tours especially in North America but luck and the times were with him and them.
The Stones, about whom hung an air of vulgarity, were never a top selling recording band, mediocre at best but Jagger was a top performance artist while Keith was and is revered as a guitarist and personality. The nature of the tour also evolved so that under the guidance of Rupert major companies such as Chrysler sponsored tours contributing up front money while toward the end promoters ponied up a couple hundred million to manage the tours. The expense of putting on the show was the Stones but the mechanics of lining up venues and retailing the tickets was off their hands.
If you can stay together the intellectual property or ‘brand’ can become extremely valuable providing a payoff as time goes on. The Stones may be unique in the size of the payoff but many performers have been on the road for decades and are still out there, viz. Bob Dylan.
Still given all the imponderables, one is astonished that a respectable investment banker would take such a huge risk on his future. Not only had the principals been arrested and convicted, actually sent to jail, on a drug charge but they were involved with the revolutionary movement, indeed, other revolutionaries considered them one of them. Jagger wrote revolutionary and agitprop songs. As the seventies were characterized by revolutionary upheavals throughout the Western world including European outfits like the Baader-Meinhoff Gang and the Italian Red Guards and the infamous Carlos as well as the criminal and destructive American group, The Weathermen it would have been desirable to have some inconspicuous means of communication. Historically a means has been itinerants who had a reason to travel about such as the entertainers like the Stones and Bob Dylan. Cultural exchanges in governmental usage.
I think it quite possible, although I have no hard evidence that when Rupert was investigating the Stones at Chrissie Gibbs request he may have contacted the security agencies of England who seeing an opportunity to put an operative above suspicion in the Stones organization recruited Rupert.
As an intelligence agent in the Stones’ organization Rupert could maintain contact through his Europe wide aristocratic friends while dealing through the Stones with the revolutionaries who, at the very least, hung around the Stones. I suspect that Mick and Keith were more than sympathetic to them.
Eric Burdon of The Animals as a solo artist was arrested by the German police on suspicion of aiding the revolutionaries. Eric pleads innocence of course but the rock crowd as a group was sympathetic to the revolutionaries while the lyrics themselves were frequently openly revolutionary. Police suspicion would not have been misplaced.
In Eugene Oregon where I had my record store at the time, revolutionary zanies functioned quite openly, at least as far as I was concerned, infesting the foothills of the Cascades where they had built bunkers to store weapons, ammunition and food against the Day which was thought imminent. As a record store owner they assumed that naturally I too was a revolutionary. The Black Panthers for instance extorted money from me. I was caught in the middle as the authorities assumed naturally that I was too. It was tricky as I was then walking a tightrope between two hostile sides.
Thus Rupert otherwise inexplicably declassed himself while undertaking to represent a bankrupt band that was hopelessly in debt to the Inland Revenue. A debt he knew could never be paid off and never has been. In fact his first act regarding the ones was to advise them to leave England for more tax friendly shores.
When Rupert moved the band from England they ceased being a specifically English band becoming a band without a country or a true global band. As a global band it is probable that Allen Klein even though Jewish was strictly of a US geographic mentality whereas Rupert being Europe based with friends in each country was better able to deal with different tax laws, mores, etc. As a businessman he was better prepared to set up the business organization that the Stones needed.
It must be borne in mind that when the band left England on the cusp of the big boom of the seventies they became a multi-million dollar corporations with rather intricate financial problems. Klein had the reputation of a buccaneer; he could squeeze the pips but he couldn’t command respect, Rupert could.
So, the success of the Stones after ’68 depended in a great part on the superb financial management of Rupert, as well as his ability to deal with a lunatic like Keith. Rupert had no sooner got the band established in France than Keith got them thrown out of the country for, let’s not put a gloss on it, criminal behavior. Keith was handling large amounts of heroin while providing, as it were a safe haven for the Marseilles criminal drug element. Finally Keith and Anita turned a young girl, possible with violence, which resulted in the Stones having to flee France. That made two countries they could no longer perform in, at least for a while, France and England.
I’m sure Rupert smacked his forehead, wrung his hands and asked the universe, what the hell is going on? Keith and Mick must have been born under good signs as Rupert stayed on.
Having established a basis for prosperity Rupert then set about dealing with the first key problem, Allen Klein. Although broke the Stones initiated an expensive , read multi-million lawsuit against the wily Klein. Americans operate on the principle that possession is nine tenths of the law so getting anything out of Klein would be a small miracle. Without numbers to go on any accurate notion of what happened is impossible but as both sides were into the lawsuit for millions over eighteen years it would seem the results when they finally signed off were profitable for each.
So, having serendipitously acquired a supremely competent money man in Prince Rupert Loewenstein the financial future of the Stones was secured. They would become perhaps the richest band in history.
A Review: Allen Klein by Fred Goodman
July 6, 2015
A Review:
Allen Klein
The Man Who Bailed Out The Beatles
Made The Rolling Stones
And Transformed Rock And Roll
Goodman, Fred: Allen Klein, The Man Who Bailed…etc., 2015, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Loewenstein, Prince Rupert: A Prince Among Stones, 2013, Bloomsbury
Oldham, Andrew Loog: Stoned, 2000, 2001 Vintage Edition
Oldham, Andrew Loog: 2Stoned, 2002, 2003 Vintage Edition
Oldham, Andrew Loog: Stone Free, 2012, Escargot Books
I anticipated what I hoped would be a revealing account of the infamous Allen Klein. I have been sorely disappointed by this hagiography. Bailed out the Beatles, made the Stones and transformed rock and roll? Whew! Where’s his statue so I can reverence it. Since Allen died in 2009, his son, Jody, has shaken up his father’s empire. Jody has dipped into the archives to let out the two Stones’ movies Charley Is My Darling and Rock and Roll Circus to his credit. They can now be seen and appreciated. He probably has done much else that I am not aware of but would undoubtedly approve.
Fred Goodman’s white wash of Allen is disappointing. Jody did call Fred and offer him the job so this must be a work of hire. Perhaps Jody wanted a hagiography of sorts which is what he got or perhaps Fred was so daunted by the job he swallowed his teeth. Having accepted the assignment Jody led Fred out to the warehouse and showed him several pallets of documents. That would make me shiver too.
When Rupert Loewenstein accepted Jagger and the Stones as clients after the Stones rejected Allen he spent two or three years studying all their contracts and documents which were voluminous although not several pallets. And he did it without pay.
Something tells me that Fred never touched those pallets. If he didn’t study the documents one thing is certain: he read the three books of the Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham carefully. It was Oldham who sold the Stones to Klein. Apparently none of these people understood the nature of intellectual properties because, if we are to believe, none of them realized that the developing rock catalogs would be worth anything down the road. Even Oldham who is billed as prescient let the Stones’ masters that belonged to him as the producer go to Klein for less than a peanut.
The president of Decca Records, Edward Lewis, sensing the Oldham was having difficulties offered to buy the masters for 800K, K as in thousands, much less than even a million that would be a low ball. Oldham didn’t want to sell to Decca but needing money offered to them to Klein for 750K. The biggest bastard in the valley snapped them up. They have since proved to be worth tens and tens of millions of dollars over the years. Of course, Andrew would have had to wait and his blood was running too hot for that.
A few years later when he realized the masters might be worth a billion or more he has spent his life begging Allen for a larger settlement.
Andrew Oldham’s three books are Stoned, 2Stoned and Stone Free. They make good reading although 2Stoned is a rehash and expanded version of Stoned. There is a French condensation of both books into one but the translation is laughable as Andrew was much too colloquial for French. Fun to have though if you get a thrill out of mere possession. I’m not exactly guilty but I don’t object. It’s there on my shelf.
While Fred gives an overly long synopsis of Andrew’s life, probably because he needed a little filler and certainly didn’t have what It took to tackle those pallets, Andrew tells his own life better. Fred seems to have based his researches on Andrew’s brief life of Allen as contained in Stone Free. Stone Free might be sub-titled Brief Lives of the Notable Rockers. A great collection and grand background. Fred follows Klein’s Life closely.
Fred’s book was obviously written after Rupert’s: A Prince Among Stones. Published in 2013 but Fred shows no evidence of having read it and he didn’t use it. To read Fred’s account Allen was a greater prince than Rupert even though the facts as we know them read differently.
Allen who was Jewish, was born in 1931 in the city of Newark, New Jersey, a city that has produced several notable Jews including the novelist Philip Roth. Allen’s mother died when he was only a few months old so he never knew her. He briefly lived with his maternal Jewish grandmother but his paternal grandmother objected because his mother’s parents weren’t Jewish enough. His father unable to care for Allen and his sisters placed them in an orphanage. This fact explains much about Allen’s adult attitudes. I was in an orphanage but a municipal orphanage rather than a religious one. Jewish orphanages seem to have been rather cushy places. The groupie Catherine James lived in one that appears to have been a ‘country club.’ Allen’s Newark orphanage (often called Children’s Homes) had only thirty inmates and let me tell you that removes a lot of stress.
Mine had a hundred twenty or thirty most of which were bigger bastards then Allen could have been. The Catholic orphanage down the street that we visited as a group every so often was as close to hell on earth that any kid would want to get. Still orphans are pariahs in the community so I’m sure Allen’s small place left an indelible impression on him.
When he grew up and entered the record business, notable for the quality of its bastards, Allen billed himself as the biggest bastard in the valley. He was undoubtedly at war with everyone including himself.
Once in the record business he saw the easy marks and they were English. The American record people were uncommonly intense bastards while the British were mannerly bastards so someone like Allen, the biggest bastard, pretty much reversed the British Invasion traveling to England and scooping up some impressive bands and artists. I mean, Mickie Most! He was already a legend to anyone who read the record covers.
He cut his teeth on Sam Cooke as the first artist he bilked- that is robbed. Somehow he managed to steal Cooke’s face, that is his whole musical career and hence life, lock, stock and barrel. Sam Cooke died under mysterious circumstances. As might be expected Fred clears Allen of any suspicions accepting the story that a hooker he was with did the deed. Well, maybe, she caught with his pants around his ankles unable to maneuver properly; on the other hand Andrew Oldham who is fairly reliable at calling spades spades says that Cooke was badly beaten and the hooker couldn’t have done that. That doesn’t implicate Allen necessarily, him being in the record business. Sam certainly knew a few bastards, may have been one himself, who could make Allen look like a crass beginner.
Nevertheless Allen got all the goodies bar none and for perpetuity. After having viewed Cooke’s body he was satisfied the hooker did it. Those intellectual properties just keep on paying and paying. Poor Sam. Allen probably could have stopped there but the biggest bastard wanted the biggest bands- the Stones and the Beatles and he did realize that orphan’s dream.
Allen had the typical manager’s attitude toward his clients’ money, pp. 57-58
Theatrical producer, Lawrence Myers, a British business manager and an accountant by training, met Klein several months before Cooke’s death and credited Allen with altering the course of his own career. “Allen taught me something without which I wouldn’t have the lifestyle I do today,” said Myers. “Don’t take twenty percent of an artist’s income- give them eighty percent of yours. The difference between Allen and I is that I actually told them what was going to happen. And Allen certainly didn’t. They found out sometime later.”
Obviously being a ‘business manager’ was a license to steal. If Allen gave all his artists 80% of 20% son Jody has inherited well. As a ‘business manager’ all checks were collected by Allen and once in his pocket were the devil to get out. However after all was said and done, after taxes, fees, expenses and commissions there wasn’t that much left over to be divided five ways. Even if the manager was honest, and few are, he, as an individual was taking a minimum of one fifth. In the case or Colonel Parker and Tony Defries nearly all. There wasn’t that much left over to be divided five ways.
Consider: The tax rate in England for ordinary income was 90%. That means that after all expenses were deducted, perhaps fifty percent or more out of a million, a half million at best might be left over. Ninety percent of half million is four hundred fifty thousand dollars leaving fifty thousand dollars to be split five ways. That is at most ten thousand dollars each. While the Stones minds were confused because they were earning millions and getting peanuts. Didn’t compute in their minds.
So while from 1963 to 1968 if the group earned ten million dollars and that’s a lot of money they were only entitled to a mere good living in after tax dollars. Not flush at all. At the time I don’t think the Stones realized that.
Without knowing the exact amount of money Klein was handling perhaps the Stones were making unreasonable demands for cash. For Klein it was a stroke of good luck when the drug addled Andrew sold him the Stones masters from 1963-71 for what to him was pocket change. Those masters are the basis of what Klein made from the Stones. And it was a legitimate purchase. They have no complaints against Klein on that score as Andrew owned the rights and could sell them to who he chose.
Nevertheless Klein did not deal openly with Jagger and the group so Jagger, by far the businessman of the group, began to look for help elsewhere. A Hippie about town he knew named Chrissie Gibbs had a passing acquaintance with the investment banker Rupert Loewenstein, introduced him to Jagger, then he inexplicably agreed to represent an uncouth rock group of whom he says he had never heard. This is even more remarkable in that the Stones had been arrested and convicted on drug charges in 1967 the year before the staid and respectable Rupert took them on. It was on the front pages with pictures.
Reminded of William Rees-Moggs editorial in the London Times that Rupert had read, he writes in his memoirs that, oh yes, he did remember that but endorsed the conviction entirely. He still agreed to represent them. What do you think of that?
Analyzing a mountain of paperwork Rupert probably came to the conclusion that the Stones’ past was a lost cause and only the future earnings counted. The only hope for big money lay in performing. As the way touring was conducted at the time was less than cost effective Rupert had to reinvent it. He had to eliminate as much of the thieving and inefficiency as possible. This is actually pretty strange.
Why he felt equal to this with absolutely no guarantees is beyond me; according to his memoirs at this time the Stones were not only broke but in debt to the Inland Revenue for more than they could ever hope to pay as matters stood. Well, OK, Rupert was super prescient. You have no idea how criminal the record business is or was at the time. Think about leopards. The business is a shadow of itself today since the internet recreated the single while destroying the LP market.
Rupert was lucky in that Jagger was essentially a performance artist who would make Yoko Oko turn several shades of green. But that is part of the Stones’ story.
Rupert and Klein got into a twenty year legal battle that as the saying goes made the lawyers rich.
However as the Stones left Klein’s stable Allen’s dream of managing the Beatles, at least three of them, came true. Allen got John, Ringo and George while Lee Eastman got McCartney.
Once Klein got the money it was very difficult to get it out of him although he took a sort of paternal interest in the artists. Of course if you are robbing them it is only proper to give then an allowance now and then. Fred goes out of his way to demonstrate, or at least claim, Klein’s honesty, white washing him entirely although as one evidence of dishonesty Klein actually went to jail for a couple of months for failure to report income.
In the record business in order to get their records exposure, companies have to allow for so many demonstration albums- promos or demos as they were called. I owned a small chain of stores back in the day so I would be given sets of albums of a new release for in store play. The promo men had boxes of copies for all the radio stations and other uses. As should be obvious there is a certain play in there to sell demos.
George Harrison, a client of Klein’s put together the charity play, The Concert For Bangladesh. That was a charity release, box set of three records, for relief of the starving of Bangladesh. Any of them starving at the time of the concert were dead by the any money reached Bangladesh. Klein’s deal was that he pressed the records and packaged them, obviously he had the masters, sending the completed copies to the companies for distribution. He then pressed, according to Andrew in Stone Free, literally truckloads of copies that he disposed of as promos. Now these were sixty foot semis were talking about.
The things that happened in the record business is incredible. When the Kiss solo albums were released Neil Bogart of Casablanca seriously overestimated the demand pressing up two million copies of each in advance. Supposedly two truckloads, 200,000 copies, where hi-jacked on I-5 on their way North. As unbelievable as it may sound it was suggested that I was the responsible party. I’m sure those copies were insured.
It was not a crime for Allen to sell the records but, unfortunately, he failed to report the income and that is an IRS offense. Bad, bad.
Andrew offers this take on the situation, Stone Free p. 360:
Allen’s karma finally caught up with him in 1979 when he was convicted on charges of US Federal tax evasion. Klein had sold literally truckloads of albums that were accounted for on the books as “promos” (albums distributed free of charge for radio stations and press for which the label is not obligated to pay artist royalties. His actual felony was pocketing the income from those sales without reporting it to the Internal Revenue service. But Let’s tote up who Klein screwed in the affair, his country, which was entitled to tax him; the Beatles, both collectively and individually…UNICEF…and thousands of starving childre
Perhaps this was a sensitive issue for Jody because Fred carefully steps around the issue claiming a penny ante sharing between himself and his hapless promotion man. The jail sentence says something else.
Actually it got Klein into more hot water than two months for a tax dodging charge. By the time of Bangladesh Klein was one of the most hated men in records by fans. His reputation was just terrible. Calling him a mere crook wouldn’t begin to cover what the fans thought.
A.J. Weberman got wind of the scam. For those who don’t know, Alan J. Weberman was the first ‘garbologist.’ He was so interested in what Bob Dylan was doing he used to collect his garbage from the cans set out on the sidewalks of New York and sort through it carefully. He was trying to prove Dylan was a heroin addict among other things. So, he was a self-styled policeman of the industry.
Having got wind of the sale of the promos, he not only arranged picketing of Klein’s office but actually invaded it. By the time he got through, Klein’s battered reputation was beyond repair. Fred avoids all that even though a great story.
Allen also failed to back Harrison in his lawsuit over his supposed plagiarizing the song He’s So Fine with his song My Sweet Lord.
Andrew Oldham handles that story well in his biography of Allen in Stone Free p. 361:
Quote:
A falling out with Lennon followed (John would vent many of his feelings towards Klein in his song “Steel and Glass”). but the ultimate betrayal came when Allen sued his own former client, Harrison for copyright infringement. To Allen, this was probably as simple as getting the attention of an artist he felt was off the reservation- a counter-insurgency- if you will. Like so many songs before it, George’s “My Sweet Lord” was patently based on the spiritual “Oh Happy Day”, a song long in the public domain and hence not subject to copyright. Unfortunately, another song derived from “Oh Happy Day”, the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine’ was protected, prompting the publisher, Bright Tunes, to launch proceedings against Harrison.
Klein, naturally, was enraged, and happily assisted Harrison in preparing his defense. But as his relationship with the former Beatles crumbled, Klein looked for ways of bringing George back in line. He took himself out and purchased Bright Tunes for himself- and kept the lawsuit alive. A degree of justice prevailed as the Judge slammed Klein for switching sides…
Unquote.
That’s a perfect example of the record business. If Harrison had employed the same solution, buying Bright Tunes, Klein would have howled foul. Artists are supposed to function with a different morality. That’s the record business.
The thing is there are no original songs, every song is derived from another or several. I don’t know why the Courts accept the suits. There is no way the Judges can make an informed decision unless they happen to be musicologists.
As Fred obviously read Andrew as above and had other information or could get it from his employer Jody, there is no reason to shield Allen’s terrible reputation. The guy was totally unscrupulous. Probably better than his counterpart Morris Levy of Roulette or Tony Defries who managed David Bowie or the king of con men himself, Colonel Parker who robbed the King himself- Elvis.
To conclude: I can only recommend the book to the dedicated Stones or Beatles enthusiast. There is no depth or breadth to the book. Allen’s roster of clients, most of whom are still living do not seen to have been interviewed by Fred. He doesn’t even seem to have talked to Andrew who knew and was intimate with Allen the longest. Heck, Fred didn’t even bother to interview his own employer, Jody Klein.
I mean Jody must have had something to say about his father. Even the pictures ae somewhat limited. Fred could have gotten a picture of the orphanage that created the ‘biggest bastard in the valley.’ Allen’s whole career can be placed in the context of his life in the orphanage. Four years old to nine, whew!- the most formative years of a boy’s life.
I was in from eight to ten and that was bad enough. You learn a lot about bastards in the orphanage so when Allen Klein bills himself as the biggest bastard in the valley he is saying a little more than something.















