by Gene Mahoney
Down and Out in Beverly Hills... - September 2001
September 2001 - My intern (no jokes please), Faustine, had to go back to Paris recently, but she really wanted to see Los Angeles before she left, so we hopped in my piece-of-shit 1980 Toyota Corolla and headed down Highway 101. Yeah, I know 101 takes longer than I-5, but I wanted her to see the beautiful vistas of the Pacific coast. She wanted to take I-5 because she thought it would be a drive through the desert. I told her that north of L.A. really isn’t the desert. I didn’t know how to describe it; Just mountains on one side and dried-out brown grass on the other. We got to stay in Santa Barbara for an hour; just enough time to grab something to eat and race down the road again. As it turned out, the first place we parked in front of was a French restaurant called Pacific Crepes (705 Anacapa Street off the main drag), where Faustine engaged everyone in her native tongue. The very cheerful and polite mom and pop owners Andre and Jeanine gave us some additional crepes after I paid the bill and told them I publish a newspaper, which made me realize I should have whipped out my business card sooner and gotten us a free meal. Actually, as I recall, all the customers were French, too. I was the only Ugly American there. Make sure you visit this place the next time you’re down in Reagan Country. Anyway, we managed to make it down to La-La Land and hop on that giant parking lot known as the Santa Monica Freeway. I had to get Faustine back to SFO for her flight the next day, and we got there just in time for the afternoon rush hour, so most of the trip was her leaning out the car window, taking pictures of "sights" like the Universal building and the Hollywood sign in the hills. Stressed, I needed an iced coffee, so I pulled into Hustler Hollywood; the world headquarters of First Amendment poster boy Larry Flynt. It’s pretty much a coffee bar with sex toys and videos all around for sale. Being from France, Faustine probably thought she was in a regular convenience store. She ordered our drinks while I went to the sandbox. On the way there, I heard some guy on the phone yell, "No, I want FIVE boxes of inflatable wives!"
Then I took a stack of Heralds and left them at the free publication table, next to the L.A. Weekly and some local gay rags. We ended up having a nice conversation with some older guy named Bud (who worked on game shows like Tic Tac Dough) and a middle-aged couple visiting from Long Island. Very nice people. It was getting late, so I didn’t have time to show Faustine my old place in Marina Del Rey, or take her for a stroll down infamous Venice Beach. Part of the reason we came down was to see a photo exhibit titled 20 Years of Rock ‘n Roll at the Backstage Cafe (9433 Brighton Way in Beverly Hills). I was tipped off to this show via a web site I discovered dedicated to the former lead singer of The Police, www.sting.com. It said that the exhibit would be at the Backstage Cafe on... (I forgot what the date was. It was the day we were there)... and that there would be some rare photos of the ‘80’s supergroup, taken by Ms. Catherine Bauknight. I had also recently heard that Stewart Copeland and his brothers had started a restaurant down in L.A. After surfing the web some more I found out that this was that restaurant! I then remembered the guys who own Benway Records on Venice Beach had told me that Andy Summers now lives in the City of Angels. Heck, this could be an adolescent fantasy come true! Maybe Sting, Andy, and Stewart would be there! Then again, maybe they wouldn’t; we got to the club and we were the only people there. As it turns out, the exhibit had been postponed. I told Driss El Astif, the manager, that we had driven down from San Francisco JUST for the exhibit and he felt really bad. He made sure the dinner we ordered was very pleasant. He was great. So was Liz Pereira, their bookkeeper. Liz is about my age so we started talking about ‘80’s "New Wave" bands and various concerts we attended. As it turns out, Liz manages a very talented diva named Fabienne Shine. Fabienne and her band Shakin’ Street debuted in ‘78 with the cult-classic "Vampire Rock". Renowned as the best heavy metal band ever to come out of France (Is that true, Faustine?), the band relocated to San Francisco and toured with the likes of The Damned, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, and Black Sabbath. They broke up in the mid-’80’s, but now Fabienne is back. I didn’t hear the older stuff, and I despise heavy metal, but the new CD Liz gave me is very good; very non-heavy metal. Hell, it’s worth buying just for the first two songs, which I keep playing over and over again. I’m listening to it now as I type this. Fabienne’s music is dark and haunting, yet covertly catchy. If you like Broken English by Marianne Faithfull and Wave by Patti Smith, you’ll dig No Mad Nomad by Fabienne Shine. Order it today by logging onto www.fullmoonprods.com.
Anyway, back to our story: Joules, the Backstage’s General Manager came out and said hello. A nice chap from Manchester, England as I recall. He and Driss showed me around the place, which has a real New York look to it, along with photos of various rock stars and gold records hanging from red walls.
The head honcho behind The Backstage Cafe is Ian Copeland, one of, if not the most, successful booker/agent/promoters in the history of rock. His Frontier Booking International (FBI) represented hundreds of artists, including The Police, The Go-Go’s, Squeeze, R.E.M., Simple Minds, The Smiths, Ultravox, Siouxsie & the Banshees ---- everybody! His older brother Miles is the former CEO of IRS Records, which recorded many of the bands that Ian booked tours for. His younger brother Stewart, as you know, is the former drummer for The Police and is currently a film composer. Ian owns most of the club (the other owners are his brothers, Jerry Moss, and Tony Broccoli). Ian’s daughter, Barbara, is Backstage’s resident chef, and has assembled an impressive menu of reasonably priced California cuisine, with some Italian, French, and Middle Eastern dishes thrown in as well. Barbara was exceptionally nice to Faustine and myself. She even took a stack of Heralds, placed them in the boutique they have next door, and said I could drop them off there every month.
The sun was starting to set, so I was gearing up for our all-night drive back to The City By The Bay, but Barbara cheerfully insisted I show up later for a party they were throwing for some model. Hey, twist my arm. We came back a few hours later and the model wasn’t there, but I did get to meet Catherine, the photographer of the exhibit we had planned to see. As it turns out, you can catch her Rock ‘n Roll photos there from 9/14 to 11/7. Then I saw him -- Ian Copeland! He casually, confidently walked in (as if he owned the place). I shook his hand and told him, truthfully, that The Police were my favorite band; kind of like The Beatles for my sparse generation. He smiled and handed me a copy of his autobiography, which he proceeded to sign for me. It’s called Wild Thing, a truly engaging work which chronicles his life growing up in the Mid-East then moving to England and, along with his brothers, changing the course of popular music. I tell ya; the reason why this issue is a few days late is because I can’t stop reading this thing! The only reason I don’t finish it today is that I have to bang this column out so I can get this rag off to the printers. The only downside to Wild Thing is that after what the author has been through, just about any guy is going to feel like a major league sissy boy when he’s done reading it. As for Ian; I’m amazed this guy is still alive! Some highlights: He grows up in Beirut with his dad a CIA agent and his mom a spy for British Intelligence. As a boy, his whole family is trapped in their house for days as militants fire bullets into it, until the U.S. Marines show up on their front lawn. He joins a motorcycle gang constantly on the run from the law. He runs away from home at age 15 and heads for London, where he sleeps in public and gets thrown in jail until heading back for Lebanon. He falls in with the wrong crowd who steals cars. He runs away from home again, joins the U.S. army, and gets shipped off to Vietnam, where he encounters action from day one. He witnesses terrible violence in that nation (almost as bad as Sting and Stewart going at it backstage after Police concerts!) Heh heh, joking aside... he saw some intense shit. So don’t walk... run out to your nearest bookstore and get yourself a copy of Wild Thing: The Backstage, On the Road, In the Studio, Off the Charts Memoirs of Ian Copeland. Or better yet, head on down to Beverly Hills and buy a copy at The Backstage Cafe. Recommended reading on related topics: Ian’s father wrote three books about his experiences organizing the CIA: The Game of Nations, The Real Spy World, and The Game Player. I haven’t read any yet, but my friend from Lebanon has read Nations and says it was very good. Sting: Demolition Man by Christopher Sanford is an enjoyable biography of the former Police frontman. No CIA espionage, but it’s still a good read. Oh, and visit a web site dedicated to Ian’s brother Stewart at www.angelfire.com/sc/Thorn495/Copeland/cpage.htm and read an article posted from the Spring 2000 issue of Revolver magazine. It’s the first interview in years with all three members of The Police together in the same room; and it’s pretty damn amusing.
You Go-Go, Girl! You Go-Go, Girl, Go-Go!
Despite all the extremely positive press we gave The Go-Go’s recently, Kimberlye and I still managed NOT to get invited backstage after their show at The Warfield on August 21st. But we did manage to schmooze our way back there anyway, along with a Japanese all-girl punk band called gito gito hustler that had traveled from the land of the rising sun to see Belinda, Jane, Charlotte, Gina, and of course, Kathy. They couldn’t speak English, but they held up signs with drawings they did of them seeing The Go-Go’s on TV in Japan, and then flying out here to see them perform at The Warfield. It was cute. If you’ve ever asked yourself, "I sure do love The Go-Go’s, but why can’t they sing in Japanese?" then gito gito hustler is the band for you. Actually, they sound more like The Donnas (or even The Ramones) than The Go-Go’s. For more info visit www.gitogito.org.
News and Notes, This and That...
It’s August 30th as I write this. I wasn’t supposed to write anything on August 30th as I thought I had finished this column on August 29th. But I was relaxing with a glass of cheap red wine at Café Barrone in Menlo Park, ready to begin laying out this issue at the Kinko’s a few hundred feet away, when I saw a familiar figure walk by. I quickly realized who it was. "Mr. Hitchens!" I yelled to this person. And indeed I was correct. Mr. Christopher Hitchens, the enfant terrible of journalism, was here in Silicon Valley. And, unlike the way he often comes across on the telly, he is one heck of a nice guy. Perhaps you saw him a couple of months ago on "Politically Correct", where he debated former KISS frontman Gene Simmons over the morality of the Vietnam War. I told him that I had spoken with him a few months ago when I saw him speak at Modern Times Bookstore about his most recent work The Trial of Henry Kissinger and that William Rivers Pitt had reviewed it in Herald’s July issue. We walked to my piece-of-shit 1980 Toyota Corolla and I handed him a few copies of that back issue because I had forgotten to mail it to him. Then we went to the British Banker’s Club and had a couple of drinks. As you may recall, in Hitchens’ book on Kissinger, the author makes a rather compelling case that the former Secretary of State should be indicted by the International Court of Justice for war crimes in East Timor and Vietnam, as well as numerous other locales. Kissinger recently retaliated by accusing Hitchens of being a Holocaust denier. Hitchens threatened to sue Kissinger so, not surprisingly; the good doctor has since retracted his idiotic accusation. Read the exchange of letters between the barristers for Kissinger and Hitchens at www.enteract.com/~peterk/. Hitchens told me he spoke to Ian Copeland’s dad years ago and recalled the former CIA agent: "Yeah! Miles! I remember he said he had a kid who was starting a band." As I recall, Hitchens said he has released, or will be coming out with soon, a sort of "Best of" book of his writing. Make sure you check it out….
"Life is like an 18 hole golf course and you’re the ball. You get smashed around then end up in a hole in the ground." So says the prolific Jim Barbera, co-owner of S.F. Black and White Gallery (868 Post btw Hyde and Leavenworth), a place that has prolific photographs. If you’re looking for images of San Francisco, it’s the best gallery in the city for selection and price.... 2M&G Marketing Arts, a design firm based in Tiburon, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, marks its ten-year anniversary by opening a gallery in downtown Tiburon at 1704 Tiburon Boulevard.... San Francisco’s Hottest New Artist Laurie Jacobs has some of her latest creations on sale at Mike’s Furniture (2142 Fillmore, 567-2700). If you’ve got to go to another wedding or another baby shower or whatever, buy one (or several) of her beautiful glass creations. They would be the perfect gifts: Guaranteed to make an impression on your friends, not your wallet!... Berkeley author Sheldon Greene has a critically acclaimed book out titled Burnt Umber. It’s a novel about German painter Franz Marc, American sculptor Harry Baer, and the strong-willed women they loved. $14.95 from Leapfrog Press.... Pacific Rowing Club is hosting a series of open houses to recruit high school age rowers and raise awareness about the sport. It will be held from 10-11:30 on 9/22, 10/13, and 11/17 at Pacific Rowing Club located at the Lake Merced Boathouse. For more info call (415) 242-0252 or visit pacificrc.org.... The definitive guide publication to the underground press and music scene is coming back: Send your ‘zines, books, videos, and CD’s to Factsheet 5 at P.O. Box 4660, Arlington, VA 22204.... Speaking of CD’s, I received a couple of them in the mail. The first one was accidentally mailed to John at the San Francisco Herb Company and he loved it so much he refused to send it to me. So the record company sent me another copy of Rosas Del Amor and I’m glad they did. It’s truly beautiful Spanish guitar music by a fellow named Armik. Available at Tower, Borders, and Amazon.com. Visit armik.com....
The second CD is by a local folk/jazz band called Sexfresh. The album has a mellow flow, and lead singer Bunko has a passive voice, which sort of reminds me of John Doe from X. The songs that stand out the most are sung by Emily Zuzik, whose voice usually sounds like Carly Simon when not occasionally slipping into Peggy Lee. Visit them at mothersdiscontent.com.... Local pop stars Electric Peach (who kind of sound like a cross between No Doubt and the B-52’s) warmed up for Rod Stewart at Shoreline recently and may be close to a record deal out of L.A. Visit the lovely Mary Cary and her bandmates at ElectricPeach.com to order their CD.... Around mid-August I was walking around Haight Ashbury when I noticed a young woman playing guitar on a street corner. She wasn’t exactly playing it in the traditional way you play that instrument. She was sort of slapping and hitting it, singing ditties like "Amazing Grace" in a trance-like state, completely unaware she was being watched until I finally applauded. I told her she reminded me of ani difranco. She thanked me, told me her name was Courage, and was down here temporarily looking for people to live and work at a Healing Arts Massage school. If you’re interested in doing work exchange, work study, or being on staff, contact Heartwood Human Resources at (707) 923-5012. Visit them at Heartwoodinstitute.com.... This fall powerHouse Books will release Pass The Mic, Beastie Boys 1991-1996, with photographs by Ari Marcopoulos and texts by Carlos McCormick & Paul D. Miller.... Grant & Green (located at Grant & Green) has gotten spruced up but still offers live music. Johnny Nitro plays there on 9/15, Daniel Castro on 9/20, 22 & 28. You can also catch most sporting events on TV there.... See my friend Jennifer Lawry perform with the Redwood Symphony on 9/23. See redwoodsymphony.org for complete info.... Heaven, a comedic play about a human rights lawyer whose actions ignite an unstoppable chain of events leading to range and violence, by George Walker, runs until 9/29 at the Actors Theatre (533 Sutter). Call 296-9179 for tickets.... Who do you think was the most beautiful woman ever to grace the silver screen? Bardot? Deneuve? Garbo? Monroe? Perhaps, but I still think it was Linda Harrison, the woman they lock Chuck Heston in a cage with in the original Planet of the Apes. Yeah, I know that doesn’t exactly impress you film scholars out there, but who cares. Go rent that flick and tell me any of those women could hold a candle to "Nova". Hubba Hubba. I tried to get an interview with Ms. Harrison for this issue and did manage to find her web site and email address. She wrote, "If you do the article no free pictures". I sent her a copy of the Herald with my phone number on it and never heard back from her. Oh well. Another adolescent fantasy bites the dust.
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