Showing posts with label psychedelic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychedelic. Show all posts

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Mindf#ckers


Mindfuckers, Edited by David Felton
No month stated, 1972  Straight Arrow Books

Yes, friends, the title of the book is really “Mindfuckers.” I just changed it in the post title given the overly-sensitive AI that now polices Blogger. Which is fitting, because this book is essentially about thought control. Subtitled “A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America” and comrpised of three very, very long articles that originally ran in Rolling Stone, Mindfuckers was published by the Rolling Stone imprint Straight Arrow, and likely it had a low print run, given how scarce the book is now. Luckily someone uploaded it to the Internet Archive

The book has been on my radar for quite some time, but I only now decided to read it because I’ve been on one of my infrequent Rolling Stone journalism kicks, and also because I’ve been on a Manson Family kick. Mindfuckers opens with the Manson piece, titled “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter,” credited to David Felton and David Dalton. Per Joe Hagan’s Sticky Fingers, Felton and Dalton argued over who should be the main writer for this piece, until editor Jann Wenner intervened and gave it to Felton – something Dalton was very upset over. Personally I find it confusing that the two authors have such similar names. 

Originally appearing in the June 25th, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone, “Year Of The Fork” took up the majority of the publication; I consulted my Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-Rom and scanned through it to compare to this reprint in Mindfuckers. It appears the only thing missing is the photography that graced the original version, but for what it’s worth the copyright page of Mindfuckers states that “Portions of this book, in slightly different form, originally appeared in Rolling Stone.” I didn’t do a thorough A/B review, but I didn’t see any glaring changes, so the edits must have been very slight indeed. 

Running to a hundred pages, “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter” is certainly comprehensive, and as expected paints a very good picture of the era’s counterculture. In this regard it’s even more of a success than Ed Sanders’s contemporary The Family. But unlike Sanders, in which the author’s hatred for Manson and his “vampires” was palpable, Felton and Dalton convey an almost sympathetic tone. Indeed, again per Sticky Fingers Wenner’s original goal was to publish a story titled “Charles Manson Is Innocent,” but upon Felton and Dalton’s investigation that goal was scrapped. Likely Dalton had a lot to do with this, as per Hagan’s book he was living on Spahn Ranch when the story was written, and had first heard of Manson through Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (with whom Dalton also lived at one time, again per Hagan). 

Published before the trial began, the story caused enough waves that, per prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter, it caused trouble for both the defense and the prosecution. Bugliosi also notes that the “copycat” scenario had its origin in this story; Felton and Dalton float the idea that the Tate-LaBianca murders were perpetrated so as to get Family member Bobby Beausoleil out of jail. But as Bugliosi notes, this half-assed defense wasn’t even brought up until after Manson and his three killers (Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten) were found guilty. (Charles “Tex” Watson, who carried out the brunt of the killing those nights, hadn’t gone to trial yet.) Bugliosi presents the inside scoop on how this article caused waves, noting in Helter Skelter that even the judge on the case was aware of it. 

Writing-wise, the Rolling Stone style, only a few years old in 1970, is already apparent. Predating the gonzo journalism of Hunter Thompson, Felton and Dalton don’t insert themselves as protagonists into the narrative, and for the most part the writing is on the level. It’s only in the counterculture vibe that the piece seems different than something published elsewhere – and this was one of Felton’s first assignments, coming in from the Los Angeles Times, where he’d won a Pulitzer. Perhaps the biggest coup of Felton and Dalton was an interview with Manson himself, which appears midway through the piece. 

The story encompasses most every aspect of the Manson story, starting off with a memorable open in which the authors take us on a virtual tour of Los Angeles, focusing on the areas of Manson’s impact as if we were hitting each one on a leisurely day’s drive. Then the authors meet with an anonymous attorney on the defense side who shows them gory photos of the murders and exposits on the particulars of the case – certainly stuff that would’ve construed a leak and could have gotten the entire trial thrown out as a mistrial. From there the story appropriates the vibe of one of those vintage Rolling Stone interviews in that the interview dialog goes on and on (and on)…with the caveat that it isn’t John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix or whoever doing the endless talking, but Charles Manson and his “super acid rap,” looking like a “cajun Christ” in his prison garb as Felton and Dalton interview him. 

This internminable interview once again outs Manson as a bullshit artist supreme. Like I wrote in my Helter Skelter review, it’s a wonder anyone took this guy seriously – certainly today no one would, given his constant self-comparisons to Christ, comparisons which would fall on deaf ears in this (mostly) post-Christian era. But Manson very much sees himself as a ‘60s Christ, about to be crucified (one almost gets the impression he regretted never going to the death chamber – then his martyrdom might have been ensured). In fact his attempts at being compared to Christ are ridiculous throughout his endless spiel, which is only occasionally broken up by befuddled responses from our two reporters. Charles Manson’s delight to finally be in the spotlight – to finally matter – is evident throughout this interminable sequence. 

After this we get lots of first-person recountings on Manson from followers new and old, which is how the piece closes; probably the highlight of “Year Of The Fork” is that it captures the Family immediately post-Manson, still living at Spahn Ranch and still eating food taken from garbage cans. We have Gypsy, for example, giving a metaphysical speech no doubt taken from Manson; the authors imply that Gypsy, slightly older than the other Family members, seems to secretly understand that Manson might never be coming back to them. I found this interesting from a modern perspective, as Gypsy (real name Catherine Share) has appeared in a few recent Manson documentaries, having cast off the cult shackles years and years ago. She was featured, for example, in the 2018 Manson: The Lost Tapes documentary on Fox, which featured a memorable moment of the former Gypsy putting on a pair of glasses to watch a recently-discovered film of Manson. Doubly ironic in that it was a visual display of how the Manson family was so long ago – the 70-something Catherine Share watching a film of the 20-something Gypsy – but also ironic given that Manson banned glasses in the Family. Something, by the way, he expounds upon in the interminable intervew in this Rolling Stone story. 

Overall this was certainly an interesting read, notable because it starts off seeming to be pro-Manson, but Felton and Dalton continue to pile up the evidence against him. The Helter Skelter motive isn’t mentioned, but we do get a lot of stuff from Manson and Gypsy on how the Beatles are sending out coded messages – even if The Beatles themselves don’t realize it! But in the capturing of the time and the place “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter” even bests Ed Sanders’s book. However, it’s no Helter Skelter

Next up we have another 90-page feature: Robin Green’s “The Great Banquet Table Of Life – We Deliver,” which first appeared as “Sgt. Bilko Meets The New Culture: The First Church Of Christ, Realtor,” in the December 9, 1971 Rolling Stone. Per Joe Hagan’s execrable Sticky Fingers, Robin Green was editor Jann Wenner’s “resident assassin,” the person he would send when he wanted a hit piece on someone. This particular story was briefly covered in that biography; Wenner’s mother, a rather self-obessed sort named Mimi, had fallen in with this pseudo-Tim Leary named Victor Baranco, and Jann Wenner was jealous of this (Hagan saddles Wenner with all sorts of hangups in the book, from latent homosexuality to Mommy Issues), so he sent Robin Green off to do a hit piece on Baranco. 

Regardless of the origin, the story really isn’t that compelling, and in fact has the vibe of a Kurt Vonnegut story or something. Well, maybe that’s stretching it…though Green does open the story with a quote from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. But essentially this one’s about this guy named Baranco who one day realized he was perfect as-is, despite any hangups or issues or whatnot, and so decided to teach others to accept their perfection. Or somesuch. But the gist of this Rolling Stone piece is that he charges his followers exorbitant amounts of money for basic things, and also puts them up in houses that they have to pay rent on and fix up, and etc. Green’s writing is fine and she carries the story along, adding a humorous note with the dimwitted cult members – many of them affluent types whose pockets are easily picked – she interracts with while researching the story. 

Rounding out Mindfuckers is the 178-page opus “The Lyman Family’s Holy Siege Of America,” by David Felton and from the December 23, 1971 and January 6, 1972 issues of Rolling Stone. This story, a book in itself, documents a Manson-esque cult founded by a banjo-playing mystic; a cult that boasts it hasn’t killed anyone…yet. The opening is especially memorable: we’re in Boston, where a cult member is disguised as a security guard in the Lyman Family compound. The “guard” runs away in the dead of night – and Felton reveals that in reality it’s none other than Paul Williams, former Crawdaddy writer, whose Outlaw Blues I reviewed here a few years ago. 

Similar to Felton’s piece on Manson, we then flash back to the origins of this cult, which started in Boston in the early ‘60s with the apperance of a Mel Lyman on college campus, toting a banjo. The drug of choice was Morning Glory seeds, which per recent discovery could be soaked in water and ground up for an LSD-type experience. He was into the folk scene and could play Bach on his banjo and whatnot, and in the style of the time he began accumulating followers. I had a hard time understanding why, though. After 178 pages I still found nothing special nor memorable about Mel Lyman, at least in the way he was presented by David Felton – why so many followers would willingly boast that they “served” him was just a mystery. 

Regardless, Felton serves up this story as if it were a counterculture epic, painstakingly interviewing several of Lyman’s early followers – some of whom refused to have their real names shown in the story. Throughout there is the insinuation of Lyman’s evolving mean temperament, particularly given how his followers were so afraid of him. But boy it does go on, Felton doggedly pursuing leads to figure out the mystery of the “Lyman Family.” And speaking of which, despite getting started earlier, Lyman gradually became inspired by the Manson Family – particularly by the Rolling Stone story Felton himself wrote, which brings a full-circle vibe to the anthology. 

Felton takes us through the earliest days of the family, with lots of material from fellow musician Jim Kweskin, who also became a follower of Lyman – as did Paul Williams. I’m not familiar with Kweskin but I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to hear that Paul “Crawdaddy” Williams, who displayed such an independent strain of thought in the pieces collected in Outlaw Blues, could have fallen in with a cult – particularly one in which he gave up his own individual thought. I guess if nothing else this is a demonstration of the cult of personality, something Lyman apparently shared with Manson – though the drug regimen he put his followers through didn’t hurt matters. 

There’s quite a bit of stuff about some flap at a radio station where Lyman’s music was about to be played, but the levels were wrong, and the family accused the station of intentionally doing this, leading to a scuffle – as I say, Felton quite develops the theme of an undercurrent of violence in the Lyman Family. Also mystery, with the investigation leading Felton to realize that Lyman had at least one secret identity, which he apparently used in a brief capacity as a music director at that radio station. Meanwhile Felton hangs with the cult members at family HQ in Boston, where they eat communal meals and throw people in an isolation room for running afoul of groupthink. You kind of what to go back in time and shake the shit out of these people – I mean it’s the height of the goddamn counterculture era and they’re giving up their most basic rights for a dude who plays the banjo. Oh and on that note – family members are also occasionally denied having sex by Lyman, despite the fact that he himself has plenty of gals for his personal enjoyment. 

Felton does a good job of building the mystery around Mel Lyman, though; the vast majority of the story is just Felton talking to people about Lyman. One of the more interesting parts concerns Mark Frechette, an actor who at the time was momentarily famous for starring in Zabriskie Point, Michelangelo Antonini’s flop counterculture movie of 1970 – which also was spotlighted in Rolling Stone at the time. Many years ago, when Zabriskie Point was almost impossible to find, I went on a hunt for it and then learned about Frechette; all I knew was that he’d been an unknown, discovered on the spot by Antonini and cast as the lead in his picture. And also that he died in prison a few years after the movie was released – having been sent there for robbing a bank. What I didn’t know was that Frechette was involved with the Lyman Family, and Felton spends a bit of time with him here in the story…mostly relating how Frechette kept trying to sway Antonini to the Lyman path. Interesting here that Frechette is presented as someone who will be going on to a Hollywood career, which was not to be. 

When Lyman does appear in the finale, he’s almost humble and soft-spoken, quite anticlimactic after the preceding 170-some pages of buildup. He’s a far cry from Manson, I mean to say; Felton even drops incidental details like how Lyman is missing teeth. He comes off more like an underdog than a cult leader, but then again this might have been his intention – this meeting with Lyman stems from the family’s concern that Felton was going to write a negative story about them. Speaking of which, prior to the Lyman meeting there’s an unintentionally humorous bit where some of Lyman’s thugs confront Felton in his home and make vague threats to him, and Felton finally kicks them out – and they leave! I mean they’re totally in a different league than Manson’s family. 

Anyway, as a document of the era’s “acid gurus,” Mindfuckers is pretty interesting. The writing is good throughout, but the book certainly isn’t worth the exorbitant prices booksellers charge for it; if you’re after the Manson piece, you can also find it in the much-more-affordable paperback anthology The Age Of Paranoia, credited to The Editors of Rolling Stone and published by Pocket Books in 1972.

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

The Family


The Family, by Ed Sanders
No month stated, 1971  E.P. Dutton

Years ago I went on a short-lived Charles Manson kick and picked up this first edition of The Family, courtesy author-poet Ed Sanders, founding member of the group The Fugs and also the author of the surreal Shards Of God, which I keep meaning to re-read some day. Given how much I enjoyed that novel I decided I’d read Sanders’ nonfiction study of the Manson cult, and specifically this first edition, as it contains material that was expurgated in all subsequent editions. 

At 400+ pages, The Family is certainly comprehensive, perhaps too much so, as it almost pedantically details the day-by-day events of the Manson “family” (Sanders never capitalizes the term, by the way, and nor will I), to the extent that the reader gets exhausted. And Manson and cohorts aren’t the most enjoyable people to spend over 400 pages with. Sanders’ unusual prose style is a huge help in making the mundane stuff entertaining; he routinely doles out memorable, oddball phrases, and he writes the book in a sort of New Journalism style that isn’t too far off from what Tom Wolfe was doing at the time. With the caveat that Sanders, unlike Wolfe, is deadly serious throughout, and indeed his hatred for Manson and his ilk is palpable. 

Consider my surprise, then, when I accessed my Rolling Stone Cover To Cover CD-Rom and pulled up the review of Sanders’s book, from the November 25, 1971 issue. Reviewer Ed McClanahan spends three columns of small print bashing the book, mostly due to Ed Sanders’s “aggressively moralizing” tone. For some reason the Rolling Stone reviewer is surprised that Sanders comes out against sacrifice, muder, and blood-drinking; in particular McClanahan is shocked that Sanders ends the book with the plea that California must be purged of freaks like Manson. Also, McClanahan disparages the “bad writing” of The Family, noting Sanders’s frequent subpar phrases and outright mistakes, though he theorizes that such things might be “intentional…[as if] Sanders had cunningly planted them throughout the book as a kind of peculiar comic relief.” (Somehow though McClanahan, when giving examples of Sanders’s “bad writing,” fails to note the most egregious example – both of bad writing and an indication that it was intentional for comedic effect – when at one point Sanders actually writes the phrase “allegedly alleged.” You don’t write a phrase like that accidentally.) 

Indeed, McClanahan caps off his Rolling Stone review with “The Family…is the very best bad book I’ve ever read,” as if this were the book equivalent of cinema turkeys like The Valley Of The Dolls…which, of course, featured Manson victim Sharon Tate. Personally I enjoyed Sanders’s writing here; he has a definite gift for those aforementioned oddball phrases and description, though it must be acknowledged that sometimes his narrative becomes rather flat in its wearying documentation of every single day’s events. He also often undercuts his own tension with asides that quickly become grating, like narratorial versions of eye-rolling (ie, mocking certain Manson banalities with the phrase “ooo-eee-ooo”). I also got annoyed with Sanders’ apparent obsession with the word “oozing,” which is used so frequently that one could make a drinking game out of it. 

Now, as to this first edition from E.P. Dutton. It features an entire chapter removed from all ensuing editions, focusing as it does on ‘60s subcult The Process. In addition to this chapter, it appears that all references to The Process throughout the book have been removed from later editions of The Family. This must make for a bumpy read, as Sanders refers to The Process a helluva lot in this first edition of the book, and he makes a grand case that Charles Manson was heavily influenced by them. (Later editions of the book lacked all this material because The Process successfully sued E.P. Dutton and Ed Sanders, but it appears the UK editions remained unscathed.) Several years ago I read Maury Terry’s phenomenal ‘80s True Crime classic The Ultimate Evil, which is where I learned of Ed Sanders’ book in the first place; Terry refers often to Sanders’ Process connection, building up an argument that Manson was actually part of a sort of Satanic crime syndicate. 

Ed Sanders doesn’t go to such theories in The Family; for the most part he sticks to the narrative prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi used to get Manson and his assassins on Death Row – and speaking of which, I so enjoyed The Family that immediately after finishing it I ordered myself a copy of Bugliosi’s bestseller Helter Skelter. The title of Bugliosi’s book refers to Manson’s supposed doctrine: that a race war would take over America and Manson and his followers would hide out in a magical city beneath Death Valley (one with friggin’ chocolate fountains), to eventually come out and be accepted as the leaders of the victorious blacks – who, per Manson’s warped ideology, would be unable to govern themselves. 

The Process was just one of the “sleazo inputs” Sanders says Manson was inspired by; there was also a Satanic cult that drank dog blood that was running around in Southern California at the time, and also Manson was really into the biker cults of the day, particularly the Straight Satans. Not to mention the Esalen Institute. And of course there was Manson’s years and years in prison, where he learned about Scientology, another belief system that Manson pillaged from to make his own. Sanders relegates the book to the years 1955 through 1969, opening with Manson getting married and having a child but regularly – almost addictively – getting in trouble with the law and going to jail, until ultimately he spends the majority of the early to mid ‘60s in Federal prison…which he reportedly begged to stay in, because he didn’t understand straight society. 

What makes this curious is the multiple times Manson will manage to escape custody once he’s out; Sanders, clearly in disbelief himself, documents time and again how Manson escapes prison, even after commiting rape, murder, theft, possession, and a host of other infractions. Regardless, Charles Manson certainly picked up on the vibe of the times, going around like a sleazier version of Ken Kesey and putting together his own not-so-Merry Pranksters. Sanders documents all of this; there are a host of characters in The Family, and it becomes difficult at times for the reader to remember who is who, particularly given that so many of the family members have several names. Sanders keeps it all straight, yet at the same time one can’t help but wonder how accurate a lot of this is – even down to random mistakes that cast doubt on the entirety. By this I mean Sanders’s statemement, midway through the book, that Manson shoots a drug dealer in the stomach on July 1…and then notes later that the guy gets out of the hospital on June 14. And this is all the same year, 1969. (A mistake McClanahan also notes in his review.) 

Otherwise The Family was very informative, as I must admit I only knew the general story of Manson and his followers. Having read the book I can’t say my perceptions were greatly changed; it just added more detail to the chaos and suffering they caused. As mentioned I got exhausted at times; the family was nothing if not peripatetic, constantly traveling around California until ultimately holing up at the infamous Spahn Ranch and later in Death Valley. It must’ve been a serious amount of work to keep track of all this, not to mention trying to make sense of what happened. But then, the argument is made, even today, that Sanders’ narrative – which appears to have had its genesis with Vincent Bugliosi – might not be the whole story. In other words, the tale of the hippie killer cult might be more a product of the prosecuting attorney than what really happened. 

What’s curious is that I figured there would be no mysteries left…but I frequently found myself going down rabbit holes during my reading of The Family, only to find that, 50+ years later, there are still no answers to many of the questions posed by Sanders. For example, throughout the later half Sanders recounts random murders that occurred in California when family members were in the vicinity, implicating of course that this could be their work. I looked up the unfortunate victims, only to find that the cases were still cold. Sanders also wonders how in the hell William Garretson, the young long-haired caretaker on Sharon Tate’s property, could have “slept through” the murders that were occuring mere yards away from his cottage, complete with screams in the night that would have echoed through the valley. It seems that there never was a sufficient answer for this (Garretson himself died in 2016, and in the late ‘80s he gave one interview where he said he did see two women chasing each other that night), and Sanders speculates that Garretson might have been “hypnotized” by the family. My guess is that the dude was probably high on acid or whatever (hey, it was L.A. in 1969) and didn’t want to tell the cops that when they interrogated him. 

Another rabbit hole is the missing videotape Sanders almost obsessively refers to in the book. In another of those random flukes that seemed to bless the early family, Manson et al were able to get hold of an NBC camera and proceeded to make videotapes of themselves. According to Sanders, some of these depicted the drugged-out family doing dances that recounted the Tate murders, or another tape showing them drinking blood, or another one depicting a Satanic orgy, and on and on – but, according to Sanders, the tapes have disappeared. Doesn’t look like they’ve been found yet, that is if they ever existed. Some years ago I recall watching a program on the Fox network titled Manson: The Lost Tapes, or something like that, but as I recall the “newly-discovered footage” was innocuous stuff like the family members at the Spahn Ranch talking about how great Charlie was. Another mythical film Sanders notes is the one the LAPD supposedly found in the Tate residence, depicting big-name Hollywood elite indulging in an orgy and other kinky affairs; none of this has ever come to light, over 50 years later. 

The biggest question of course is why the Tate residence? Or, more importantly, why the LaBianca residence? Another mystery still unsolved all these years later. Manson never elaborated, plus years later he claimed the killings weren’t even his idea, they were Tex Watson’s (who indeed did the majority of the killing for the family). Thus we are left with all these weird coincidences that are unexplained. Like speaking of Tex Watson, Sanders notes when Watson is introduced to the text that Watson had a successful wig shop in Laurel Canyon…and, many pages later, we will see that one of Watson’s victims is Jay Sebring, a famous hairstylist who worked in Laurel Canyon at the same time that Watson had his wig shop. How could these two not have known of each other? And yet it would appear they didn’t, as one of the main stories recounted by all the family members in the Tate home that night was that Sebring asked Watson who he was, leading to the infamous “I’m the devil” response from Watson. 

Ed Sanders doesn’t even speculate on this; as McClanahan notes in his Rolling Stone review, The Family is filled with “red herrings” and “unfinished subplots” that Sanders never explains. One also suspects that Sanders basically put into the book everything he was fed about Manson, which ultimately does make Manson seem more myth than man, which certainly wasn’t Sanders’ intention. What else are we to make of the random story recounted by some nameless family member that once upon a time Charlie was getting a b.j. from a nervous female new to the family, who accidentally bit Manson’s dick “in twain,” yet with the power of his own will Charlie was able to make himself whole again? 

Or, in another howler that McClanahan also notes, what are we to make of the story that, months after the Tate-LaBianca murders, the cops infiltrated Manson’s desert hideout, wanting to bring him in on charges of dune buggy theft (it took months for the killings to be pinned on the family), and Charlie motioned into the darkened hills and told the cops he had family members out there with guns trained on them…and the cops ran away? I mean, Manson’s followers were acid-fried teens who thought Charlie was Jesus Christ, and otherwise Manson’s compatriots were bikers and other social outcasts, so perhaps all this is testament to the type of informant Ed Sanders came across: they were willing to believe anything. 

Speaking of which, Sanders provides an entertaining intro where he notes the type of sicko freaks he encountered while reseaching The Family, even stating how he went undercover at one point. All of this would have made for fine material, but Sanders doesn’t go much into it, for the most part keeping himself out of the narrative. But what really bummed me was that Sanders also noted the “thousands” of photos he took in the course of his investigation…yet there is not a single photo reproduced in The Family. Indeed, one gets the impression it was rushed straight from the galleys to the printing press, so as to be the first “major” book on Charles Manson. This would also explain the occasional gaffe in Sanders’ reporting…and also why the trial material is completely skipped over, Sanders ending his book with Manson finally being arrested. 

The murders are documented clinically, but obviously Sanders has relied on those trials for this material, as all of what happened at the Tate and LaBianca homes was only known to the killers. For some reason I was under the impression that the victims at the Tate home were mutilated, but so far as Sanders has it, they were just killed – I realize of course I’m getting into a “Hamas didn’t behead any babies, they just murdered them!” argument, but still. Sanders does allude to this when he notes that someone in the coroner’s office gave out misleading info that made the murders sound even more horrific. More interestingly is Sanders’s argument that Manson and someone else (Sanders speculates that it might’ve been family member Clem) came back to the Tate home after the killings and moved the bodies around, as none of them were found in the positions the murderers left them in. It’s my understanding Manson admitted to this in a book published decades later, but still never divulged who went with him to the murder house. 

I’ve kind of jumped around in the review, but my assumption is practically everyone is familiar with this subject. It’s curious though that, in our modern age of mass shooters and other atrocities, the Manson family still holds such interest. In that regard I’d say the old saw that the Manson families tarnished the Woodstock era might be accurate. Anyway, Sanders spends the first quarter of The Family on Manson’s early days in various jails and then getting out in the late ‘60s and basically collecting runaway, easily-molded girls and driving around Southern California in a school bus that was painted black. Around late 1968 the rot sets in; another mystery is what exactly pushed the Manson family into death and killing in 1969. This could be another indication of later editions of The Family being a bumpy read, what with all those Process mentions removed; here in the first edition, Sanders notes the “coincidence” that the Process moved into death and swastikas right before Manson did. 

The last quarter-plus is devoted to the killings, with the most “famous” of the lot, the Tate murders, getting the most spotlight. Again, the question is how this particular residence was chosen, but of course Sanders notes the connection with producer Terry Melcher, whom Manson had been chasing for months for a movie and album deal. A curious thing here is Sanders keeps using the phrase “genuine Roebucks” when describing the black jeans the killers wear on the killing missions…the same garb worn the following night, on the LaBianca murders. “Genuine Roebucks,” over and over. I mean were those jeans really that special? I mean they just bought them at Sears, right?? “Look out, everyone, I’ve got on my genuine Penneys tonight!” (I used to work at the J.C. Penney corporate office, btw – only the old-timers still called the place “Penneys.”) 

Sanders does his best to make sense out of insanity. Like for example the LaBianca kill. It starts with Charlie wanting to show his “kids” how it’s done, riding around in a car with them and then “randomly” picking out a house…which, again “coincidentally,” happens to be across from a house familiar to the family. Then he “creepy-crawls” into the house, gets the spring on the middle-aged man and woman inside, ties them up, and sends in his killers to off them. This, Sanders and Bugliosi claim, was Manson’s way to start up “helter skelter,” his race war idea that was gleaned from one of the best Beatles songs – though, as Sanders notes, it’s regrettable that Manson was unaware that a “helter skelter” was an amusement park ride in England. But if a race war, why Manson’s direction for the girls to put something “witchy” on the walls after the murders? 

Maury Terry picked up this ball in The Ultimate Evil, and now it’s pretty much a given that I’ll re-read that book. In fact I think Sanders might’ve even been one of Terry’s sources; it was from Terry’s book that I learned the first edition of The Family had the cut Process material. Terry in particular took note of a claim made by Dennis Hopper, which first appeared here in Ed Sanders’s book, that the occupents of Ciello Drive (ie the Sharon Tate residence) were into kinky freak scenes and had filmed the ritual whipping of someone who had “burned” them in a drug deal. Sanders does focus a little on the “drug burn” angle, but if anything his behind-the-scenes intimation is that Manson was perhaps working for some other cult in the killings. Maury Terry sort of extrapolates on that, picking up on the Process connection and brining in a sort of Satanic Mafia angle. 

One thing I can say though is that this is one of those books where I wished I could magically transport myself into the text so I could kick hippie ass. Surely this was some of the impetus behind Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (the novelization of which I’ll probably now get around to reading). I mean Pitt and DiCaprio – the actors themselves, not just the characters they played – could’ve probably taken out Manson and his followers without breaking a sweat. I mean Manson was like a hundred pounds soaking wet, as the saying goes – and also surely I can’t be the only one who sees the resemblance between him and The Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin? Yet for some reason Manson was able to scare people. Well, he did have a gun on the LaBiancas, and I read elsewhere that Tex Watson also creepy-crawled into the house with him, something I don’t think Sanders notes here. 

Speaking of creepy-crawling, I wonder also if Manson, or maybe even this book, was an influence on Joseph DiAngelo, the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker/Golden State Killer. “Creepy-crawling” was Manson’s term for breaking into homes at night and slipping around inside while the owners were asleep, stealing minor things or even messing with the owners in some psychological way. DiAngelo started his crime career around this time, also in Southern California, as the Visalia Cat Burglar, and given the time and place I wonder if he wasn’t somehow inspired by reading this book. Who knows – another mystery. If The Family makes anything clear it’s that a ton of weird shit was going on in Southern California in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. 

Overall I was certainly entertained by The Family, even though it probably wasn’t the best book to be reading during the Christmas season. It also had me hitting Google for searches that likely put me on various FBI watch lists. But I must mention that at times I found myself a little bored with the sometimes flat and clinical reportage; again, the impression I got was that the book was rushed to meet a deadline. I did learn a lot from it, though; I had no idea that it wasn’t for a few months that the August 1969 murders were pinned on the Manson family. Nor did I know about the dune buggy army thing Manson had in mind, a “Rommeloid” vision of him and his family ripping through Death Valley and pillaging towns. Sanders’ writing, when not going for the clinical angle, is inventive and really gives a feeling for the era. But if anything I found The Family to be like an appetizer for Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, which was published a few years later and would go on to become the bestselling True Crime book ever. 

Speaking of which, I’ve added a “True Crime” tag here on the blog, so will be reviewing Helter Skelter here once I’ve read it, along with other true crime paperbacks (not just Manson-related) I’ve picked up over the years. But sticking to the Manson topic, if interested you can also check out my review from a few years back for the obscure Manson cash-in novel The Cult Of Killers

Oh and speaking of the Xmas break, apologies for the two-week delay in posts. I might have to go to a single review per week schedule for the time being, as I’m reading pretty long books at the moment (one of them a literal doorstep at 1200 pages!), so I need to actually finish the books before I can review them!

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground


Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground, by Joe Banks
No month stated, 2020  Strange Attractor Press

I try to refrain from making sweeping statements, but it seems to me that Hawkwind didn’t make much of an impact here in America. I mean, I’m 49 and have spent pretty much my entire life listening to rock music from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and even I only heard of Hawkwind probably around 1999 or so, in an off-hand mention in a review of Primal Scream’s album XTRMNTR (and there’s another group that didn’t make much of an impact in America – at least, no one I knew at the time had ever heard of them). 

Even then, it wasn’t until I discovered the Hawkwind reviews by The Seth Man (my favorite music reviewer ever, btw) at Julian Cope’s Unsung site, some years later, that I even bothered looking into the group. Seth Man focuses on Hawkwind’s early ‘70s output, and later I’d learn that this era is for the most part considered the Hawkwind, even though the band continued on (even to today), with multiple lineup changes. But about the only member I knew in the band was bassist Lemmy, who of course would go on to form Motorhead; indeed, if anyone in the US is aware of Hawkwind, it’s probably due to Lemmy’s connection with the band in the early ‘70s. 

But even that isn’t very well known; I know a guy at work who is big into the music scene, as is his wife, and he mentioned the other week that his wife had just read Lemmy’s autobiography (!!!. Now that my friends is a woman you marry!!). “So she probably knows who Hawkwind is,” I said. The guy gave me a blank look and was like, “Who?” He wasn’t even familiar with the term “space rock.” Presumably his wife would indeed know who Hawkwind is, given that she’s the one who read the book – and now that I’ve read this book, concerning Hawkwind’s rocky ride through the 1970s, I think one day I too might check out Lemmy’s autobio. He proves himself the most colorful character in a group solely comprised of colorful characters. 

Over the years I’ve heard all the Hawkwind albums from the classic era, but have failed to become interested in any of the post-Lemmy albums (which is to say, 1976 onwards). But still even then I didn’t know anything about the group, or the revolving lineups, or who anyone was. Wait, I also knew of Stacia, the statuesque, 6’ 2” beauty with the staggering bust who danced in the nude at Hawkwind concerts during the Lemmy era. Recently I got on another Hawkind kick and decided to finally learn a little more about the group. Joe Banks’s Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground served as the perfect overview of Hawkind, and by focsing solely on 1970 to 1980 Banks here gives us the glory days of the band over the book’s 400+ pages. 

Banks handles his subject in an interesting way: this isn’t a bland study of the group, but one that is broken up into different formats. There’s “Chronology,” which offers persent-tense detail on what Hawkwind is up to throughout the decade, and “Album,” in which Banks reviews each record released during the decade – and Banks proves himself a great reviewer in that he actually describes the music, a failing of many so-called “music reviewers.” In fact his style reminds me a bit of Seth Man’s. Then there are “Interviews,” in which Banks throws some questions at a few (surviving) Hawkwind members. Finally there is the periodic “Essay,” in which Banks will focus on a subject for a few pages, like how Hawkwind related to the political climate of Britain at the time, or Hawkwind’s relationship with the sci-fi New Wave (collaborator Michael Moorcock being another of those interviewed here). 

One thing I quickly learned was that Hawkwind honcho Dave Brock (vocals and guitar) doesn’t seem to have much time for these things: he’s not one of the people interviewed here, and all his comments in the book are taken from contemporary interviews. Brock also failed to appear in a BBC documentary that was produced several years ago (which Banks links to on his informative and comprehensive website for the book), due to his falling out with another founding member: Nik Turner (sax, flute, vocals). Banks doesn’t get into the details of this falling out in his book, but then again Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground ends in 1980. At any rate Turner died in 2022, so his falling out with Brock was permanent. It just seems strange that Brock does not appear in any of these band retrospectives, given that he started Hawkwind and is still running it. 

Regardless of Brock’s lack of involvement, Joe Banks carries the narrative along smoothly, as mentioned relying on contemporary articles and interviews. One thing I learned from this book was that Hawkwind were heroes of the British underground, often performing at free concerts and operating out of the Portobello Road area, where they presented themselves as one of the people. So I guess sort of like The Jefferson Airplane, at least insofar as their political/radical inclinations went, but Hawkwind certainly never became as wealthy or successful as the Airplane did. In fact you wonder how these guys even made a living: eventually their shows were known for elaborate light shows (not just the naked dancing girl), and they used all sorts of audio generators and other electronic gizmos that were outsie the realm of your typical rock group. This entailed a large touring company, which of course had to be paid for. 

Compounding the issue was that none of the members wanted to get on the “star trip,” and indeed most of them would shun the spotlight, content to let the slideshows and light shows and Stacia take the brunt of the audience’s attention at concerts. No doubt this is another reason Lemmy is probably the only member of Hawkwind an American fan might know off-hand, as Lemmy certainly had the star trip down pat, becoming a legend in his post-Hawkwind days. Otherwise even I, who had listened to the albums and collected some of them on vinyl over the years, couldn’t name a single other member of Hawkwind until I read this book. They were an eccentric group of characters to be sure, but we aren’t talking a John-Paul-George-Ringo group of different and memorable personalities. 

But then, Hawkwind’s music outweighs any personalities – it’s a heavy, spacey kind of rock that’s heavy on the effects and the overall trance-inducing vibe. The only problem I have with it is that I’ll hear a Hawkwind song and think, “This is great!” Then the next song will come on, and I’m like, “Didn’t I just hear this song?” What I’m trying to say is, variety is not key with Hawkwind, at least for the classic era of the early to mid ‘70s. To this day I still confuse “Born To Go” with “Brainstorm,” or etc – and not just them! Entire LP sides almost blend into one long track, but as Joe Banks successfully argues here, that’s the entire point! Hawkwind’s music was designed to take the listener into another realm (even without drugs), inducing a trance through repetition of its heavy psychedelic rock vibe. 

Another thing that sets Hawkwind apart from groups of the era was that Hawkwind was indeed psychedelic – and not “progressive,” as they are often categorized. As Banks also notes, in this regard Hawkwind had more in common with the krautrock bands out of Germany, in that they continued with the heavy psychedelic rock of the ‘60s but brought it into the ‘70s with all the production tricks of that decade. But they had little in common with true prog groups like ELP or Yes, and more in common with such German acts as Amon Duul II (which also had a revolving lineup, including a bassist who played in both ADII and Hawkwind in the early ‘70s). 

It's in the description of this music that Banks’s narrative style really shines. As mentioned, he describes the music, treading the line between insightful commentary and the colorful word painting David Henderson employed in Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child Of The Aquarian Age. In fact it had me going back to the albums to listen to them again, though I have to admit that, despite his enthusiasm, Banks did not succeed in making me appreciate the post-Lemmy era of Hawkwind. I found myself skimming a lot of this material, as I’ve never been interested in the group’s attempts at capturing the punk or New Wave scenes, nor do I like the streamlined act in which Bob Calvert became their main singer. I mean, I like the dude as the crazed circus ringmaster who links tracks on Nektar’s Down To Earth, but not as the main singer in a New Wave-styled Hawkwind. 

Speaking of which, Banks makes much of Hawkwind’s impact on the emerging punk scene, which is another line of divergence for American readers. Punk just never had that impact here…despite Johnny Rotten’s infamous T-shirt, Americans today are a helluva lot more likely to listen to Pink Floyd than the Sex Pistols. In England though it seems that “punk” is still held in high regard, for giving a new boost of energy to the dying rock scene or whatever. Hawkwind, while never punk, is often cited as an influence on the scene, to the extent that even Johnny Rotten said there never would’ve been a Sex Pistols without Hawkwind. To which I say, “Who cares?” 

Joe Banks relates Hawkwind’s trip through the ‘70s in an amiable tone that is never too critical or apologetic. His enthusiasm for the band is clear, but also he can’t help but relate some of their poor choices – like, of course, canning Lemmy and Stacia. Also Dave Brock’s increasing control of the group is cast in a questioning light, especially given that everything was going fine previous to his changes in the lineup. Also the group had a rather strange habit of abandoning band members on tour – Banks relates in the later ‘70s portion of the book how Robert Calvert was abandoned during some tour, and caught Brock et al as they were leaving in a taxi, Calvert chasing after them while brandishing a sword. This is the closest the book gets to Spinal Tap territory, by the way. But also, in that BBC documentary I linked to above, there’s a part where Lemmy relates that he too was abandoned while the group was on tour in the US, just assuming he had wandered off somewhere to get some speed and taking off without him. 

What I find curious about this is that there’s also a scene where a Hawkwind member (“Liquid Len”) is ditched by the other members of the group in the 1976 novel Time Of The Hawklords, by Michael Moorcock and Michael Butterworth (though as Banks notes in the book it was entirely written by Butterworth); I’ll have a review of that one up once I’m finally able to finish it, as to tell the truth the novel’s a bit of a slog. The tidbit of a Hawkwind member being ditched by the others is entirely too coincidental and makes me suspect Butterworth was spoofing how Lemmy was ditched in the US, though it doesn’t happen to Lemmy’s character in the novel. 

Speaking of Lemmy and his amphetimines, Hawkwind was of course synonymous with drugs, and Banks treats this topic with candor – there is no apology or regret or any other stuff. About the only issue is that Lemmy was a speed and heroin user, and this didn’t jibe with the preferred drugs of the others. Hawkwind was a pot and acid band, which itself was notable for the ‘70s. This could be why their mid-‘70s output does not sound sterile and lifeless, like so many other groups of that era. The same, again, holds drue for the krautrock bands of the day. Another thing I learned from Banks is that British critics of the day also saw this similarity with contemporary German bands (krautrock was also never a “thing” in the US), but today hardly anyone mentions Hawkwind in the same breath as Can or the like. 

Joe Banks’s Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground goes a long way in fixing this; the story told here is memorable and entertaining, and makes one wish for a time machine – what it must have been like to see the group’s “Space Ritual” production in person. (And I share Banks’s incredulity that none of these shows were ever filmed for posterity!) Banks also does a good job of defining the various lineups and how they differed from one another, while still maintaining a “Hawkwind” vibe. Overall I definitely enjoyed the book, with the caveat that my interest waned as the ‘70s progressed (but then that’s pretty much true about everything ‘70s for me), and it had me listening to my Hawkwind albums with a renewed appreciation. I also appreciated the thoroughness Banks brought to the book, down to detailing every promo film made of the group in the ‘70s, as well as notable outtakes that were not released in the day – and speaking of which, the 2018 Record Store Day double-vinyl compilation release Dark Matter: The Alternative Liberty/U.A. Years 1970 – 1974 is highly recommended, collecting as it does some of the very outtakes Banks mentions in this book.

Monday, October 30, 2023

The Neural Atrocity (The DNA Cowboys #3)


The Neural Atrocity, by Mick Farren
No month stated, 1977  Mayflower Books

The DNA Cowboys “trilogy” wraps up with this third installment that begins soon after Synaptic Manhunt. In fact the two installments come off as one novel, whereas first installment The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys still seems like a book disconnected from the series. Even more so with this last one, as all the characters continue with the retconning that occurred in Synaptic Manhunt; The Minstrel Boy is a “nothings”-navigating “tracker” and prepubescent adult AA Catto is a would-be conqueror, looking to dominate the entire ruined Earth with her minions of black-armored shock troops. 

Catto is even more unhinged this time around. Mick Farren clearly intends her to be some sort of post-apocalypse Hitler, and her scenes, which all take place in the city of Quahal (which she first conquered last volume), are certainly inspired by Hitler in the bunker in the final days of the war. Catto becomes increasingly insane as the novel progresses, her only ally Nancy, the pearl-skinned hooker who joined up with Catto last volume. The two enjoy more lesbian shenanigans, but Nancy finds herself more and more the victim of Catto’s frequent tantrums. 

Speaking of which, Farren continues pushing buttons: The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys featured a random part where Reave, one of the titular “DNA Cowboys” (though the phrase has still not appeared in the books themselves), had sex with some albino dude. Well late in The Neural Atrocity, the Minstrel Boy and Billy Oblivion are approached by monks who claim to be there to serve their every need (male monks, just to confirm), and the Minstrel Boy puts them to the test by having one of them give him a blowjob! 

One new thing Mick Farren introduces here is that Catto has developed a penchant for having Stuff Central (ie the vast computer that serves up whatever a person orders) create clones of previous celebrities, and Catto will have her sadistic way with them until she has them dumped in the compost bin or whatever. So there’s lots of annoying stuff where Catto will have this resplendent meal with all these clones of long-dead notables, and the one that gets the most attention is the clone of Elvis. Catto and Nancy enjoy this one the most, so there’s a bit of clone-sex and sadism at play too. 

But for the most part The Neural Atrocity is focused on war and carnage; when we meet Billy and the Minstrel Boy, they’re in a new city that is being waylaid by Catto’s shock troops. Once again they’ve hooked up with, uh, hookers, and once again Billy’s become the pimp of the one he’s with – a recurring bit from the previous book. Despite the war raging outside, Billy is more upset that the Minstrel Boy has two girls in his room, while Billy is stuck with just one. 

There’s a goofy part where Billy has sex with this hooker…but he’s had so much sex with her over the weeks (as it’s literally all she wants to do) that he’s grown bored with it. So Farren actually writes an entire scene in which Billy goes through the motions, humping dutifully away just to get it over with. Almost as if Farren were spoofing the entire “exploitative” angle of pulp – I mean there’s nothing like a fairly explicit sex scene in which the protagonist is bored – but also it ties back to the previous book, where Billy was bored being stuck with his previous hooker girlfriend. Maybe Farren’s trying to tell us that hookers are only fun if you don’t start a relationship with them… 

As ever though our heroes are kind of lame. Billy and the Minstrel Boy do little except hide and have sex with their hookers; there’s no part where they decide to wipe out their old enemy Catto. This job falls to that other loser from the previous book: Jeb Stuart Ho, the kung-fu monk who was introduced as such a badass but ultimately turned out to be a buffoon…one who didn’t even succeed in his mission to kill AA Catto, but instead went back to his temple to report his failure. This time he’s given a pep talk by his leaders and goes back out into the fray again, determined to stop Catto and her attack on the world for real this time. 

Action is given more focus this volume, but again Ho carries the brunt of it. There’s a bit of kung-fu and swordplay, and again he uses a pistol. But Farren is more focused on the atrocities carried out by Catto’s troops, and the relish Catto takes in hearing about them. But as mentioned she becomes increasingly nuts as the book proceeds, with Farren hammering the “Hitler in the bunker” stuff, complete with Catto being whacked-out on various drugs and paranoid to the point of delusions. Catto carries the brunt of the narrative; her or Jeb Stuart Ho, to the point that the supposed DNA Cowboys – Billy and the Minstrel Boy – barely appear. 

You’ll notice there’s one DNA Cowboy I’m not mentioning. SPOILER ALERT – skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. But anyway, I have not mentioned Reave. This is because he was killed off in the final pages of Synaptic Manhunt. But it happened so casually, with such little exploitation, that it almost seemed as if Farren were implying that Reave was just injured and not really dead – as it happened, he was shot at while escaping with some others, and fell down, but he was off in the distance and it’s possible he could’ve just been hurt; even Billy seemed unsure. Well, Reave isn’t even mentioned in The Neural Atrocity, which would indicate he’s well and truly dead…except for the fact that he seems to appear in The Last Stand Of The DNA Cowboys, the fourth volume of this, uh, “trilogy.” 

Well, that’s it for the spoilers, but I’ll also hint that the finale of this one wasn’t very satisfactory. I kept hoping for some comeuppance for a certain increasingly-annoying character, but it didn’t happen, and Jeb Stuart Ho proved himself as buffoonish as ever. Worse yet, Billy and the Minstrel Boy spend the last quarter of the novel just trying to escape the apocalyptic events (Stuff Central being shut down, the vanishing of certain towns, etc),  So the two of them basically disappear for long stretches. 

So then, the DNA Cowboys Trilogy comes to a vague and surreal finale, with Billy and the Minstrel Boy going through the nothings to some new town, with no idea what to do. This is how Mick Farren left the characters for several years…until he decided for whatever reason to revisit them in 1989’s The Last Stand Of The DNA Cowboys. Curiously, this one was initially a paperback original in the US, even though the original books had never been published here. I have that one as well, and will read it anon – it’s longer than the original three volumes, and a glance at its contents would indicate it’s more of a “real” novel, at least when compared to the surreal escapades of the original books.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Synaptic Manhunt (The DNA Cowboys #2)


Synaptic Manhunt, by Mick Farren
No month stated, 1976  Mayflower Books

The DNA Cowboys “trilogy” continues with this second installment that was supposedly written right after the first. But if I didn’t know any better I would’ve assumed that Synaptic Manhunt was written at some much later date, as it introduces new characters to the series and changes previously-established characters to fit the whims of the new plot. Whereas The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys flitted from one surreal adventure to the next, this one follows more of a standard plot with actual repercussions for the characters. It’s almost like the previous book was a warm up and Synaptic Manhunt is the actual start of The DNA Cowboys

The biggest change is that we suddenly have a new protagonist: Jeb Stuart Ho, a kung-fu monk who lives in a monastery and is sent out on his first mission as an “executive,” his goal to assassinate someone who threatens the entire world. And who is this global threat? None other than AA Catto, the self-involved socialite woman in the body of a 12-year-old girl. Whereas The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys merely had it that Catto was a narcissitic and depraved wanton, the sudden revisionism now has it that she’s like a female Hitler or somesuch, one with delusions of grandeur and dominance, and it’s only a matter of time before she puts together an army and tries to take over the world. 

So it’s Jeb Stuart Ho’s job to keep this from happening – and once again, it’s “Jeb Stuart Ho” every single time this guy is mentioned in the narrative, same as it’s “AA Catto” every single time Catto is mentioned. Not sure why Mick Farren has this strange authorial quirk, but it’s annoying. Ho (as I’ll refer to him!) is clearly inspired by David Carradine in the contemporary popular culture hit Kung-Fu, but Farren doesn’t spend as much time on his background or training or whatnot. Instead, Ho gears up in an armored leather suit, grabs his sword, nunchucks, and pistol (I love it that “executives” don’t relegate themselves solely to bladed weaponry) and heads out into the nothings to track down and kill AA Catto – who meanwhile has moved into a new city, where she’s again looking for the latest kick. No mention is made of her brother or the other recurring characters in the Catto sections of the previous book, again giving the impression that Synaptic Manhunt is from a different series entirely. 

On that same note, whereas The Minstrel Boy was an aloof, sometimes inexplicable presence in that previous book, here Farren has turned him into one of the main characters. Not only that, but he’s suddenly gained superpowers; we learn here that he’s a “searcher,” able to divine his way through the “nothings.” Finally Mick Farren bothers explaining the surreal fabric of this world. Apparently it’s some centuries(?) after things fell apart due to some catastrophe, and now locations are separated from one another by the dizzying non-space of the “nothings,” and the Minstrel Boy is one of the very few who can actually find his way through the nothingness. 

This, then, explains how he was able to constantly show up in various places in The Quest Of the DNA Cowboys, at least sort of. Here he’s drafted by Jeb Stuart Ho to find the city AA Catto is now in – the book is so disconnected from the previous one that Catto isn’t even in the same place anymore, but has abruptly moved to a new place called Lutz, where she’s again on the endless hunt for depravity. Another thing that Farren adds to the books, which is quite prescient, is that credit cards are very important; it’s a cashless society, and the Minstrel Boy will only take the job if Jeb Stuart Ho, who is financed by his wealthy temple, agrees to allow the Minstrel Boy to withdraw whatever amount he wishes upon completion of the job. 

A funny thing about the novel is the subtext, early on, that Billy and Reave, the ostensible heroes of the previous book, are both ensnared by women at the start of Synaptic Manhunt. Reave has become the literal plaything of AA Catto, who controls Reave with a collar he wears around his neck and can’t remove; Catto has a ring that allows her to send flashes of pain through the collar, the level of pain depending on how angry she is. Meanwhile Billy, who split off from Reave at the end of the previous book, happens to be in the same city, but has become “Billy the Pimp” because he oversees the business affairs of his girlfriend, a hooker named Darlene. Even though he’s not in a pain-collar like Reave, Billy is still at the beck and call of his woman; one could almost see this as Farren’s subtle message that young men should stay focused on their quest for fun and thrills and not get tied down with one single woman, as nothing but pain and misery will result. 

This setup doesn’t last too long, though; an interesting thing here is that characters who were previously friends are set against each other. AA Catto, learning that a temple assassin has a contract on her, hires a group of local toughs – including Billy – to serve as her security. And meanwhile the Minstrel Boy is working for the man who wants to kill Catto. However Farren doesn’t make much out of his three heroes reuniting; indeed, Billy and Reave reunite off-page, and there’s no camaraderie between the two, let alone with the Minstrel Boy when he shows up. For the most part the Minstrel Boy is here reduced to being Ho’s sidekick, and worse yet there’s a part later on where the Minstrel Boy is drugged so that he has laser-focus and can doggedly track down one particular person in the nothings – a dangerous drug that could potentially kill him, but also turns him into a veritable zombie while it’s in effect. 

Another new character shows up, another hooker: Lame Nancy (later just “Nancy”), an acquaintance of Billy’s hooker girlfriend, but one with more of a fondness for women. She’s “all white,” with crewcut white hair and “pearl” skin, all of it set off by the black brace she wears on her withered leg. I’ve now finished the trilogy and Nancy turns out to be a main character, which is funny because when she’s first introduced you figure she’s just going to be another one-off character in the sprawl of the narrative. Eventually she hooks up with AA Catto and becomes her closest confidant and bedmate; Farren is sure to turn in a few sapphic trysts between the two, but once again the novel is not very explicit, at least not when compared to some of the other stuff I’ve reviewed here. 

Action is sporadic and it too isn’t very exploitative. Another funny thing is that Jeb Stuart Ho is introduced as this total badass, but he too turns out to be the typical Mick Farren loser protagonist, bumbling through his adventures and being reprimanded by the people he encounters, in particular The Wanderer, an old man who is a fellow “searcher” like the Minstrel Boy. The picaresque vibe of The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys is for the most part gone this time, as Farren really focuses on the “manhunt” for AA Catto, including such memorable scenes as Catto commandeering an airship in her escape from Lutz. 

The final quarter of the book takes place in Quahal, a place where all “advanced” technology is forbidden, destroyed by floating robot-things that show up, confiscate anything high-tech, and incinerate it. That said, they seem to leave guns alone, deus ex machina be damned. Here Farren indulges in what appears to be a sudden decision to write a fantasy novel, as Quahal is run by armored knights on horseback, and AA Catto challenges their queen to rule the place. After which she has her own army and is finally free to conquer the world, something which she’s apparently wanted to do for a long time, though you never would’ve gotten that idea from the previous book. 

Another new element this time out is Stuff Central, which reminded me for all the world of the Acme mail order stuff in old Looney Tunes cartoons. Basically it’s a computer that spits out whatever you request from it, and ultimately Catto starts putting together her own made-to-order army from Stuff Central, as well as a few Jeb Stuart Ho replicas to confound the actual Ho. It’s all very busy but still has that reserved, almost disconnected vibe of the previous book, to the extent that nothing packs much impact. Even when a major character is killed off in the final pages of the book, the death doesn’t even register…you just keep thinking he’ll show up again later (though having read the last book in the trilogy I can report that he does not!). 

While I mostly enjoyed The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys, I didn’t much care for Synaptic Manhunt. The storyline with AA Catto suddenly becoming a would-be Alexander the Great just didn’t work for me, and I found new guy Jeb Stuart Ho more of a buffoon than the badass Mick Farren intended him to be. I mean he asks way too many dumb questions to be a badass action hero. Given that at this point Farren has decided he is indeed writing a trilogy (we’ll overlook that he published a fourth installment several years later…but I’ll read that one eventually too), this means that Synaptic Manhunt does not come to a close – the events are continued in The Neural Atrocity, which I’ll be reviewing next.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys (The DNA Cowboys #1)


The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys, by Mick Farren
No month stated, 1976  Mayflower Books

Two years after he published the greatest rock novel of all time (or at least of the many I’ve read), Mick Farren turned out The DNA Cowboys Trilogy, which was only published in the UK…and which wasn’t really a trilogy, as in 1989 he published a fourth installment (which to make things even more confusing was initially published in the US!). Apparently Farren wrote the “trilogy” all at once, so I read the three books in sequence – meaning this week and next will be dedicated to DNA Cowboys reviews! 

At just a little over 200 pages, The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys isn’t so much a piece of world-building as it is a fast-moving adventure yarn with a definite surreal vibe. The reader must do the heavy lifting on figuring out what is going on, or more importantly why it is going on, as Mick Farren clearly was under the influence of various drugs while writing the book – and no doubt would proudly proclaim as much. So it’s definitely psychedelic sci-fi, only not “sci-fi” in the sense that there’s space exploration or alien worlds or the like. It’s all grounded on Earth…though a seriously fragmented and strange Earth, possibly centuries after some apocalyptic event. 

Another funny thing is that there’s neither a “quest” nor any “DNA Cowboys” in the book! At no point do the two main characters, Billy Oblvion and Reave, refer to themselves as “DNA Cowboys” (and nor does the narrative refer to them as such), and they don’t go on a “quest” so much as they just wander aimlessly around the wastelands of this strange world. In fact I really started to wonder where Farren even came up with the “DNA Cowboys” tag…I’m assuming he got the title in some narcotic flash and just ran with it, but it turns out to be a little misleading for the reader. About the most we get in this regard is when Billy and Reave arm themselves with replica Old West revolvers at the start of the book…but then nothing more is made out of this in the ensuing narrative. 

Farren throws us right in with little setup: we meet (the mostly undescribed) Billy and Reave just as they’ve decided to leave the small town of Pleasant Gap and to go see the rest of the world…the first residents of Pleasant Gap to do such a thing ever. The two are presumably young, but then Mick Farren’s not an author who is much for describing his characters – indeed, we don’t learn the age of one main character until late in the novel, which renders all the preceding material with this character even more shocking in retrospect. Billy, with his fringe of black hair, is ostensibly Mick Farren’s stand in. Reave, described as being built like a “farmer” is the less cerebral of the two…not that Billy is very cerebral. If there’s any subtext to The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys it’s that young men are pretty clueless and just wander aimlessly through life as they look for the next kick. 

And that’s really all that makes these two leave Pleasant Gap. I identified with this early part of the book, growing up as I did in a similar small town that seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world – to make it even more coincidental, there was a place called Short Gap near where I grew up. But Pleasant Gap is truly cut off from the world. In order to leave the place Billy and Reave must get portable “stasis generators,” little gizmos they apparently strap on (again, details are minimal) and which literally create matter in the pocket of “nothings” that separate all the communities in this future ravaged Earth. And it is certainly Earth, with occasional references to 20th Century pop culture and the like. People drink tea and whiskey, everyone speaks English, etc. 

It's just all so surreal and vague that it’s hard to identify with anything, and ultimately there’s such a disconnected air to it all that The Quest Of The DNA Cowboys lacks much impact. It doesn’t help that our “heroes” are kind of losers, bumbling from one misadventure to the next. They gear up and leave Pleasant Gap, and the reader is prepared for an epic adventure. Instead, the two find themselves in a truckstop, being bullied by truckers who don’t like the looks of them. Here is the first appearance of what I guess would be considered another “DNA Cowboy:” The Minstrel Boy, a sort of wandering musician with a Bob Dylan-esque mop of black hair and a silver guitar strapped around his back. While The Minstrel Boy will becoming more of a figure in the next two volumes (I’ve already read the second one), here he is more of an aloof presence, more of a deus ex machina that Mick Farren employs throughout the damn book to get Billy and Reave out of their various jams. 

Meanwhile the narrative frequently veers off into two subplots, only one of which will ultimately merge with Billy and Reave’s narrative. The subplot that doesn’t ever meet up with the main plot concerns what appears to be a female deity, presumably the triune figure appearing on the cover. These sequences are annoying at best, written all in ugly italics, and seem more stream-of-conscious than anything. Farren refers to this figure as “she/they,” as if he’s attended his “pronouns training” decades early. The other subplot that does impact the overall storyline concerns one AA Catto, a promiscuous babe who lives in a drug-fueled pleasure dome; her sections really reminded me of The World Inside, given that she lives in what appears to be an entire community that’s indoors. 

Oh, and “AA Catto;” Farren has an annoying tendency to refer to his characters by their full names. Constantly. So every time “AA Catto” does or says something, it’s “AA Catto” we get in the narrative. (Curiously though, Billy Oblivion is just “Billy.”) By far I enjoyed the parts with Catto the best; whereas Billy and Reave’s adventures take them through downtrodden slums for the most part, Catto lives in the high-tech pleasuredome drug paradise that I demand in my ‘70s sci-fi. Farren really puts his psychedelic imagination to work here, with such notable drugs as one that makes flesh transparent – and the woman who has done this to herself can only imagine how interesting it will be for the man who gets to sleep with her. Decadence is the order of the day in AA Catto’s sections, and given that she’s a highborn who lives only for indulgence she almost seems to have walked out of a toga trash novel. 

In comparison, Billy and Reave’s adventures seem threadbare. Things get off to a bumpy start when they’re almost immediately drafted into an army for crying out loud, complete with boot camp and the like, and I was afraid for a bit that Farren wasn’t writing the book I wanted. Luckily though this “war” stuff is eventually dispensed with and we’re back to various random travels with the two – with the Minstrel Boy constantly showing up, as if via magic, to save them. But as mentioned he is a very aloof presence; there are times where Farren doesn’t bother to explain how the Minstrel Boy has even found Billy and Reave, and also there’s more unexplained stuff besides. Like for example one part late in the book has the trio on a raft, and a big hole in the lake crashes them, and Billy and Reave make it to shore. A few pages later they’re reunited with the Minstrel Boy, who again looks different (his clothing and hairstyle changes constantly, and at one point I was certain Farren was referencing glam-era Lou Reed). But the Minstrel Boy claims that the raft scenario was “a whole long time ago,” even though to Billy and Reave it was just “a few days ago.” So does the Minstrel Boy travel in time, or did Billy and Reave themselves jump unwittingly through time? Farren is not at all concerned with letting us know. 

Action is sporadic, and when it happens it isn’t much exploited. For that matter, neither is the sex. There’s a lot of talk of sex, but the book itself isn’t overly explicit. It’s certainly kinky, though. Like early on Billy hooks up with a blue-skinned babe (Farren implies she might be an alien – but again he doesn’t give any details), and she has this electric-shock thing she jolts Billy with during the act. But mostly it’s AA Catto who handles the brunt of the book’s sleaze – despite which it’s her brother she’s sleeping with. Oh, and Farren pulls one of the craziest reveals ever. We spend the entire novel cutting frequently over to AA Catto, where we are told of how sexy she is, and how she’s slept with this or that person, or whatever. Then only in the very final pages does Farren drop the bomb that AA Catto…is only twelve years old! As mentioned I’ve already read the second installment, Synaptic Manhunt, which reveals that Catto’s really an adult, but one who has used “age retardation” to keep herself pre-pubescent. Still…this definitely lends the entire preceding events an “ick” factor. 

Farren enjoys pushing buttons throughout; there’s a random part where Billy finds Reave in bed with an albino dude named “The Medicine” who randomly enough sports a pair of breasts. But our heroes are not judgmental at all, and Billy basically laughs off Reave’s attempts at an explanation. Otherwise our heroes don’t do much to make themselves memorable. They’re essentially on a quest to just keep moving, even when they’ve found happiness: one of the best sections has them in a society that seems to be a commentary on the ‘60s movement. Here the eternally young do nothing but take drugs and listen to endless music; for once the Minstrel Boy whips out his guitar and plays with the house band (I couldn’t help but imagine the Grateful Dead, what with how Farren described the scene). But while Billy wants to stay, Reave and Minstrel Boy insist he leave, to “keep moving.” 

This constant hopping around means there’s no unifying thread to the narrative, and the finale comes upon us without much warning. Billy and Reave end up in the community of AA Catto, and the book features the coldest of endings – Catto makes Reave her personal plaything, and Billy takes off for more adventures. But as mentioned Farren wrote all this at once, so it isn’t really an end at all: the story continues with Synaptic Manhunt, which I’ll be reviewing next.

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

2001: A Space Odyssey


2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
July, 1968  Signet Books

If I could see just one movie on the big screen it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially if I could see it on the original Cinerama curved screen setup. Every few years when the movie makes it back into theaters for a special screening I either don’t hear about it or forget about it; the closest I ever came to actually seeing it in a theater was when my wife and I were in London in Fall of 2012 and we were out in the suburbs somewhere, I think the place was called Battlesbridge or something like that, and we passed by a theater that had 2001 listed on the marquee. But the start time was only shown as “Late.” When I asked the snotty British ticket-booth guy when exactly “Late” was, he gave me the snotty British answer that, “It’s generally after the sun goes down and it’s dark out.” I admit, that was very funny, but I was like, “Dude, over in America we have this thing called time.” 

Anyway, I never did see the movie – it had been a long day, and 2001 is a long movie (and not the most snappily-paced one), and the timing just wasn’t right. So I had to be content with my Blu Ray, which I admit I only play every few years, if that. But none of this long preamble has anything to do with the novel at hand, which of course is a well-known book written by one of the more noted science fiction authors of the 20th Century. That said, I’ve never actually read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, even at the height of my sci-fi nerd era as a middle school student in the mid-1980s. Some years ago, in a fit of “vintage space books” collecting, I picked up several of Clarke’s ’60s and ‘70s non-fiction books, like for example The Promise Of Space and Report From Planet Three, but still have not read them – though I have thumbed through them. 

And, judging from this off-hand, casual observation, I want to say that Clarke’s novelization of his own 2001 script reads, for the most part, just like one of Clarke’s non-fiction space books. Whereas Stanley Kubrick’s film leaves much to the viewer’s interpretation, Clarke spends the majority of his novel lecturing the reader on philosophy or explaining how and why this or that happens. In many ways it is a guidebook to a “future” that never happened, same as Arthur Clarke’s non-fiction space books of the era were. For the most part Clarke’s 2001 goes out of its way to leave nothing to the reader’s interpretation, thus cutting out the mystery and esotericism that make Kubrick’s film so fascinating to this very day. 

On the other hand, it is neat to see how this world of 2001 actually works; we’re told how the interstellar craft operate, how HAL 9000 “thinks,” and most notably even what exactly the mysterious Monolith is up to in the Dawn Of Man opening. Again though, this undercuts the drama, and I could imagine Stanley Kubrick (to whom Clarke dedicates the novel) seething at some of Clarke’s “explanations,” mainly because they are rather unimaginative. I mean the Monolith chooses the “Moon Watcher” monkey-man in the Dawn Of Man sequence because he shows the most intelligence of the monkey-men; I mean that’s so much more direct and “duh” than how it’s done in the film, where you wonder if the Monolith itself is directing events (which the novel makes implicit) or if it’s merely the presence of the Monolith that causes the monkey-men to begin thinking. 

This is the line Clarke walks throughout the book. We’ll have a little “narrative material,” where the plot will proceed along, then we’ll have a bunch of expository info-dumping about space exploration. I imagine Clarke must’ve been excited to get this material out to those who wouldn’t be so interested in reading a book about space exploration, but the caveat is there isn’t much “fiction stuff” in his 2001. I mean honestly, if we are looking solely at dramatic thrust and an exciting plot, then the novelization of Moon Zero Two is actually superior. This is of course because there isn’t much plot per se in the film, and Clarke of course follows his own script: the Dawn Of Man sequence, the discovery of the Monolith on the Moon, the flight to Jupiter which climaxes in the psychedelic Dawn Of New Man. While Kubrick follows an absorbing pace (or, conversely, a leisurely pace), letting the visuals tell the story, Clarke must fill pages, gussying up a barebones plot. He does so as if he were writing another of his nonfiction space exploration books; be prepared to learn much of the orbits of asteroids, or what the surface of Jupiter is like. 

That’s another of those little changes to the text – the second half of the film concerns a trip to Jupiter, but here in the novel Jupiter is just the first stop along the way, with Saturn the ultimate goal. That said, there is a sequence – again as if shoehorned in from one of Clarke’s nonfiction books – in which the ship, Discovery, hitches a ride on Jupiter’s orbit to get a boost in speed. This entire sequence is almost lifted from the real-life Apollo 8 mission, which was the first mission in which human occupants of a spacecraft went around the “backside of the moon,” losing contact with Earth. A total “baited breath moment” if ever there was one, but not nearly as dramatic here in the novel – though Clarke does have monosyllabic astronaut heroes Dave Bowman and Frank Poole silently shake hands when the mission completes successfully and they are set on the proper path without any trouble. Curiously this was exactly what real-life monosyllabic astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did when they landed on the moon over a year after 2001 was published – they silently shook hands. 

All these decades later, 2001 can be seen as its own thing, but it’s clearly intended to be the natural progression of where everyone thought the space race was headed; monosyllabic astronauts Bowman and Poole are terse ciphers, same as their real-world counterparts in the Apollo Program. The Cold War is still on in this 2001, but in the novel it isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is in the film; the only Russian character is a scientist who appears in the brief opening sequence in the Space Station, same as in the movie, but here in the novel we learn he is good friends with Dr. Heywood “Pink” Floyd (not his real nickname, btw). Floyd is our main protagonist after the Dawn Of Man opening (which by the way doesn’t climax with the famous “bone toss” scene of the film), and he too is cut from the same overly-formal and reserved cloth as Bowman and Poole. 

Floyd’s actually less relatable in the novel. The bit of him calling his daughter back on Earth (Kubrick’s actual daughter, I seem to recall) is not in the book, but we do get more about him getting a solo ride all the way from Cape Kennedy to the Moon in a little over a day, all at the behest of the President. Nor is the equally-famous bit where Floyd is introduced, napping in zero-gee on his way to the Space Station, here in the novel. And speaking of which, yes the zero-gee toilet is also in the novel; indeed, we get to see it in action, as Floyd uses it (Clarke focused on the the mechanics of the equipment, I should clarify). We also get a lot more pondering on what the Monolith is, and it’s also carefully explained – several times, in fact – that the Monolith was intentionally buried beneath the surface of the moon three million years ago, and let off a “scream” of radio static when the sunlight touched it upon its excavation. 

In other words, as Floyd explains late in the novel, the Monolith is an “alarm,” one set there by some mysterious race of beings. But otherwise there is a lot of pondering throughout 2001, to the point that the narrative often comes to a dead stop. And it’s all space-geek stuff, too. Like a part where Discovery is coming upon its first asteroid – the orbits of which, we are informed, have carefully been laid out in the navigation so the ship will never encounter any of them on the journey to Saturn – and Poole and Bowman geek out about taking photos of it via missile-launched robot. And this goes on and on, a somewhat thrilling scene…with the caveat that the asteroid is thousands of miles away. But again it’s just a chance for Arthur C. Clarke to show off his knowledge of space exploration and how such things are done, and it’s just more stuff that seems to be shoehorned in from a science journal. 

There is no mystery in Clarke’s 2001. Everything is told in a bald, matter of fact style that comes off as insulting, at least when compared to how the film left so much to the viewer’s interpretation. HAL 9000, referred to simply as “Hal” in the book, also suffers – Clarke is at pains to explain away the AI’s responsibility for the events of the final quarter. Again, the movie leaves it vague; did Hal go nuts, or is it the effect of the Monolith? (Notice how when the Monolith appears, it also teaches how to kill – first the man-apes who kill animals and then their fellows, and later in the film HAL 9000 goes on a killspree.) All the events on Discovery are different in the novel: Poole’s fate, the fate of the scientists still in cryo – even Bowman’s fate is different, as after all this happens, including his shutting down of Hal, he’s on the ship for three more months before we get to the Star Child finale. 

This is what I mean about forward momentum being nil in the novelization of 2001. I mean really. We have this huge catastrophe on the ship…then a few pages later we have Bowman walking around the cleaned-up ship and listening to opera. Even here there is endless pondering and info-dumping; all fascinating if you are looking for science fact, but kind of distracting when you are looking for science fiction. But anyway, I was going on about the explanation on Hal. This is where Heywood Floyd returns to the scene; he calls Bowman (rather than the video briefing Bowman accidentally activates in the film) and tells him that Hal had been programmed with the ship’s true mission, and keeping that knowledge secret caused the AI to go haywire. 

The climax is mostly the same, but instead of a psychedelic lightshow it is, once again, a bunch of info-dumping. Bowman, having reached Saturn and knowing he doesn’t have enough oxygen to surive the years until a new ship can be built to come rescue him, gets in a pod and decides to investigate the massive “Big Brother” Monolith that is floating around the planet. Nearly a thousand feet long, this Monolith is “full of stars,” per Bowman’s frantic last call back to Mission Control on Earth – and no, he doesn’t say anything in the film. But even here, while floating through changing worlds with crashed space ships beneath him and strange sights in the varying skies, Bowman still ponders over everything in a factual, reserved, “man of science” style that is impossible for the reader to identify with. And again it just comes off as several pages of Clarke showing off his knowledge of astrology and science. 

It's also kind of goofy – compared to how creepy the finale of the film is. Here there’s no question Bowman is being watched by aliens as he finds himself in a makeshift cottage…complete with even boxes of cereal! And TV shows with “a famous African reporter” on television! All of it, he realizes, stuff from two years ago, when the Moon Monolith was discovered (neither the film nor the book bother to spell out that the stuff with Heywood Floyd is actually in 1999, not 2001). So Bowman theorizes that the aliens used TV broadcasts of that time to create a perfect little cage for him. Then he goes to sleep(!), and we get a sort of psychedelic sequence where he turns into a Star Child advanced human thing with cosmic powers, Clarke calling back to the finale of his Dawn Of Man sequence earlier in the book: “He would think of something.” 

I’m glad I finally got around to reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, but to tell the truth I feel that he took away a lot of the film’s magic. Sure, much of the plot is based around Clarke’s own story ideas and whatnot, but still. His incessant need to explain and exposit just stops the narrative dead at times, and the book has none of the ultramod sixties sci-fi vibe I so love, like the film did…a look which I believe reached it’s apotheosis in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO. Undeterred, Clarke went on to write 2010 and 2061 and others in the series, but I doubt I’ll ever read them – though I will read some of his nonfiction space books.