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VH-1's Behind the Music: Sympathy for Milli Vanilli
by William S. Repsher

published 3/8/99

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William Repsher is a LeisureSuit.net staff writer based in Queens.



MOST RECENT YAK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE:

Subj: alban pfisterer
I wish to sell a 'very limited edition' Snoopy interview published by ZigZag in 1971 - badly cycostyled and in a buff folder with a large(red) Love logo on the front. Offers, anyone?

-- andre klarenberg
Nov 25, 2007 at 2:10PM

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The fallen star strolls on the beach at sunset. He still looks good: thin, strong, handsome. A bit older. Crow's feet and graying temples. Maybe he has a wife with him--good looking, but not out of your league. Maybe a child or two. And the announcer intones: "(Insert rock star name here) has found the inner peace that evaded him in the spotlight. It's been a long, hard road for (insert rock star name here), but he's walked long enough to find his pot of gold."

It could be a beach. Or a comfy home recording studio with the faded star laying down some vocals. Or a sunny living room. Maybe a stage in a small club filled with sweaty, howling fans, although not the jam-packed stadium of yore.

In any event, on VH-1's "Behind the Music" (Sundays at 9:00 p.m.--although they're rerun constantly), you can always witness a phoenix rising from the ashes.

With a new special almost every week, the studios at VH-1 must be covered in smoke and bird shit. Such is the lot of those wayward performers who make their ragged way to this strange series. Rick James. Heart. Leif Garrett. Def Leppard. Milli Vanilli. David Cassidy. Ted Nugent. Andy Gibb. Mötley Crüe. The list is long, and if the show continues to be as wildly popular as it has been, there is a perpetually-replenishing supply of has-been rock stars to provide years of these bizarrely-touching documentaries.

Here are some of my favorite episodes -- I haven't seen a bad one yet. In this world of four-CD box sets and slavish, spooky Internet lists dedicated to individual artists, the concept of over-exposure seems to be a lost art. It's a brilliant concept to over-expose artists who will never be over-exposed again.

DEF LEPPARD
Joe Elliott, lead singer of Def Leppard, on the drug/alcohol-induced death of bandmate, Steve Clark: "His blood-alcohol level was double what killed John Bonham."

Such a great quote--I find myself using it all the time, in Elliott's thick Northern English accent. Someone at the bar asks me how I'm feeling: "Not bad--considering my blood-alcohol level is double what killed John Bonham."

Everyone in these specials is convinced no one EVER did more drugs than he/she did. (It's a rare special where drugs don't play a major role in an artist's downfall--maybe only Ted Nugent, who tanked his recording career simply because he was an asshole?) In some cases, they're right--Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx literally died for a few moments from a heroin OD and was brought back to life only by an adrenalin hot-shot to his heart. (Please see Pulp Fiction for a graphic re-enactment of this dramatic process.)

Take my word for it: they can all drag their umlauted little asses home and put a hypodermic-studded crown on Ozzy Osbourne's head in the drug department. Use Ozzy as the archetype for decades-plus drug abuse and the attendant insanity--he should wear a white pharmacist's smock onstage. (Two of Ozzy's finer moments: biting the head off a live pigeon in a record company meeting and, in a dress, urinating on the walls of the Alamo.) If you're as stoned as Ozzy, then you're being fitted for either a straightjacket or a casket. When you reach the point of snorting a line of red ants from a sidewalk (as Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee witnessed Ozzy doing on a particularly wild tour), come back and we'll upgrade your status.

Of special note is Leppard's one-armed drummer, Rick Allen. The band loses one of its founding members to drugs, fatally loses their lead guitarist to alcoholism, and the drummer loses his arm in a car accident. (They also lost those spunky Union Jack hot pants I saw so many assholic metalheads wearing in 1982.) Amazingly, the band continues with Rick using a specially-designed drum set. Still, Rick continues to freak out on drugs and booze, and ends up getting arrested for beating his wife in an airport, which he finally takes as a warning sign.

A drunken, one-armed man beating his wife in an airport! Now that's rock and roll!

LEIF GARRETT
Leif, meeting a long-lost friend left wheelchair-bound in a car accident they had shortly after the peak of his recording career, responding to his friend's statement that Leif had inadvertently "saved his life" by having that accident: "Dude, that's the coolest fucking thing anyone's ever said to me."

Leif, wearing a hanky on his head to hide male pattern baldness, and weeping. His friend, wheelchair/biker chic, long hair and tattoos, looking ragged but healthy, not at all like the wacky-faced lad pictured with a teenage Leif in photos. His life was "saved" by Leif because he was over-engaged in the sloppy seconds of Leif's excesses, and the accident made him find out "who he was," albeit at the expense of ever walking again. Time has done a number on both, but they're survivors, man. Hold on a second, while I pull my hanky off my head and wipe my eyes, man. Shit, where's my Rogaine? Dude, this is the coolest fucking paragraph I ever wrote.

For me, this is the most affecting moment of all the specials, because while it may be hammy and calculated, it is real. It's hammy because we already know the outcome, that Leif will find forgiveness and closure with his long-lost friend. If his friend had lunged at Leif from his wheelchair and cried out, "You ruined my fucking life, you piece-of-shit teenage idol! I always liked Shaun Cassidy better than you," do you think we'd have seen it? No. Why? Because Leif would have been mainlining heroin again the next day, and making his previous roadtrip to drug-addled hell look like a jaunt to Disneyland.

Another point on Leif's plight--it's odd how the lesser-talented artists always have the best specials. I've never owned a Leif Garrett record--and never will. But I found his VH-1 special far more interesting than, for instance, the Bruce Springsteen or John Lennon specials. And, frankly, I find that the lesser artists, with their new-found sense of humility and new albums (always "the best thing I've ever done") that will go nowhere, tend to come off as fairly likeable, normal people who went through the star-making machinery, got spit-out the shit end, and are now relatively saner and wiser. I like Leif Garrett after his special--I couldn't stand him in the 70s.

ANDY GIBB
From a never-released Andy Gibb song: "I'm too young to die."

This song is shocking. Why? Because Andy called his own number, granted, after a few years of burning himself down with every drug known to mankind. The song is the same sort of middle-of-the-road/disco fluff that his brother/pop guru Barry concocted for him to rise so meteorically to the top. The gravity of the lyric doesn't fit the sound, especially in light of his death soon after. And that makes it all the more chilling.

Simply stated, Andy had it all (including Victoria Prinicipal) and blew it. Life lessons like this are peppered all over these specials, a veritable "how to" on the seamy underbelly of the music business. You have artists who let themselves be puppets for producers and agents to achieve fame (Milli Vanilli), those who had a ready-made vehicle for stardom and simply lost or forfeited control (David Cassidy), those who paid no attention to their business affairs and went broke as a result (literally every artist), and those who developed crushing drug/alcohol addictions (almost every artist). Anyone in a band who needs a guide book on what not to do in the music business, watch "Behind the Music" and take notes.

DAVID CASSIDY
How low was David Cassidy, of Partridge Family and early 70s solo fame, at his nadir?

David Cassidy: "I . . . was . . . licking . . . the . . . pavement."

The way he slowly and soberly states this line, one isn't sure if he's being facetious, or if, literally, he dropped a newly-purchased baggy of blow on Sunset Boulevard one lost day in 1981 and felt inclined to lick it off the pavement in his wretched state.

No offense to David--his special was pretty damn enjoyable. (He's now doing a campy magic/rock show in Vegas for major bucks -- more power to him.) But you know what I'd much rather see?

"VH-1 Behind the Music: Danny Bonaduce". Think of it. Spying on Susan Dey naked in her dressing room. Losing his virginity to one of David Cassidy's disappointed teenage groupies. (I think her name was Helen Keller.) Prolonged bouts of alcohol and cocaine abuse. Beating up a transvestite and then almost marrying him/her. Man, little Danny Partridge is rock-and-roll incarnate. And hats off to Danny, who is now a radio shock jock. I thought he was the ugliest kid on earth, but he's managed to look like a normal adult, which is no mean feat considering the bizarre child-star life he's had. As Ruben Kincaid said to him on The Partridge Family TV show, "You're a forty-year-old midget."

MEAT LOAF
"Bat Out of a Hel"l was a monster hit. I know--in my family's household alone, I had it on eight-track, and my brother had the album. You couldn't attend a beer blast in the woods in the late 70s without hearing this album. Meat was poised to dominate the late 70s music scene with his next album.

What happened? He got catty with his songwriter, Jim Steinman, over the quality of material, and they drifted apart. (At the time, I recall Meat saying he simply had a "mental block" about singing Steinman's songs, but the truth came out in the special.) The album Meat would have made, Steinman's "Bad for Good", went nowhere. With his creepy leather fetish and grade-school music teacher demeanor, Steinman was clearly meant to play the wizard behind the curtain to Meat's all-powerful Oz. That album would have been an enormous hit for him. Steinman went on to write occasional 80s hits for the likes of Air Supply ("Making Love Out of Nothing at All") and Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart"). Make no mistake--these are songs that Meat Loaf would have devoured, so to speak.

So what happened to Meat? He pumped out album after album of forgettable dross (including a horrible duet with Cher, who's due for her own special soon) that made "Bad for Good" sound like "Abbey Road" and got a few minor roles in bad movies (like Roadie). He gets bonus points for not going haywire on drugs and recognizing, before David Haselhoff, that he could be big in Germany.

He eventually came to his senses and got back with Steinman, making the subtly-titled "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell" and, like a phoenix (a fucking big phoenix) rising from the ashes, rocketed to the top once again with an apparent ode to anal sex, "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." Meat's got it all now: a recording career back on track, movie roles (with Patrick Swayze!), a happily family and his beautiful daughter singing back-up onstage.

But, most of all, he's found the unconditional love a young Marvin Lee Aday could not find from his alcoholic, abusive father. Meat's ending is like most endings on these specials: happy. Will VH-1 ever do a special about a has-been rock star who is still coked out of his mind and on a downward trajectory? Does anyone have Billy Idol's phone number?

HEART
Maybe they should have changed their name to Stomach?

Ouch, I know that hurt, Ann Wilson, and I'm sorry. But I don't know anyone who doesn't look at pictures or videos of Heart early-on and then from the 80s and think: "Ann, did you move into the Little Debbie section of your supermarket?"

This special nails that feeling perfectly, although much time is spent stressing how evil the music business is for trying to make Ann feel awful about her massive weight gain. Like the music business, especially in the age of video, is known for rising above such petty issues? Heart had an image partially based on the physical beauty of these two hot sisters, Nancy the blonde and Ann the brunette, playing balls-to-the-wall rock. I know--I literally walked over to a wall, unzipped my pants and put my testes against a wall every time I heard "Barracuda." (And it had nothing to do with the metal plate in my head.)

Maybe Ann Wilson should count her blessings and forget about counting calories. If not for that stark change in her physique, Heart might be just another forgotten 70s band playing bars in Seattle, fallen rock goddesses wondering where it all went. As it is, they're still going strong, and you can most likely see them on tour at some county fair with Loverboy, Journey and Quiet Riot. Hey, don't knock it--how many musicians do you know who make a living at it?

It's a rare "Behind the Music" that I haven't seen at least three or more times. Why? Why do I keep watching these cheesy specials about has-beens I really don't need to know anything about?

I think because in the series' tone, which hovers between operatic and infomercial, there is that sense of rock in the 70s, how it used to be before MTV. If you're too young to remember, let me fill you in. Any time you saw a rock star, especially one of your favorites, it was special. Videos were a rarity. The only times you could see them on a TV set were shows like "The Midnight Special" or "Don Kirschner's Rock Concert". That, or the occasional video or lip-synch performance on "American Bandstand" or a lousy variety show.

That was it. Aside from magazines (Creem, Circus and Rolling Stone, in its old newspaper format, were my favorites), these were the only ways you could see bands then. Not the only ways--you could see them when they toured. If you lived in a small town like me, that usually meant you were shit out of luck and filled with dreams.

"Behind the Music" somehow resuscitates that glittery fascination with all things rock. That age old story, presented here in helpful bullet points:

  • Anonymous, nerdy outsiders form a band
  • Simply joy of playing together with people who see the world the same way
  • First big break
  • Meteoric rise to the top
  • Reign
  • Inevitable ego wars, petty squabbles and drug problems
  • Downfall
  • Shitty tours opening for bands who used to open for the band
  • Total rejection by the music business
  • Passing time and rehab
  • Resolution of the journey via acceptance of success and failure
  • Maybe a second shot at a minor place in the music business.

It's a beautiful story, when it works. And, barring death, it works all the time on "Behind the Music". The series reminds me that there is something at stake, after all, through all the record business cynicism and rampant over-exposure. These somehow tragic stories still matter in some sense, even if I often find myself laughing at the quality of the artists' output. Maybe for the last time, I'm seeing artists I won't be seeing much of anymore, and seeing them in a way the neatly presents them in a humane, understanding way that hasn't been done before.

So, next time you see somebody like Rick Springfield or REO Speedwagon playing a county fair or run-down bar that had Foghat or Corey Hart the week before, stop to think this very true thought: This man has climbed a ladder to the stars most mere mortals never will, fell from grace, like a rock-and-roll Jack from the fabled beanstalk, and lived to tell. Maybe the goose's golden eggs were not quite so precious after all.


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Name: andre klarenberg
Subject: alban pfisterer
-- Nov 25, 2007 at 2:10PM
I wish to sell a 'very limited edition' Snoopy interview published by ZigZag in 1971 - badly cycostyled and in a buff folder with a large(red) Love logo on the front. Offers, anyone?

Name: Richard Potts
Subject: alban pfisterer
-- Oct 23, 2007 at 9:11PM
Hey I met Alaban in Thailand in 1995 where we played in a band together. He played a tabler with his hands and a range of maraccas and symbols with his feet he was a great guy. I have his address if you want it in Washington.

Best of luck

Name: teo
Subject: alban pfisterer/Love/Arthu r Lee
-- Apr 6, 2007 at 5:24PM
Alban Pfisterer actually lives inGreece,thessalonik i...i met him and gave me a very nice cd with greek musicians....

Name: tim
Subject: alban pfisterer/Love/Arthu r Lee
-- Aug 13, 2005 at 10:42AM
No-one knows what happened to Alban Pfisterer, says A.L.Douglas? I met him in Nepal in 1991. He was looking after a photo shop for a friend. His home was in Washington State: he said he'd created a clearing in a forest and built a large log house, with recording studio in the basement. He was fit and strong, clearly.
He never listened to Love & hadn't done so until I played him my cassettes. He'd never heard anything at all after Forever Changes. He thought the first Signed DC was the best thing Arthur Lee had written. He told me about an inadvertant draft dodge. When he was due into the army recruitment office, he'd spent the previous night with Arthur, tripping on acid. Alban had a seriously bad trip and the next day in the recruitment office, he was so disorientated, they thought he was a crazy weirdo & they threw him out in disgust. So, thereby, he never went to 'Nam.
Arthur, he said, had an insatiable appetite for women & drugs. No-one could keep up with his death-defying, superhuman consumption. Eat yer heart out, Keith Richards. He also echoed what many have said since: "Love" was a most inappropriate name for the band, which was forever in malicious conflict with itself.
Alban was never particularly into drugs & hadn't touched anything for a while, until he sampled some of Nepal's finest, courtesy of me. We knocked around together for a few days, Alban, me and a Danish girl I'd copped off with, called Lina. We went to Nepal's only casino together & he taught me how to beat the bank at blackjack. He drove me to the airport on the day of my departure & I nearly missed my plane to Bangkok, absorbed as I was (and losing) in a game of chess with him in the airport cafe. I left him with Lina. I do hope they enjoyed each other. In know he was interested & she'd have been a fool not to have reciprocated. Unfortunately, I lost my address book a few weeks later, in Malaysia. I have tried and failed since to get in touch with him many times. I try every so often, which is how I ended up on this site. I remember his house number was something strange like 4500 & he lived in Washington, but that hasn't helped.
But I can assure everyone that in 1991 he was fit and well, although while I was with him, he heard that his Washington house had been burgled & his equipment stolen.
If anyone else has any contact details, I'd like to get in touch with him.
Tim

Name: ENRIQUE
Subject: COCUYO
-- Jun 18, 2005 at 10:33PM
I LIKE RICK SPRINGFIELD TOO, DON T TALK STRANGERS, SOULS, AFFAIR OF THE HEART, I HAVE COLLETION TOO, MY TEL. MEX. CITY 55 58 112246

Name: Kara
Subject: I Love Rick Springfield
-- Mar 11, 2005 at 6:07PM
Hey Ya ! I just want you guys to know that I love Rick Springfield and I LOVE the song Jesse's Girl !!!! It is my Fave song ever !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Heart is the best !!!!

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Heart & Ann Wilson...
-- Jan 31, 2005 at 6:49AM
Hey, man, she was fat! I don't mean "needed to lose 30 lbs." -- I mean gigantic. Orson Wellesian fat. Not a burning issue. I think you need to get off your "fat" high horse. Being fat isn't like being a minority, isn't like skin color. It's a choice. If it weren't a choice, then she wouldn't be "only 30 pounds away from her weight in the late 70s." She's chosing to reel it in -- good for her. I've probably been at the same point she is now for the past decade -- needing to lose about 30 lbs. to get myself into top condition.

And you know what? If someone called me fat, I'd say, "You're right ... and?" And move on. Whatever you or someone else thinks about me is basically irrelevant -- not something any sane person would lose sleep over.

Sorry, dude -- I'm not getting on whatever 12-step weight watchers bandwagon you have yourself on. Fat is fat. Ann Wilson was the size of a house. And I won't be lighting a votive candle for my "sin" of recognizing this. Frankly, if she gained 100 lbs. back, I'd consider that her choice and wouldn't lose a minute of sleep over it.

Why this faux holiness attached to fat people? I don't get it.

Name: Trav
Subject: Heart & Ann Wilson...
-- Jan 31, 2005 at 2:17AM
To: William S. Repsher

William, what you said about Ann Wilson seemed absolutely repulsive and insulting. Perhaps you have never had a weight problem and maybe you don't understand how difficult it is to be heavy, especially in the public eye. With all due respect, you seem to have some issues. Jealousy? Little Debbie section? Ann has been struggling with weight since she was born! She starved herself in the 70's to stay slimmer and has been trying diet after diet and diet for YEARS! She has been exercising and working out since 1991. With help from the lap-band weight loss procedure, Ann Wilson has lost nearly 100 pounds. Last summer, I had the opportunity of meeting Ann and her sister Nancy. Ann looked positively stunning and is probably only 30 pounds away from her weight in the late 1970's. It doesn't matter when you wrote the article. The harshness of your words were so cruel. How dare you claim that the only reason for Heart's success in the 80's was from Ann's significant weight gain? William, pick on someone your own size! Lighten up, dude!

Name: Stevie-Anna
Subject: What?
-- Aug 8, 2004 at 2:01AM
What's all this bollocks about Def Leppards down fall...They never fell they're still up there with the greats but I will support them I'm from the same city, I support the home team, plus I've met them alot...SO DEF LEPPARD FUCKIN ROCK (Til they drop, he he he sorry couldn't resist)

Name: ahsan
Subject: thanx
-- Oct 21, 2003 at 4:05PM
i love you i Miss you

Name: becky
Subject: how did joe no at stevedied
-- Sep 16, 2003 at 11:19AM
im what to no why joe did cry steve died

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Heart
-- Jul 21, 2003 at 4:54PM
Well, blow me down, David! Considering the article was written in 1999, i.e., four years ago, that's great news.

Actually, David, help me ... I'm still trapped in 1999 ... there's a party going on ... Prince is here ... Ann Wilson is still the size of a house ... and you're still an asshole ... please help me, David ... HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!

Name: David
Subject: Correction
-- Jul 21, 2003 at 4:52PM
Sorry. Ann has lost 70 lbs.

Name: David
Subject: Heart
-- Jul 21, 2003 at 4:51PM
What on earth is wrong with you?! If you even kept up with the news and had a brain, which you clearly don't, you would know that Ann Wilson has around 70 pounds and looks great. She is touring with Heart right now and they are still great after singing for almost 30 years.

Name: Mike
Subject: Baldilocks
-- Jun 22, 2003 at 2:34AM
Leif garret is a bald eagle.

Name: beckyreep
Subject: fan of def leppard
-- Dec 6, 2002 at 10:51AM
i like def leppard

Name: love fan
Subject: love
-- Oct 14, 2002 at 6:36AM
A movie on Arthur Lee & Love would be great, but to the guy who posted about this below:

1) Don Conka kicked drugs decades ago, and is alive and well. Came to see Arthur's first gig after his release from prison in April 2002.

2) Neal Rappoport wasn't hung by the band, he overdosed on heroin. He's the one who introduced the band to heroin; stole their equipment for drug money, then had the OD. That song on Four Sail is about him.

Name: MATTHEW SHUTE
Subject: MILLI VANILLI
-- Jul 13, 2002 at 10:20AM
PLEASE BRING BACK THE BEHIND MUSIC OF MILLI VANILLI cause i didnt see it and i really want to please put it on
REMBER ROBAND FAB own album they were big

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Rick-effing-Springfi eld!
-- Jun 19, 2002 at 11:19AM
I tend to get drunk, go to Skynyrd concerts and bay out "Jesse's Girl" all concert long. That, or "Sister Christian."

Call me "daddy"? Baby, if you're old enough to be a Rick Springfield fan, how about "kid brother"?

Name: Amber
Subject: Rick-effing-Springfi eld!
-- Jun 19, 2002 at 10:08AM
My favorite Behind the Music probably is the Leif Garrett one as well. Man, the tears just flow at the end there when the biker kid and Leif get all huggy with each other. Oh man, but what about the Lynyrd SKynyrd one?? You know there is always some drunk asshole in a bar yelling "FREEBIIIRRRDDD !" at the band in hopes they will play it. And yes, that drunk asshole is usually me. What can I say, I'm an emotional drunk. I hate to say, I also MUST watch the Rick Springfield one whenever I see that it's on, too. I used to kiss my Rick Springfield album covers when I was a kid and have to admit, even now that he is older, he is still a sexy bitch.

Oh, and Mr. Repsher, when we get married, can I call you Billy? Or should I call you daddy? mwah ha ha haaaaa!

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Hey
-- Apr 18, 2001 at 7:21AM
Yes, the producers of Behind the Music apparently dug it out of the pile -- just beneath David Lee Roth's apparently, as I can guarantee you Van Halen will get a special when their new "David Lee is back" album comes out.

An interesting special for Billy -- but the way they glossed over his excesses would be like another documentary describing the Third Reich as a tupperware party.

Name: Sara S
Subject: Hey
-- Apr 18, 2001 at 2:43AM
I heard something about Billy Idol's phone #?

Name: Todd Hoffman
Subject: Big Fan
-- Apr 6, 2001 at 2:29PM
Hi,

My name is Todd and I am a
big fan of Milli Vanilli.
Please send me all related
items

Name: mohamed
Subject: photo
-- Mar 1, 2001 at 5:51AM
envoyer les parole de le chanson "girl you know it's tue de milli vanlli

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: You're a riot Bill!!
-- Oct 4, 2000 at 10:15PM
Hey, Robert! How did the family tree project go? Afraid I wasn't of much help, but something tells me our lineage comes from a lot of different directions.

Consider a name change. I'm going to get worse!

Name: Robert Repsher
Subject: You're a riot Bill!!
-- Oct 4, 2000 at 11:02AM
Hey, Bill. Your cousin Robert from Savannah,GA.
I catch your writing every now and then on
the web. You have a really cool sense
of humor. Keep it up!

Name: A.L.Douglas
Subject: Paul Allen/Hendrix
-- Jul 7, 2000 at 3:09PM
OK, I am trying to find out if Microsoft's Paul Allen ever lived in or visited LA 67-70. A young teen named Paul who looks like Allen hung out a lot at The Psychedelic temple, an old nasion painted up for the pter Fonda LSD film The Trip. Paul helped me set up the stage and gear for hendrix, who made his 68 Tv special there. Paul wanted to play bass guitar. Allen does just that now and is a megafan of Hendrix!Same Paul? That'd be cool...I am out to get a moviue made about Arthur Lee and Love. Goes like this: when I was Douglas Carl Czinki, AKA DOug Delain, singer-guitarist 58 on, I moved to LA from Miami in 65 and got Bido Lito's going with the TYhompson family, got them to hire Lee and his band, they signed with Elektra, got Elektra to sign The Doors, I sang with love, hung out with lee, cut two of mysongs with Lovemembers in 67 after leaving mylast band, Euphoria. Lee gbot 3 LPs out on Elektra, man6y others on other labels. hendrix emulated him and guitarist Johnny Echols completely, and made a big hit of Hey Joe,which love's Bryan macLean was doing since 65 maybe earlier,its on their first LP. Hendrix later cut tunes with lee and a photo of himis ona Love LP, Vindicator, I think. I ran into hendrix also in hawaii in 68 living at a Diamond head mansion with actor John PhillipLaw, the angel in Barbarella. hendrixlived near by, I went over, had a drink one day, he was wearing curled up toe arabaina slippers. OK..the old masnionwas tore down in 70, LA Times did a story about it. It had become an outlaw biker place,real famous. Artist Ed Roth did some posters of it, tooAs for me, i changed sex by surgery, got famous as a writer as Angela Douglas,Angela Keyes Douglas, punch latter name up, I'm discussed in some books, etc. I live as a man noiw anyway, 57, in the Marianna, FL area, and began poerforming again in 98 as Lee Douglas, have some lo fit tapesrecorded, including of live shows and original tunes. I'm outsting Billy Idol...As for Love, real tragic; original drummer Don Conka before they signed with Elektra, dead from drugs; ken Forssi, Echyoils,went to prison on heroin, robberies, later died; no one knows what happoend to Alban Pfisterer. Band suspected of hanging a roadie, Neal Rappaport. A musician who also joined Lovelater got into the Manson Gang. is this a rock and roll movie, or what?I'd like to helpwrite it, put it together and recreate SIxties Hollywood.TAFKAP (Prince) would make a superb Arthur lee. Lee is doing 12 years in Caliufornia on a 96 conviction of firing a gun at someone objecting to his loud music! Lots about it on line under Bido Lito's, Arthur Lee, Love. Still has a strong fan base in UK, where Love is revered still.This was The American Rolling Stones. Ok, that's it. I can be reached by mail as A.L. Douglas 7520 hwy. 90 Sneads, FL 32460 on-line bambaza@hotmail.com, message phones (850)526-DRUM c/o Gailand 235-0956 c/o Sean.

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Well Undertood Points
-- Jan 24, 2000 at 10:24PM
Thank you, Tood, and I think the series has brought back more than that sense of intimac with the rock audience. It's brought back Rick Springfield, and Jesse's Girl. You know, I wish I had her. Where can I find a woman like that?

Name: Todd Babbitt
Subject: Well Undertood Points
-- Jan 24, 2000 at 9:58AM
I appreciated your comnments on the "Behind the Music" series. As I was reading your article I could not help to think also what this show has provided the audience. In the United States our 'village' has become very global since the introduction of Cable Television, Digital Satalites, the internet and more. What has happend is we have lost the intimacy with our community. What VH-1 has been able to do is bring back to us a level of intimacy with the outstanding members of this new global community-the rock stars.
I think that VH-1 has found the niche' in this global community that has obviously been missing for a long time. I expect many more programs like this to follow.

Name: Nick Garcia
Subject: "I loved your...
-- Dec 30, 1999 at 9:53PM
I loved your article. While it bordered on the cynicacle side, you definitly hit a cord with the Leif Garrett comments. I thought this guy was complete dork and somehow, especially after the tearful reunion at the end, I found myself liking him. The series hits the nostalgia factor big time. I grew with many of the bands depicted and could take great pleasure thinking about the songs and stories surrounding them. I am hooked!(no pun intended)


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