WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HIPPIE GENERATION – PART II

by Anthony Forwood

In this second part of this series, we’re going to look further into Karl Franzoni, Vito Paulekas, and the GTOs, since it appears that they may have been far more responsible for creating the Laurel Canyon scene in the 60s than Frank Zappa ever was.

(Note 1: Since I wrote the first part of this series, I’ve learned that both Carly Simon and Doors band member Robbie Krieger were also from ‘connected’ families. Carly Simon comes from the Simon’s of the Simon & Schuster book publishing dynasty, and Robbie Krieger’s father was head of the Rand Corporation.

Note 2: I’ve also come across a published letter from Jim Morrison’s father to his deceased son, in which the man expresses incredible pomposity and self-glorification while demeaning his son Jim in every possible way. It reveals a lot about the strained relationship between these two, and I warn those who respect Jim and his work that they will probably be angered by his father’s utter ignorance and disrespect of Jim and his accomplishments. It’s a slap in the face to all of Jim’s fans. For some of you, like me, it will sound very familiar to how your own parents and family have treated or spoken about you for making your own choices in life. For those interested, you can read it at this link:

Note 3: I’ve also discovered that another member of Vito’s dance troupe, Lewis Beach Marvin III, was the heir to the S&H Green Stamp fortune, as well as the leader of the ‘Moonfire’ family commune which preached a militant, fire and brimstone mantra of “Love Animals, Don't Eat Them” from makeshift tents along the Sunset Strip. I’ll have to research him further.)

VITO, KARL, AND THE FIRST GROUPIES

As we discovered earlier, Frank and Gail Zappa were absent from the Laurel Canyon scene for about eighteen months, between 1966 and 1968 – a crucial period in the development of the music scene that was developing in California. In fact, contrary to what David McGowan states in his Inside the LC series, Frank and Gail weren’t even living at the Log Cabin until the summer of 1968, when it was already occupied by Karl Franzoni and served as a hangout and crash pad for a group of girls who were eventually known as the GTOs. The GTOs were part of a dance troupe that was led by Vito Paulekas, and this group was better known at the time as Vito and the Freaks. The dance troupe had been around since 1962, although they weren’t really recognized until they started dancing at performances of the Byrds in 1965. Vito Paulekas, who was already in his 50s at the time and therefore quite a bit older than the others, had been operating an art studio in Laurel Canyon throughout this time, and his wife Szou, who was more than thirty years younger than him, ran a clothing store nearby, selling the fashions that would become so popular among the hippies and flower children in the years ahead. Karl Franzoni was a businessman who met Vito in 1964 and soon became a member of the troupe. Karl decided to give up his business to join up with these dancers.

In his own words from an interview*:

I gave up my cars and motorcycles and just would show up at the Whisky and places like that and dance every night.

What sort of business was Franzoni in that he would give up all the material benefits it brought and join up with this group? In researching him further, I discovered that he arrived in Los Angeles in the early 60s when he was already in his 30s, and he became a street hustler, pimping young runaway girls. He soon met up with two other Sicilians and went into business with them selling breast and penis-enlargement pumps. He must have been doing quite well at it, since he could afford cars and motorcycles through his sales. Or did he make all that money from pimping?

I’ve also discovered that the famous writer of the earlier beat generation, Jack Kerouac, who wrote On the Road, which inspired hordes of young people to take to the highway and hitchhike around America, grew up in the same small town as Vito (Lowell, Massachusetts), knew him from high school, and had been inspired by him.

Vito apparently had a criminal history, and was in and out of reform school throughout his youth. When he was 25 years old he was convicted to a 25 year sentence for robbery, but avoided a life in prison by joining the US Merchant Marines when the judge offered it to him as an alternative. So he had a military past as well. Interestingly, Jack Kerouac also happened to serve in the US Merchant Marines as well (add two more to the growing list of military-connected players). Where the younger Kerouac had left off leading the beat generation of the 50s, Vito picked up the loose ends and transformed it into the hippie generation of the 60s.

In his interview,* Karl explains that when he met him in 1964, Vito had been looking for a band to play at a teen dance that was a ‘Stop the War in Vietnam’ affair, and the Byrds happened to audition and got the gig. After this, the Byrds were suddenly (within the next night or two) playing regularly at a nightclub where a lot of movie stars were known to hang out, called Ciro's Le Disc, and Vito’s dance troupe would tag along to add flavor to the performance and get the crowds going. Members of the dance troupe (mostly girls) were later taken along on tour with the Byrds, acting as the first groupies while introducing their unique dance style to the world. The hippie clothing that these girls wore were the creation of Vito’s young wife Szou, so it was a way for her to advertise her fashions as well. By the way, Szou had been a high-school cheerleader who was only 16 years old when she married Vito. She had been smitten by his ability to charm people. Vito is described as having great leadership skills as well… two qualities that make a good cult leader/mind-control programmer.

So, with just Vito and Szou alone, we have the origins of the hippie/flower child scene, already well planted in Laurel Canyon before anyone else of significance started arriving on the scene. They literally set the stage for what was to come, providing a distinct look and using promiscuous young runaway girls as part of the lure to entice thousands of young people to California. By 1965, David Crosby’s band the Byrds got involved with them, acting as the original musical sound for the new hippie culture that was about to develop. And we should take note that Vito was involved in organizing at least one teen dance at that time, where he might easily have acquired young girls for his little group. Where he found his girls is otherwise unknown.

Let’s not forget here that David Crosby, the leader of the Byrds, had deep military roots. Let’s also not forget that many Hollywood insiders and many movie stars were also deeply tied to military/intelligence organs in one way or another, and so there would obviously be an inner circle of people who could be called on to help each other and make things happen that might not have otherwise. So the fact that the Byrds instantly got a regular gig at a nightclub that catered to Hollywood’s biggest stars is not likely to be by chance alone. Let’s also not ignore the fact that a bunch of sexy young girls showing such adoration to the band would have been a definite attraction to any young men in the audience, and would certainly have instilled a desire in more than a few of them to want to become musicians.

Franzoni and the rest of Vito’s dance troupe later toured with Frank Zappa as well, helping to propel him to fame, and the girls became the first groupies for him and many other bands that were to make it in those formative years of rock n’ roll music. So McGowan had it wrong. Zappa adopted Vito and the Freaks, so to speak, and eventually took over control of them, but this wasn’t until several years later in the summer of 1968.

And we shouldn’t ignore what McGowan revealed about the death of Vito and Szou’s young child, Godot, who the parents may or may not have given LSD to just before he died under suspicious circumstances, and whose death seemed so inconsequential to the parents. Nor should we ignore the sexual antics that Vito engaged the young groupies in, encouraging them to make out with each other while everyone else watched. Here’s another description of those antics, provided by Pamela DesBarres, who was herself one of the dance troupe:

[T]wo tenderly young girls were tonguing each other … everyone was silently observing the scene as if it were part of their necessary training by the headmaster, Vito … One of the girls on the four-poster was only twelve years old…

Apparently, Vito and his wife had to flee the country a few months later because of these antics, around the same time that the Manson murders took place.

As for Karl Franzoni, at about this same time or soon after, he got caught up in some sort of drug deal gone bad, and ran for the Canadian border, but when he later found out that the charges had been dropped he returned, and eventually became the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation in the small community of Cotati, California, where Vito Paulekas had gotten himself elected as the mayor.

Frank and Gail Zappa moved out of the Log Cabin and into another Laurel Canyon residence on Woodrow Wilson Drive soon after as well, but not before Charles Manson and a few of his followers had dropped by for a short stay.

Speaking of Charlie, the source for the above quote by Pamela DesBarres makes this comparison between him and Vito:

• Vito appears to have spent a good portion of his younger years in prisons and reform schools, as did, as we all know, Charles Milles Manson.
• Vito considered himself to be a gifted artist and poet, as did our old friend Charlie Manson.
• Vito, according to [Barry] Miles, “was something of a guru,” as was, quite obviously, Chuck Manson.
• Vito surrounded himself with a flock of very young (often underage) women, as did Manson.
• Vito was considerably older than his followers, and so too was Charlie.
• When Vito addressed his flock, they listened with rapt attention as though they were being delivered the word of God, as was true with Charlie as well.
• Carl Franzoni was known to wear a black cape and refer to himself as “Captain Fuck,” while Manson was also partial to black capes and declared himself to be “the God of Fuck.”
• Vito is said to have had a virtually insatiable libido, as did, of course, Chuck Manson.
• Vito’s flock adopted nicknames to aid in the depersonalization process, as did Charlie’s.
• Vito’s troupe included a Beverly Hills hairstylist named Sheldon Jaman, while Charlie’s included a Beverly Hills hairpiece stylist named Charles Watson.
• Vito believed in introducing children to sexuality at a very young age, while in the Manson Family, as [Ed] Sanders has noted, “Infant sexuality was encouraged.”
• Vito apparently liked to stage live sex shows for his followers, usually involving underage participants, which was also a specialty of Charles Milles Manson.
• Finally, Vito encouraged his followers to drug themselves while he himself largely abstained, thus enabling him to at all times maintain control, while Manson limited his own drug intake for the very same reason.

The source for the above list also points out that Vito and Manson weren’t the only ones adopting black capes, since David Crosby also began to adorn one as well. And if you’ve read McGowan’s Programmed to Kill, you’ll know that the members of a certain satanic cult that was operating in the area at the time – the Process Church of the Final Judgment – was also big on wearing black capes, and Manson was very connected with that group.

Some other interesting information I’ve come across that relates to Courtney Love’s father Hank Harrison, who, as I mentioned in the first part of this series, was involved in a secret government program in Berkley during the early 50s that was similar to the one Jack Sarfatti was in. Apparently Harrison was the manager of an early 60s rock band called the Warlocks, later to be renamed the Grateful Dead. His wife and Courtney Love’s mother, Linda Carroll, who just happens to be a psychotherapist, accused him of feeding LSD to Courtney when she was 3 years old, just like Vito and Szou were accused of doing to their own young child, Godot. And according to author Jim Keith, Grateful Dead band member Robert Hunter had previously been part of a government study at Stanford University where he was given LSD.

I have to say that I’m becoming overwhelmed with all of these connections and the rather small circle of people who seem to have held it all together, and I still have much more to add. There’s still the whole drug aspect of this tale that needs to be put into proper perspective, as well as the various cults that emerged in California and the killings associated with them, and all the rest of the darker shit that came about.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at the drug aspect of all this. Stay tuned…

* See ‘Carl Franzoni: The Sundazed Interview’

WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HIPPIE GENERATION

by Anthony Forwood

The following is research based primarily on the work of David McGowan regarding the events taking place in Laurel Canyon during the 1960s.* I’m taking a closer look at some of his underlying claims and the conclusions he has drawn, in order to clarify the facts and improve on the accuracy of understanding about the people and events involved. I will also add further information that relates to secret government programs that might have played a part in the 60s music scene. Readers are recommended to familiarize themselves with McGowan’s work before reading this. My intention here is not to just repeat what McGowan has already said, as so many others have already done. I hope to add more depth to the picture of what was going on during the 1960s, both in and outside of Laurel Canyon, with a primary focus on possible mind-control activities taking place within the music industry.

* See ‘Inside the LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation’, by David MvGowan

PRELIMINARY NOTES

- Lookout Mountain Laboratory was built in Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon area in 1941 as a secret air defense facility for the US Army. In 1947, it was converted into a top-secret film studio for use in atomic weapons research and other undisclosed projects. The facility remained in operation until at least 1969. Local residents had been completely unaware of its existence until the 1990s.

- Starting in 1945, thousands of Nazi scientists and technicians were secretly transferred to the US under Project Paperclip and put to work in secret military facilities. Many of these would be assigned to MKULTRA mind-control projects, where they continued the research they had been doing in Germany.

- MKULTRA projects included special schooling/training for young children who showed special talents or aptitudes. These children were often selected from military families. The programs were started as early as 1953, but possibly earlier. These programs used hypnosis and sometimes even trauma-induced MPD to access and/or enhance a child’s hidden talents, and any sort of long-range programming that might be desired could be implanted in their subconscious so that, at the very least, they would always choose certain behavior patterns over others under given situations. These programmed behavior patterns could be set up to be triggered by specific situational events.

- In support of the above, CIA Director Richard Helms stated in a memo to the Warren Commission in 1964: “Cybernetics [or computer theory] can be used in the moulding of a child's character, the inculcation of knowledge and techniques, the amassing of experience, the establishment of social behaviour patterns all functions which can be summarised as control of the growth processes of the individual.” The wording of this memo suggests that this had already been successfully achieved, and that children were the primary targets of these experiments.

- In August 1964, while Admiral George Stephen Morrison was commanding the US fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin as part of a false flag operation that would escalate into the Vietnam War, his son Jim Morrison was attending UCLA. He had arrived in Los Angeles only eight months earlier. At this point, Jim showed no noticeable aptitude for music, and was more interested in film. However, in June of 1965 he formed his band, the Doors, and within a few years he became one of the biggest rock icons in history and had a huge influence on youth culture for years after. His style of music often had a hypnotic quality to it, and the verses to many songs reflected deep mystical experiences – something that Jim seemed to be continually fascinated with. There was also a strong sense of rebellion and escapism present in many other songs. He also sang about death. Prior to even forming a band, Jim had already compiled enough lyrics – in the form of poetry – to fill several record albums.

- Around 1965, San Francisco became a mecca for young people from across the country who suddenly felt the calling to travel there, converging at Haight-Ashbury. They continued to make it their destination for several years, flooding the city. A number of those who arrived early on and became central figures in the music scene were from military families and often grew up on military bases. These included Frank Zappa (and his wife Gail Sloatman); John Phillips (and his wife Susie Adams); David Crosby; Stephen Stills; Jimi Hendrix (and his manager, Michael Jeffrey, a British intel agent); Joni Mitchell; Gram Parsons; Gerry Beckley, Dan Peek, and Dewey Bunnell from the band America; Joan Baez; Jackson Browne; and, of course, Jim Morrison.

- Frank Zappa, whose father was a chemical warfare specialist who raised his son on military bases, and Frank’s wife Gail Sloatman, who came from a long line of career Naval officers and whose father worked on classified nuclear weapons research, took up residence in a large mansion in Laurel Canyon and turned it into a hangout/crash pad for the many young people who would find their way there. Many of these people would later become icons in the music industry. How Zappa and his wife were able to afford this large property is unknown. According to McGowan, Zappa had nothing but contempt for the hippie culture that he helped to create and surrounded himself with, and was a rigidly authoritarian control-freak who supported US military actions in Southeast Asia. His manager, Herb Cohen, was a former US Marine with a shady past as an arms dealer.

- John Phillips and David Crosby, who became two of the earliest music icons to come out of Laurel Canyon during the 1960s, also had military backgrounds. Phillips was the son of a US Marine Corp Captain, and spent his youth in a series of elite military prep schools in the Washington, DC area, culminating in an appointment to the prestigious US Naval Academy at Annapolis. David Crosby’s father had been a World War II military intelligence officer, and his family tree is deeply rooted in American politics and Freemasonry. Phillips wrote the song ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)’, and was also instrumental in organizing the Monterey Pop Festival, both of which were given heavy media promotion and drew freedom-loving young people from across the country to California (the song was released on May 13, 1967). This culminated in the ‘Summer of Love’ in 1967.

- Around 1965, drugs that were once strictly limited to MKULTRA experimentation became easily available on the street in San Francisco and Los Angeles. They were being dispensed freely and in large quantities by only a few sources, including Augustus Owsley Stanley III, Timothy Leary, and Ronald Hadley Stark. The amount of hallucinogens freely handed out numbered in the tens of thousands of doses. It was discovered years later that Leary and Stark were both CIA operatives.

- A number of MKULTRA projects were being conducted in various hospitals, prisons, and military bases in Southern California throughout the 1960s. Many of these projects were interested in studying the effects of hallucinogens like LSD and psilocybin in real life situations. These studies included both witting and unwitting subjects. Many witting subjects were chosen from among the most violent prison populations and mental wards. Unwitting subjects were predominantly chosen from the civilian population.

- A number of cult groups began to emerge in California in the mid-1960s. Cults and cult dynamics had been studied extensively in various MKULTRA projects prior to this. Many of the cults were interlinked, and many of the cult leaders were since found to have had ties to the CIA. Some of these cults were involved in drug trafficking and/or murder.

- One of these cults was the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, founded by Timothy Leary at Harvard in 1963. Leary had access to large quantities of pure liquid LSD.

- The Church of Satan is another cult that was founded in San Francisco in 1966. Michael Aquino became a member in 1969, soon after he finished training in the US Army as a psychological warfare specialist. Aquino also did a tour of duty in Vietnam after his training as a psyop specialist, before returning to San Francisco.

- The Process Church of the Final Judgment, a Scientology spin-off with a satanic leaning, is another cult that set up their headquarters in Haight-Ashbury in 1967. During their early years, they had sought out ties with various counterculture icons such as Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and Abbie Hoffman. Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, and Sirhan Sirhan all had ties to this cult.

- The Phoenix Program was initiated in Vietnam in 1967. As part of a massive psyop, US soldiers indiscriminately raped, tortured, killed, and dismembered any civilians suspected of sympathizing with the enemy. The effect of this on the soldiers carrying out or witnessing the violence was total desensitization to it, often leading to psychopathy. Most or all of these soldiers were returned to the US without receiving any treatment whatsoever.

- The first of a long line of serial killers began to emerge in California in 1968. Within a period of four years, the Zodiac killer, Charles Manson, Edmund Kemper, Stanley Baker, Herbert Mullin, and John Lindley Frazier were all killing people. Most of the murders were extremely gruesome, and many bore the marks of satanic ritualism.

- Throughout the 1970s, hints that a nation-wide satanic network exists and which reaches to the highest levels of power were provided by serial killers like David Berkowitz, Richard DeSalvo, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ottis Toole.

SOME NOTES ON JIM MORRISON

It shouldn’t be assumed from the above that Jim Morrison or any other musician of the time was any sort of witting agent in a CIA/military plot against the youth of America. However, it is very likely that, having grown up in military families, Jim and others like him had been volunteered by their parents for ‘aptitude enhancement’ programs or even experimentation in MKULTRA projects long before they arrived at Laurel Canyon. It is a regular practice within the military to cull subjects for certain types of research and experimentation from among their own personnel and their immediate families – particularly those living on military bases.

It is also suspected that many within the military are closet satanists or members of long-established secret societies that have their own agendas, and the sacrifice of their own children to these experiments and programs would have been a show of loyalty or patriotism. We need to consider this in respect to the fact that Jim’s father was wittingly involved in a major false flag operation that directly led to the most gruesome war in American history. We also need to recognize that Jim was far from the only music icon to emerge in the 1960s who came from a military family.

What is important here is that the close proximity of Lookout Mountain Laboratory offered a secret location where Jim and others might have been taken from time to time for ‘fine-tuning’. Even Charles Manson, who was living in Laurel Canyon and associating with many of these rising stars in the late 1960s, might also have been a visitor to Lookout Mountain Laboratory from time to time.

It should be noted that many methods of long-term mind-control rely on memory erasure/amnesiac blocks to cover up what has been done to the subject, and that these memory blocks tend to break down after a certain length of time, and when this happens, the subject is often terminated in a manner that appears to be suicide. Jim died in 1971 from an apparent drug overdose, but whether this is true or not has always remained uncertain. Jim became more and more despondent over the years, often disappearing for long periods and never revealing where he had been. His increasing alcoholism and drug use reflected a desire to bury the reality he was living in when his ever-growing success should have resulted in the opposite.

What Jim might have felt about his family (and his father in particular) is almost completely unknown. It doesn’t appear that he ever spoke about them, and made no indication during his short life that his father was such an important man in the military. It is unlikely that Jim knew that his father was deeply involved in starting the Vietnam War, and it appears that he didn’t communicate with his family at all after he arrived in Los Angeles in 1964.

According to Jim’s close friend Frank Lisciandro, after his death, Jim’s parents were never able to recognize what their son had achieved in life, and they were nothing but embarrassed of him. They refused to talk about him and wished that nothing would ever be written about him. They felt that he reflected badly on them. This is a very interesting reaction, since it’s exactly what parents who have turned their backs on their son and completely sold him out would have said. It’s also what someone who knew a deeper truth about Jim’s past would use to excuse having to discuss anything that might reveal their part in any dark secrets. So, how long ago did they turn their backs? Was it when Jim was already making music, or was it before this? And how would Jim’s father compare his embarrassment of Jim to the embarrassment Jim might have had of his father’s activities in the Gulf of Tonkin?

I should also point out here that although David McGowan claims that none of the members of The Doors had any previous musical experience, Lisciandro, who knew Jim prior to the band forming, states that Ray Manzarek (who he knew even before Jim) was already performing with a group called Rick & The Ravens, and was very talented musically.* However, he supports McGowan’s claim that Jim had no singing talent when the Doors first performed publicly, although that quickly improved.

And then there is the question of whether Jim actually died. Many believe that his death was faked in order that he could escape the demanding life of a rock star… or perhaps to escape something much worse. He supposedly died of a heroin overdose, even though he wasn’t ever known to use that drug. No proper investigation into his death was ever carried out, no autopsy was ever conducted, he had a closed-casket funeral, and according to the original story, only one person who could positively identify the body as Jim’s ever saw it, and that was his girlfriend, Pamela Courson, who died of a heroin overdose a few years later. She never gave any interviews about his death, and this has only sustained to the mystery.

The original story about Jim’s death – that he died from a heroin overdose while in the bathtub in his Paris hotel room – has been challenged by an alternative story,** which places him in a toilet stall at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus nightclub in Paris after having purchased heroin for his girlfriend Pamela, and when his lifeless body was found there, it was taken back to his hotel by the dealers who had sold him the heroin. This first-hand account is given by a close friend of Jim’s, Sam Bernett, who was the manager of the nightclub at the time and claims to have seen the body when it was first found. Bernett’s account seems to be the most likely, since unlike the original story, he places himself and several others at the scene, and his revelations have led French authorities to consider reopening an investigation. The main thing that raises doubts about either account is the claim that Jim was using heroin, which he supposedly never touched. There is one possibility for why Bernett would make his story up, however, and that is that he was about to release a book about Jim, and he was attempting to promote it.

Did Jim really reach ‘The End’, or did he ‘Break on Through to the Other Side’, to escape real-life demons? I’ll leave it to readers to decide for themselves.

* See ‘The Calm Calculus of Reason’, by Frank Lisciandro

** See ‘The Shocking Truth About How My Pal Jim Morrison REALLY Died’, by Sam Bernett

SOME NOTES ON FRANK & GAIL ZAPPA

I was curious about Frank Zappa and his wife Gail, because McGowan suggests that they were somehow instrumental in the events that unfolded in Laurel Canyon, providing their large mansion (known as the Log Cabin) and property as a base where many up-and-coming musicians could visit and hang out, and it acted as a sort of melting pot for the 60s scene. All of this deserves to be looked at more closely, and certain questions need to be answered.

First and foremost, when did Frank and Gail arrive in Laurel Canyon and take up residence there, and where did they get the money to rent or purchase such a large property?

According to wikipedia’s page on Frank Zappa:

Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it.

So Frank had made some money recording in the early 60s, and reinvested it in himself, but it seems that it couldn’t have been all that profitable, since wikipedia goes on to say that he began living and working at Pal Recording Studios soon after this when his first marriage (to Kathryn J. Sherman) started falling apart. According to wikipedia, he eventually took over the studio from its owner, Paul Buff, and renamed it Studio Z, and friends started moving in with him. Could this studio be the mansion in Laurel Canyon? No, because wikipedia goes on to tell us that he couldn’t keep up with rent payments and was evicted, and the studio was torn down in 1966.

Wikipedia also states that Frank was arrested and charged with ‘conspiracy to commit pornography’ while living at Studio Z, and spent a short time in jail for it. This was around 1965. Note that this had nothing to do with children, as I think McGowan was suggesting. According to wikipedia, it was a set-up by the police, which is very believable, particularly when it’s the LAPD.

Wikipedia goes on to tell us that after being evicted from Studio Z, Frank joined a band and they took on Herb Cohen as their manager. But it wasn’t until they were discovered by record producer Tom Wilson of Verve Records (MGM) in 1966 that they cut their first album as The Mothers of Invention. And it was this album (Freak Out!) that was Zappa’s first real success in the music industry.

Wikipedia goes on to state:

During the recording of Freak Out!, Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album. The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use. After a short promotional tour following the release of Freak Out!, Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer.

There is no mention of what residence this was or who owned it or how it was paid for. So the next question is, who is Pamela Zarubica, and was it her property? I will answer this question further on, but at this point we can pinpoint the date that Frank and Gail started living together in Laurel Canyon to the summer of 1966.

However, according to wikipedia, Frank and Gail moved to New York later on in 1966, and didn’t return to Laurel Canyon until 1968. Wikipedia states:

Zappa and The Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn. This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life.

Was one of these the residence known as the Log Cabin? Wikipedia doesn’t tell us, but whatever the case, it appears that Frank couldn’t have been as involved in the Laurel Canyon scene as much as McGowan makes out, since he and his wife were in England for a large part of the time in question. At best, there is only a very small window of time when Frank and Gail could have been living in the Log Cabin and playing host and hostess to the young people coming to the area during the 60s.

As for who Pamela Zarubica is, I googled the name and learned that she was known as ‘Suzy Creamcheese’. I also came up with an online version of ‘Zappa’ by Barry Miles. This book offered some more relevant details. On page 118 it tells us:

This was the period Zappa was most closely involved with a community, largely through living with Pamela Zarubica. Rather than share with Vestine now that he had left the Mothers, Zappa preferred to sleep on Pamela's couch. In mid-May 1966, on completion of the 'Freak Out!' recording sessions, using some of his share of the advance money from MGM, Frank finally moved in with her. Pamela Zarubica's cottage at 8404 Kirkwood Drive, near the corner of Yukka, was a long narrow single-story white wood and glass structure squeezed into a tiny lot, hard up against the lush vegetation on the canyon wall, which left only a narrow sidewalk between it and the road. A huge utility pole stood outside like a maypole, with dozens of cables fanning out across the street.

...

He was now at the heart of what he would dub Freak Sanctuary, the narrow lanes leading off Kirkwood Drive and Could Avenue on the west side of Laurel Canyon, which was rapidly becoming Freak Central.

This was obviously NOT the Log cabin!

Searching through the book for any mention of the Log Cabin, I found that it states that a man named Karl Franzoni lived in the Log Cabin prior to Zappa moving in, and he was already running the place as a sort of commune. Three members of Vito's (Vito Paulekas) dance troupe, named Lucy, Sandra, and another girl named Christine Frka, were living there with Karl. These girls hung out at gigs and were the first known groupies. Lucy, Sandra, and some others were bisexual and apparently liked to make out in front of the boys.

On page 165 it states:

Franzoni's commune ended in May 1968 when Frank Zappa, Gail, little Moon Unit, Cal Schenkel, engineer Dick Kunc and Frank's English secretary Pauline Butcher, packed their bags and headed for Los Angeles. Zappa had visited Karl at the log cabin on a previous trip and realized it was perfect for his needs. The estate was owned by an eccentric African-American widow who charged $700 a month. Frank went to see her and shortly afterwards Franzoni, Lucy, Sandra and the girls found themselves with nowhere to live.

...

Also living there were Pauline Butcher, road manager Dick 'Snork' Barber, Ian Underwood, 'Motorhead' Sherwood and Pamela Zarubica. The eventual roll-call was about a dozen people.

...

One day Lucy suggested to Christine, Pamela and the girls that they all drop in on Zappa at the Log Cabin. She knew Zappa from New York, though quite how well she would never tell. While they were all talking to the Zappas, Christine drifted away and began tidying up. When Moon Unit crawled over to her, Christine casually hoisted her onto her hip and carried on cleaning. Gail was so impressed she hired her on the spot as a live-in babysitter.

With Christine living at the Log Cabin, it quickly became the central hangout for the other girls and, away from Vito, they began to evolve their own dance routines.

The book also states that Frank had suggested the girls call themselves 'Girls Together Only' or the GTOs. Pamela was one of them.

It goes on to say:

The Log Cabin became a home from home for the GTOs and soon they were all living more or less permanently in the artificial fairy grotto on the adjacent hillside. It was perfect, because rather than having to go in search of rock stars, they would come to the house; the downside was Frank's attitude to drugs.

...

The Log Cabin became an essential stop-off point for all visiting British rock musicians.

So it appears that Frank Zappa wasn’t really as instrumental a character in the early Laurel Canyon scene that McGowan makes him out to be, although he did provide a location in the later years for much of the activity that went on. Frank and Gail were absent from the scene for at least 18 months between 1966 and 1968. It was only after they returned in the summer of 1968 that they took up residence in the Log Cabin. The place was a commune long before he took up residence there, and this commune had been started by one Kark Franzoni, who was already letting some of Vito Paulekas’ young groupies live there. And these young girls were already interested in hanging out at gigs and offering themselves to the musicians.

How many groupies who found their way into the dressing rooms and bedrooms of rising rock stars might have actually been planted there to keep tabs on their idols while servicing them sexually? And how many were called on to help in the ‘suicidal’ demise of their idols when directed to? These young girls – many still underage – were often described as runaways, and yet nobody ever seemed at all curious about where their families were or whether they might be worried about them. It begs the question: How many of them might have also come from military families?

After all, these girls sound more like they were the product of a certain MKULTRA program that specializes in creating sexually promiscuous females for espionage and blackmail, than they do mere runaways with little worldly experience. Now, if it can only be shown that they all had butterfly tattoos, it would almost clinch it.

We’ve discovered from the above that it was someone other than Frank Zappa who was actually instrumental in establishing the hippie scene in Laurel Canyon: a man named Karl Franzoni. It appears that if there was some sort of government conspiracy going on behind the scenes to draw all these up-and-coming music icons to Laurel Canyon, it was (at least partly) due to the lure of the very sexually active young groupies known collectively as the GTOs. Frank Zappa just let them continue to use the Log Cabin once he took it over.

It seems to me that if there was a conspiracy behind the music scene that developed in Laurel Canyon during the 60s, and if this conspiracy involved some of the finished products of MKULTRA, then it would more likely be whoever was handling these girls who were responsible for creating the early scene that got it all started, and people like Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa were unwittingly used in a different capacity, whether or not they ever received any ‘aptitude enhancement’ when they were younger. The girls would have been no more aware of what they were really doing, only following what they thought were their own free-will choices and actions. They would have been a very strong enticement for all those young males who were arriving on the scene. How much more enticement would a guy like Jim Morrison need to decide to become a rock musician at that point? A little hypnotic programming earlier on to plant the idea and bring it to mind at the right time is all…

Wikipedia tells us one more interesting thing about Frank that shouldn’t go without comment:

Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known about the potential dangers of even small amounts of therapeutic radiation.

So Frank appears to have been used in an experimental capacity as a child, and although it doesn’t state it as such, it can be assumed by the unorthodox nature of the ‘treatment’ using a highly radioactive substance that it was conducted by a military doctor, and probably for reasons other than to try to cure his problem. I mean, who would ever attempt to use a radioactive substance to cure a sinus problem, outside of the lunatics working for MKULTRA? We might also wonder about the cause of his nose and ear problems, since these were both favored insertion points for electronic implants in the early days of MKULTRA, and they could cause continual medical problems for the recipients.

Before I end this section, I want to clarify one last time that it’s very unlikely that any of the rock icons that came out of the 60s and 70s were witting agents of the government, bent on destroying the hopes and dreams that young people held at that time. However, I find it very likely that at least a few of them – including Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa – were unwittingly involved in secret government programs that led them into the lifestyles that they took up, and were even given special favor by key people working behind the scenes, in order to establish them as the figureheads of a movement that was purposely intended to subvert opposition to the government, both then and in the years ahead.

THE CHILDHOOD PROGRAMMING OF JACK SARFATTI

MKULTRA was involved in putting children through special ‘aptitude enhancement’ programs as early as 1953 and molding them for later use as adults. This is written about in Jack Sarfatti’s ‘Destiny Matrix 2012’ (freely available online). Sarfatti, in case you’ve never heard the name before, is a theoretical physicist and mathematician who was involved in consciousness exploration projects going on at Esalen in California during the 70s (working directly with some of the biggest names in the field). He also assisted in psychic experiments involving Uri Geller that led to the top-secret remote-viewing programs at SRI. He now does contract work for the Department of Defense.

From his book:

One of approximately 400 pre-adolescent "whiz kids" selected nationally to participate in a classified U.S. government program during the late 1940's and early 1950's - a Cold War effort to cultivate "best and the brightest" American youth to serve the nation in a variety of scientific and economic areas geared towards national defense, Sarfatti recalls that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was definitely and he surmised that physicist and paranormal researcher Harold Puthoff was probably among the government's fellow recruits.

…

Recruiting young geniuses, educating them in the areas where they are most gifted, and calling on them in the future to lend their skills to various government efforts was a logical extension of early Cold War thinking. Compared to a plethora of darker, sinister and now infamous "black" projects conducted by the CIA and Defense Department from the McCarthy Era forward, it is also reasonable and healthy.

…

Sarfatti may have come to the attention of government canvassers because of his uncle Arthur Jacobson, who developed a singular reputation during his WWII combat infantry services in the Pacific Theatre. Arthur showed a consistent intuitive ability to sense the locations of enemy snipers and emplacements, and apparently came to the attention of Army brass, who used him as human counter-sniper detecting GPS and a jungle warfare instructor.

On the other hand, selecting Sarfatti may have had less to do with his uncle's extra-sensory predisposition than the precocious eight and nine years old Sarfatti keeping constant company with his grandfather, who frequently associated with Army psychiatrists and officers of significant scientific backgrounds in late 1940's New York City. Sarfatti remembered, "As my grandfather drove, I would sit in the back seat, with these colonels...I mean they were always analyzing. I was actually in the company of these Army officers a lot. That's when I think I met this fun colonel named Phil Corso who later wrote, The Day After Roswell."

…

At about the same time, a lengthy experience with paranormal overtones invaded Sarfatti's early adolescence. He began receiving a series of anonymous telephone calls that chroniclers of his life label the "God-phone.

…

The voice sought to speak only with Sarfatti, never anyone else. While Sarfatti only recalls the first call clearly, and has vague recollections that there may have been subsequent calls, his mother recounted that the calls persisted for "three weeks," and only stopped when she finally grabbed the phone out of exasperation over perceptible changes in Jack's personality and told the "caller" never to call again.

In Sarfatti’s own words:

When I was thirteen or maybe twelve, I got a very strange set of phone calls in which there was a mechanical voice, and it could have been simulated, but the story is of this mechanical voice that it was a computer onboard a spacecraft in the future!

…

[I]t wanted to teach me things, and I was supposed to meet these "others" in 20 years. This was 1953 and twenty years would be 1973. So this kind of whole weird thing happened. And the odd thing about it was that I only remember one of the phone calls. But my mother, I only found this out later, my mother remembers weeks of them and hours at a time, which I have no memory of whatsoever. I was walking around glassy-eyed. And finally she got worried...finally she grabbed the phone from me and says "who's this?" and heard this metallic sounding voice. And it said "this is a computer aboard a spacecraft and it wanted to speak to me." She got angry and said "Don't ever call here again," and slammed the phone down. That was her memory of it that she told me about later.

…

Either it was what it says it was, or a government program, take your choice. I mean, given everything else, it sounds like it's a government project. They're still playing psychological games on these kids, quite possibly.

…

And whatever was on the other end of that the telephone said I would begin to link up with the others, part of the group, in twenty years. Twenty years would be around 1973.

…

[F]rom the mid 60s until 1971- 72, I was pretty straight and narrow in terms of mainstream science. I was not thinking very much about the fringe stuff at all. Then in 1973, 20 years after the phone calls, a whole bunch of weird things started happening. It's too complicated to go into, but it's in my book "Destiny Matrix". I wound up at this SRI thing with Geller, and there's all kinds of weird things happening, so from 73 ...I ran into all these weird people...witches and warlocks in London, - just a whole bunch of crazy stuff happening.

So we see here that the government was certainly running secret ‘aptitude enhancement’ programs involving children who were selected from military families that go back as far as the 1950s, and that those who were involved had little recall of their experiences in the program, but who found themselves propelled into careers that were meant to be part of a larger plan.

Sarfatti provides a few more details:

I was part of a group of super kids, these genius kids that were being studied at the Columbia University Laboratory of William Sheldon, and one of his assistants, a Walter Breen, (we're talking like 1953). One member of the group was a guy named Johnny Glogower. He was a year younger than me. He was a Westinghouse Science finalist. He was a Quiz Kid on the radio show "Quiz Kids". There was a bunch of them, a guy named Robert Solovay, who became a famous mathematician at Berkeley. And even Alan Greenspan [was there].

…

Greenspan is older than I am, but Greenspan became part of this group. It was all also connected somehow with Ayn Rand. Somehow Ayn Rand had something to do with it. It was also connected to the government. It had something to do with what later became Sandia Labs in New Mexico. In fact we used to have these guys come up (they looked like FBI guys), and this was the McCarthy era, to get pep talks about being patriotic and anti-communist and all that kind of stuff.

…

[T]here's a friend of mine named Hank Harrison who was a part of it, who's the father of Courtney Love, actually Courtney Love's dad.

…

He apparently was in a similar program in Berkeley around this same time, this is like, the early Fifties, and it was tied up with the intelligence community, definitely with the government. It was kind of like the X-Men. I mean what they were trying to do...what they were trying to see. First of all, they were trying to promote an interest in Science.

This last bit is interesting, because most readers will remember that Kurt Cobain followed the same tragic road as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc. that ended in their ‘suicide’. And most of us have heard the rumors that Courtney Love had much to do with Kurt Cobain’s untimely death. I’ll have to research Hank Harrison further, but for now, let’s get back to Sarfatti’s description of the program he was involved in as a child:

There were experiments, and they would just sit with the kids, you know, trying to get them to move objects. We never moved anything, but there was a whole program going on about this. Also, they talked about aliens and flying saucers, trying to figure out how they fly, and all that kind of stuff, it was a lot of science fiction. Oh, and I met Isaac Asimov at that time.

…

Walter [Breen] was very much part of the sci-fi scene then, and also he's one of the founders of MENSA. This is in New York in the Fifties. Walter wanted me to go to the University of Chicago for some reason. And when I graduated from high school in 1956, the people in this program wrote the recommendations for me for the schools I applied to. So I applied to MIT, Cornell, and the University of Chicago.

…

I went to Cornell, and I remember Breen wrote the recommendation that got me into Cornell. Apparently it was like a ten page recommendation.

…

My mother didn't have any money, and my parents were divorced, so I got a full scholarship to Cornell. My professors were the guys who built the atomic bomb in Los Alamos.

It’s amazing for a kid from a relatively poor family to have all the doors opened for them so that they receive the best education possible… unless of course they’re already sold into the ‘program’ early on, huh?

He goes on to describe what he remembers of his experiences as a child that may have led to him being selected for the secret program:

[I]t turns out my grandfather, even before this Columbia Project, which was definitely some kind of intelligence thing...before that my grandfather worked for the US Army. He was a veteran, and this is when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was actually living with the grandparents. And after school, I would go to meet my grandfather, who was at the Army Quartermaster Corps, in the Garment District of New York. And that was a very strange situation, maybe I was 10 or 11 years old...but I would hang out there and play. And they had a laboratory there.

…

My grandfather drove around with these Army officers - my grandfather was driving the car, and I would sit in the back seat, with these colonels...they must have been psychiatrists. I mean they were always analyzing. And it's all kind of consistent. (because) at time I was, going to build rockets, go to the moon, or all this kind of stuff. But all of this was encouraging me, I was actually in the company of these Army officers alot. That's when I saw this fun colonel named Phil Corso who wrote a book, "The Day After Roswell", many years later. I'm pretty sure Col. Corso's one of those guys, really...though I can't prove it. This would've been around 1950.

…

Then there were other scientists. A guy named Hal Puthoff, who's right now in Texas, about my age, also had similar experiences, and has been involved, I mean he actually was a Naval officer. He worked for the National Security Agency, and is now one of the active researchers in UFO's and the paranormal. In fact it was Hal Puthoff who was involved in a CIA project at Stanford Research Institute back in the 70's.

…

That's where I first met him. So this has all been kind of a consistent picture of what looks like a very long term intelligence effort, definitely involving the British, definitely involving the Americans and probably other agencies as well[.]

So we have here someone of relative significance describing their first-hand childhood experience in a top-secret government ‘aptitude enhancement’ program, and naming other significant people who were also there alongside him.

These ‘aptitude enhancement’ programs for gifted children were being run as far back as 1953, and they were primarily selecting their subjects from among the children of military personnel. Also, they apparently used memory blocks to hide some of the things that went on in these programs, so that Sarfatti was only ever able to recall very little about it. Whatever the case, as Sarfatti grew up, he had all the right doors opened for him so that he could get the education he would need to arrive at the place in life that had been set out for him. Essentially, although he was influenced early on to pursue science, he was also influenced to take a deep interest in UFOs and more fantastical things of that nature.

Could Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, David Crosby, John Phillips, or anyone else from the Laurel Canyon scene have been involved in a similar program that was focused on enhancing their musical aptitudes, and were they later propelled, perhaps by hypnotically planted subconscious suggestions, to get involved in the music scene that was developing in Los Angeles in the 60s? And were they perhaps unknowingly taken to Lookout Mountain Laboratory from time to time for ‘tune ups’, or otherwise monitored from there?

The more you understand what MKULTRA was involved in within all of its various projects over the years, and the more you understand the methods they used to identify good experimental subjects for these projects, and the more you understand the various methods they used to manipulate and control the behaviors of these subjects without them ever suspecting it, the easier it will be for you to understand how possible it is that the scene that developed in Laurel Canyon (and elsewhere) was largely orchestrated by government agents using unwitting military brats as Pied Pipers to purposely lead American youth down a dead-end road.

To Be Continued…

Note 1: Since I wrote the first part of this series, I’ve learned that both Carly Simon and Doors band member Robbie Krieger were also from ‘connected’ families. Carly Simon comes from the Simon’s of the Simon & Schuster book publishing dynasty, and Robbie Krieger’s father was head of the Rand Corporation.

Note 2: I’ve also come across a published letter from Jim Morrison’s father to his deceased son, in which the man expresses incredible pomposity and self-glorification while demeaning Jim in every possible way. It reveals a lot about the strained relationship between these two, and I warn those who respect Jim and his work that they will probably be angered by his father’s utter ignorance and disrespect of Jim and his accomplishments. It’s a slap in the face to all of Jim’s fans. For some of you, like me, it will sound very familiar to how your own parents and family have treated or spoken about you for making your own choices in life. For those interested, you can read it at this link:

http://www.georgethomasclark.com/?p=1119