OUR FIRST PSEUDO-CELEBRITY FANS

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

When I last blogged, I talked about our work fifty years ago with backing musicians, but not about what was going on with the duo act at the same time that was making us something resembling a living. We had linked up with a manager who saw potential in us, but he was limited mostly by being based in Concord, about 30 miles east of San Francisco and about 10 years behind culturally. Still, he had managed to find a space in his town of Concord that was happy to give us a paid audition, a venue called Petar’s Bistro. That audition led to an indefinite booking in their banquet room that seated about 200. We worked from 9:00 to 1:00, doing three sets of about 50 minutes each, and it was pretty amazing how many people would stay the whole night, but then we were getting as sloshed as they were.

One night after a particularly raucous set, a very pretty young woman came to our dressing room (actually a liquor closet), and would not stop praising us in very graphic terms. Every positive adjective she tossed our way was preceded by the word “fucking,” and she seemed undaunted by it. We calmly said thank you, and finally she introduced herself. She said her name was Marilyn Chambers, then said, “You know, the Ivory Snow girl?” We actually did know, for she had been a model whose face was posted on a box of Ivory Snow detergent without the company knowing she had also starred in a hit porn movie, “Behind The Green Door.” It was not quite as notorious as “Deep Throat,” but it made her and its film-makers a fair amount of money, a lot of which went to attorneys’ fees. Ivory Snow cancelled the contract, and those boxes with her photo became instant collectors’ items.

The film-makers, Artie and Jim Mitchell, were also there that night, and Artie, wearing a funky blue suit with an old style top hat, took us aside later that same evening, and kept repeating over and over to us how he thought we were a major talent. He was very drunk and probably under other influences, but ultimately he wanted to be friends with us. It helped too that even though he lived in the suburb of Lafayette with his wife and three young children, he and Jim ran a noted porn theatre in San Francisco, The O’Farrell, that remained at the same location from 1969 until 2020, when the Covid pandemic forced them to close permanently after a few years of struggle.

With the brothers spending their days running the theatre, it meant they were in San Francisco most days. We were invited numerous times to come to their theatre, hanging out and getting stoned on some of the most remarkable weed we would ever sample. On one occasion, we came by the theatre with the simple request that we would be going down to Southern Cal to spend time with our respective families (Ruby’s family lived in Colton, only eight miles away from where my parents lived in Redlands). We asked if they had any pot we could take down there so we wouldn’t get too bored. They pulled out a 35 mm movie tin, saying “Well we got this stuff here, we’re not sure if it’s any good, but you’re welcome to have it.” Now, think of the dimensions of those old movie tins. They were about 18 inches across, and 35 mm is about 1 1/2 inches, so at the going price back then of about $15 an ounce, we were looking at easily $500 worth of pot that they were giving us to “test out.” That little sample lasted us through the summer, and that was with giving quantities away. We might have even sold an ounce or two.

Meanwhile, they also offered us a chance to write a radio commercial for their next film, “The Resurrection of Eve,” which also starred Marilyn. What we came up with was a spoof of the ads for household products where they’d interview housewives and ask them to sample a product or just offer “off the cuff” opinions. I’d ask Ruby what she thought of the new film “Resurrection of Eve,” and she would say something like, “Oh yeah the pile on the left was definitely washed in…” It was silly, and the Mitchell Brothers bought it and paid us $500. What’s even sillier was driving back from a gig about 1:00 am, and having the big AM Top 40 station of the time, KFRC, on the car radio, and hearing our ad for a porn film, on a station catering mostly to teens!

We would have many encounters, mostly with Artie, over the next few years. Sadly, the last one was not pleasant, as we were playing a sold out show in 1980 at the Great American Music Hall, one of the most respected venues in SF, and conveniently almost right next door to the O’Farrell. Artie came to the show, then came back afterwards, clearly coked up, and started laying into my partner about how “you had them and then you lost them,” referring to our performance. My partner figured this had something to do with her rejecting his advances a few years prior after he and his wife had split up. This behaviour was a bit of a harbinger of things to come.

We would never see any of them again. Marilyn went Hollywood and failed at a singing career (she sang onstage with us, uninvited, one time in Concord). She would have a fairly lucrative career in soft-core porn, and died in 2009 of a cerebral hemorrhage, but Artie and Jim’s story is more bizarre. Artie had gotten so out of control with alcohol and cocaine abuse that it threatened their business and the relationship with his brother. It got bad enough that on February 27, 1991, Jim drove to Artie’s house in Marin County and shot him dead with their father’s rifle. Their story was dramatised in a 2000 HBO film, “Rated X,” which featured the brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen in very bad bald wigs as Jim and Artie. Jim would serve three years in San Quentin for voluntary manslaughter, but on release, continued running the theatre until his death in 2007.

I don’t know what it is about the comedy scene that so intertwines with the porn world, maybe they just like a good old dirty joke. The Mitchells would be my first exposure to that world, but 12 years later, when I began my solo career, one of my first fans was Ron Jeremy. That’s probably another story.

March 2nd, 2023



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