That's me and Jeff Kaplan. He was a virtuoso, a classical pianist. He also played second guitar in Etta James' band. One night he invited me down to the California Club to hear them play. We were the only two white guys in the place. It was kind of scary, until I realized that people in that part of town were the basically the same as people everywhere else.
Jeff was not the first guy with whom I collaborated. I had been writing songs ever since I was a kid when I heard of a guy named Jan Berry who made a hit record in his garage. Even then, I could see there were other things, like becoming a senator for instance, where you could be more useful to other people. A career in public service looked like it would be a more fulfilling goal.
President Harry Truman had autographed a photo wishing me a useful life, and after experiencing JFK, becoming a public servant seemed all the more like the most rewarding vocation of all. But you had to become obligated to unethical interests, or be extremely rich to get elected, so that was out for the time being. Nevertheless, Pop convinced me that even if I never had the financial clout to get elected, it would still be a good idea to have a background in Law. To that end, JFK's right hand man, Kenny O'Donnell picked me up from prep school in Connecticut, and we drove up to meet the people at Harvard. But I was a couple of years short of graduation. In California I had spent more time studying cars, and waves, and music, and girls, than anything else.
Although Pop told me I was going to receive a "presidential appointment", the Harvard people couldn't do that. They suggested that I go back to prep school for more credits, and then return on a trial basis. So the following year, Ken picked me up again and showed me around campus. But by that time, JFK had been gunned down.
Being Irish, I've seen alcohol get people in ugly moods, and that is why it appeared to me that Ken had been drinking. He confirmed that when we stopped by a restaurant in Cambridge. Ken wasn't drinking just because he was Irish, or because he couldn't face an uncertain future. It appeared to me he was drinking because he was troubled. He either knew some of the people who had been involved in the killing of the president, or he had a good idea about who was involved. Either way, it appeared that he couldn't do anything about it. He had survivor's guilt, and he was using alcohol to ground him.
But bingeing on alcohol, which will kill a man a lot faster than marijuana or hashish, was not what he needed. I felt like saying something like that to him. But he was of high moral character, strictly old school, and that would have only made me look like a damned fool. I did manage to ask him a lot of questions though, and some of the things he said are still important. He was a smart man. When I have more time, and when I figure out a more intellectual way to tell you a story about what he heard JFK say on the phone to Fidel Castro, I'm going to tell you.
At any rate, I felt out of place at Harvard. It seemed most everybody came from old money established families, those who owned large corporations with household names, and my Pop did not even own his own house. He had seen what happened during the Great Depression when banks gobbled up farms and homes, before sending the world off to war, and he swore he would never take the chance of having a mortgage. Instead he rented, and he spent the rest of his salary generously picking up the check wherever he went.
I believed he was wrong to do that. Near the end of his life he thought so too. Every time we drove down a certain street in Beverly Hills he would chastise himself. "I could have bought that house there for $40,000," he would grumble. That is when I swore to myself, that I would never make the same mistake. I would one day use the mortgage system established during the booming real estate market of the Eisenhower administration to buy my own piece of the rock. I believed in the leverage provided by credit, and I figured that the laws passed to regulate banks would keep them from repeating their behavior during the 1930's.
Another reason I was out of place at Harvard, was because a year and a half of prep school was not enough to compensate for the precious time I had wasted on extracurricular activities. I did not even know how to properly approach a test. I did however have a few things in common with my new friends at school. We enjoyed Political Science and History. We knew, for instance, what to do if the stock market ever crashed again like it did in 1929. Yes we did. We took a good look at that. We wrote papers identifying socio-economic mistakes of the past and how not to repeat them. One would think that any of us would have been able to do a better job than experts like Bernanke, Paulson, Bush or Obama. But they probably knew what to do as well... for themselves.
We saw that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was right to sign the Glass-Steagall Acts, and the three administrations during the time of destabilization had been correct to try and pump dollars into the economy. The problem back then was corruption. Not enough money ever reached the people.
JFK knew what ought to be done for his country too, much more so than most people. Some thought he got himself killed because he just tried to do too much too fast, but it was more complex than that. His book Profiles in Courage (and I know Ted Sorenson wrote much of it, but he wrote it according to JFK's papers) had a recurrent point, a basic tenet of his philosophy. The courage JFK spoke about was the kind of courage an elected official must have to compromise on an issue close to his heart, and take the heat; in order to remain in office and one day cast his vote, without prejudice, where it would do the most good. That is why it surprised me to see JFK take on everybody at once.
Those who viewed him as reckless, or two-faced were mistaken. He may have appeared arrogant. But it was a righteous arrogance. Even so, it appeared that events pushed him to take certain positions he would have preferred to have taken one at a time, or not at all. At any rate, he was murdered for the courageous positions he took, much in the same way Julius Caesar was murdered; and by that I mean the real conspirators and their accomplices within government intelligence agencies and organized crime never conspired explicitly or directly. They organized the assassination through meetings of go-betweens with teams that examined the president’s itinerary and planned to take him off in places like Miami Florida, Palm Springs and Dallas Texas. What's more, they chose to blow him away in public, as if to teach the rest of us a lesson, and it had shaken my belief in the future of America.
Still, I was dutifully sitting at my desk in Franklin Hall, trying to study so I could one day become a useful member of the new establishment, whatever that was going to be. It was snowing, and a funky ancient radiator was making noises. I couldn't concentrate. I had read the same damn line in my history book about three times and then on the radio came rock and roll from my friends in California. That was it. I flew back to L.A. determined to succeed on my own terms, and make some money in the entertainment business, first.
Now one of the things Pop always told me was "If you want to be successful, pick one thing, and stick to it." Naturally I disregarded his advice and followed a plan to do everything. I would do it all. It seemed to me that putting images together with words and music had to be the most encomapssing form of art. So I decided to write books and music and movies. I'd produce, I'd take a shot at being a rock star, and an actor, and that way I might earn enough dough to get myself elected one day, where I could really do some good.
I let my hair grow longer. I caught on with a controversial band who were fed up with their leader. I got a recording deal from Verve, and soon we were making records... and anti-establishment statements. We were going to change the world.
All of a sudden I was getting noticed for having some success fronting an a radical inter-racial rock band, not exactly what Pop had in mind for me. I even landed the best theatrical agent, which was no small feat because the agency only had 5 leading men and that included Steve McQueen.
One night I was performing at the Lingerie Club on Sunset Boulevard. I noticed a lady staring up at me. I was no sooner off the stage than she was in front of me, engaging me in conversation. Her name was Sharon Sheeley. I ended up dancing with her. We became oblivious to everyone around us. It was one of those magical kinds of things. I mentioned my agent had booked me to star in a movie, and I was leaving for Rome the next day, and she seemed distressed by that.
Now If my memory is correct, the band saw how we were acting and played a slower tune for us. I held her in my arms. She did not want to let go. She did not want me to leave her behind when I left the club either, and we ended up spending the night. And by that I mean spending the night. I do not remember much about it but I believe we just talked.
The only thing I remember so far about that night, is that she kept mentioning she had something very important to do the next day, something very important to her. But nevertheless, she insisted on staying with me that next day too. She said if I had to go to Rome, she had to go with me.
A long time after that happened, after I had gone to make the movie in Italy, after I had been kidnapped and held in a medically induced coma for three months, after I had finally been rescued by Sharon and her friend Gordon Waller, and after I was back in the states, I was informed that Sharon had come to the Lingerie Club on that night with a group that included her husband Jimmy O'Neil, the host of the popular TV show Shindig. Jimmy had seen everything, including the two of us leaving together. I also found out that she was supposed to have been the maid of honor at her sister's wedding that next day, and she had stood her up. But according to everyone that knew her, Sharon was a good person, who would have never done such things. She had never acted that way before.
I got on that plane bound for Rome, without knowing who she was. She did not reveal that she was married, or that she was a successful songwriter who had written big hits for Eddie Cochran, Rick Nelson, Brenda Lee and others. And I did not realize it at the time, but she had put me ahead of everyone else in her life. In so many words, she had been showing me that she was very worried. It was as if she had a premonition. She just couldn't leave me.
For additional info about this topic go to:
http://vote4vinceflaherty.org/About_Vince.html
or:
Part VIII: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part V: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part IV: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part III: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part II: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part I: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
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