David Litvinoff fell down a 1960's rabbit hole

The 1960's were a mixed bag. If you lived in London it was all about mixing. If you lived elsewhere it was just the 1950's with a new number in it.

Which is why the story of David Litvinoff is so fascinating. He mixed, he mixed up people as well, then went down a rabbit hole.

1960's aristocratic socialite Suna Portman summed David up best and her words are the key to Litvinoff...'He seemed to know all of us rather better than we knew him,’ very wise words.

Born in Whitechapel, London, in 1928 to a Jewish family of Russian origin  David was into his twenties when he began frequenting the new jazz clubs in the west end of London. This is where the rabbit hole formed.

At this time the first seeds of the 'swinging sixties' were being sown as an unholy alliance took form in a reverse polarity. East End villains took to the West End more than before and found themselves accepted rather than shunned. A mutual admiration society flourished which reached it's hieght when the Kray twins moved uptown and mingled.

David was, in many cases the key, he flitted, he flirted, he told those he flitted and flirted with all they needed to know and nothing about David except that he was the key to the mystery. So secretive was he that very few photographs of him exist, which is why there are none in this post.

David mixed with Lucien Freud, George Melly and other Soho regulars, back in the East End it was the Krays again, both sides looked to David for introductions to the other and he kept the balance.

David's highest high came when he was a 'dialogue coach and technical director' on the ultimate British film describing the 1960's, Nicholas Roeg's 1968 'Performance' starring Mick Jagger.

Now David was walking a tightrope in the darkness of a rabbit hole.

On one side the socially powerful, on the other the violently powerful. A dangerous tightrope.

David jumped off the tightrope and into a new rabbit hole when he moved to Wales in 1968 then Australia then, in 1972, back again to the UK to Davington Priory in Faversham, Kent, a big house owned by his old friend Christopher Gibbs.

David died in April 1975 from an overdose of sleeping pills.

Author Keiron Pim has, with diligent and dogged research, managed to find enough about the mercurial, secretive David Litvinoff to write a fascinating biography of a lost character of the 1960's of who Iain Sinclair said it was 'hard to find hard to find anyone who remembered Litvinoff as the cost of joining that club was "burn-out, premature senility or suicide."

 Bravo Keiron for a great read...as usual take the ISBN 9780099584445 to your local bookshop for a great read...in stock at my local bookshop!

Another rabbit hole soon...

Sonny Liston's life was one long rabbit hole

If there is one thing most of us know it is the date of our birth.

Sonny Liston was never sure of his and there is no record of it. Arkansas, the state he was born in, did not consider birth records worth making mandatory until 1965 and Sonny was never sure of his.

A childhood of which he said '"The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating" mixed with his illiteracy led to a life on the streets and crime. Sonny got busted but didn't moan about prison, at least it gave him three meals a day he later mused.

The prison athletic coach suggested Sonny should try boxing to keep his fists away from the law. Sonny was a natural, as an amateur he beat 1952 Olympic Heavyweight Champion Ed Sanders. A professional contract followed and Sonny allegedly said on signing  "Whatever you tell me to do, I'll do"

Sadly for Sonny the men who fronted the money were from the shadier corners of an already gloomy  boxing world and Sonny worked as an enforcer as well as a boxer. Though he rose through the pro rankings earning himself a formidable reputation Sonny could never quite escape the rabbit hole the gangsters had dug for him.

His serious countenance was mistaken for surliness so Sonny lived up to the 'surly' tag,  in interviews he was often monosyllabic and soon became a figure of hate.

 This was magnified when he beat popular Floyd Patterson to become world champion in 1962. Then came the two still controversial fights in 1964 with Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. Sonny was accused of throwing one and surrendering the other to the new champ.

The rabbit hole now fully opened and Sonny spent the rest of his career trying to find his way out. He fought often and won often but never became a serious challenger.

Sonny was found dead in his Las Vegas home on December 30th 1970, heroin and marijuana were found near the body. Heart failure and lung congestion were the official causes of death but foul play has long been suspected which, judging by the title of his deeply researched and grippingly told book on Sonny's life, is also author Shaun Assaels considered opinion.

For a trip down boxings deepest rabbit hole take the ISBN 9781509814831 to your local bookshop. As usual it's in stock at mine...

Another rabbit hole soon.

Laurel Canyon was one big rabbit warren...

Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. The 1960's.

Think music then and you are also thinking Laurel Canyon. The Byrds, The Doors, Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Mamas & Papas, Frank Zappa, Buffalo Springfield, Canned Heat, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, The Monkees...and more.

For them Laurel Canyon was a playground. But, did they ever wonder about that big building on Lookout Mountain?

Dave McGowan did, he wrote a book about it and the Laurel Canyon scene, in his hands, is riddled with rabbit holes, it is a warren.

The title sort of gives it away so there's no spoiler in telling you that Dave reckoned that the whole Laurel Canyon scene was a false flag operation dedicated to undermining the anti Vietnam war movement. His argument gains traction when he points out the anti war movement began on university campuses, not among the hippy movement. He adds grit to the mix as he notes that the young men of draft age who were in these bands were never drafted and many of them had fathers in shady corners of the armed forces.

Lookout Mountain? Oh, that was only a self-contained film studio set up in total secrecy by the US government to further the propaganda arm of the cold war, how the rabbit holes spread.

In the beautifully titled 'Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon : Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream' Dave takes us into the warren of rabbit holes he found and it is pure escapist fun to tag along and join the dots with him.

As usual take the ISBN, 9781909394124, to your local bookshop, it's in mine.....

OK....if you really don't have the cash for the book the first drafts as published online are now hosted by the authors daughter Alissa (Dave passed away in 2015) and can be read on her site Center for an Informed America

Many of Dave's other rabbit holes are also on the site, have fun but don't fall down too many:)

A new rabbit hole soon..

Hank William's life was one long rabbit hole

Hank left us with music that still crackles with the torment that drove it.

Born in Butler County, Alabama in 1923 Hank arrived with Spina Bifida Occulta, a birth defect which affects the spine and can result in lifelong back pain. Such was Hank's lot.

Back then radio was king, Hank listened, got himself a guitar and looked for inspiration. Street performer Rufus 'Tee Tot' Payne was his muse, ('Tee Tot' beacuse his bottle usually held a mixture of tea and total booze, hence 'Tee-Tot') Tee Tot taught Hank the basics of guitar playing, chord progressions fret-work and such and Hank took it all in.

He added stories as lyrics and began playing on the street in Montgomery Alabama, often in front of the office of radio station WSFA (the initials stood for With the South's Finest Airport...I love that!)

WSFA producers heard him and invited him to play the occasional song live on-air. The audience loved it and demanded more of 'that singing kid'. Hank was given two 15 minutes slots a week on a salary. Was that the first view of the rabbit hole?

This local fame and the cash meant Hank could form his own band 'The Driftin' Cowboys' and drift they did across the adjoining states, playing bars, honky-tonks and anywhere else they were invited. Touring then had no tour bus, just a couple of jalopies with Hank often on the back seat, nursing his back pain with whatever bottle of booze came handy.

The rabbit hole grew bigger as war took hold. The rest of the band were enlisted but Hank fell off a bull at a rodeo in Texas and was medically deferred. His continual boozing lost him his radio show and he spent the rest of the war working in a shipyard and playing in bars.

Hank once again fell down the rabbit hole due to booze when it meant his being dropped from the 'Grand Old Opry', a TV show which, for others, was a step into stardom.

The rest of Hank's life was to him, a blur of booze and pills. To others it seemed a mystery how Hank could, time after time, turn gold into dust.

Hank died in 1952 on the back seat of  a Cadillac aged just twenty-nine

Thankfully the music survived, Youtube has Hank singing 'I Saw The Light ' and thankfully Mark Ribowsky has supplied the best memorial to Hank in this new and beautifully crafted biography.

Scribble down the ISBN 9781631491573 and take it your local bookshop, it's in stock at mine.

Another rabbit hole soon...

JG Ballard wrote rabbit holes..

I think it is safe to say that JG Ballard dug more literary rabbit holes than any other tweedy middle aged man living in London's definitively suburban Shepperton.

It is also probably safe to say that JG Ballard dug more literary rabbit holes than any other modern author...full stop.

It has been said that Ballard 'thought the unthinkable', the famous  response from a publishers reader having read the manuscript of 'Crash' was “This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish.” 

Ballard took it as a compliment. 'Crash' was published and Ballard even curated an exhibition with the same name.

The site slashseconds gives the full details here slashseconds.org . 'Crash' still sells and is probably the deepest rabbit hole he dug. Read it and he holds your hand as you tumble down the hole together into a world where most people, however much they recoil and find it repulsive continue reading, if through parted fingers, anxious to get the end to then wonder...and think.

Ballard spent a fractured childhood in wartime Shanghai, which he described in 'Empire of the Sun'. He then arrived in post-war London which, to him was a strange, unworldly place. He tried medical school in Cambridge, then, in 1954, joined the RAF and served in Canada where he found American SF magazines. The writing rabbit hole for Ballard opened.

Back in the UK he slowly established himself as an SF writer, finding success with 'The Drowned World' in 1960. The sudden death of his wife in 1964 left him responsible for their three children. His writing became a warren of rabbit holes  and JG explored them to the end of his life.

The genius of Ballard is most fully explained in book form in an extensive and fascinating collection of interviews with JG collated by Simon Sellars and Dan O'Hara in 'Extreme Metaphors'

Read these interviews and JG Ballard will shine a very bright light on the walls of all the rabbit holes he dug. For a copy of 'Extreme Metaphors' take this number to your local bookshop ISBN 9780007454860, as usual it's in stock at mine..

There are also many interviews on Youtube and the full Ballardian experience online is here at ballardian.com

Warning: Compulsive reading...don't expect an early night!

Another rabbit hole soon...

Yuri fell down a rabbit hole...

There are a lucky few who achieve something that can never be taken from them. Yuri Gagarin was one of those, he was, and always will be, the first man in space.

 Yet, having been to new heights, he went down a rabbit hole.

Born in a rural Soviet Union collective farm in 1934 to a carpenter/bricklayer father and milkmaid mother Yuri was always going places. Intelligent and possessed of a winning personality Yuri progressed through the educational system, became an air cadet and joined a flying club. First glimpse of the rabbit hole.

His aptitude as a pilot led him to be promoted to Senior Lieutenant and he was one of twenty pilots inducted into the search for the man who would be first into space. The selection course was tough and when anonymously asked who they thought should be 'the one' among them, seventeen voted for Yuri.

So Yuri it was who flew into space for one hour and forty-eight minutes on 21st April 1961 in a metal ball, a silent Soviet era video is here and celebrates how Yuri becomes the first man in space

On landing Yuri became  an instant hero both in the Soviet Union and worldwide, his engaging smile shone out from TV screens, newspapers and postage stamps.

 

 Fame for Yuri had the same effect it has had on many thrust into the limelight. The rabbit hole opened when the vodka bottles opened.

The Soviet authorities, conscious of his propaganda value,  forbade him from any further space flight in 1967 after the crash-landing of Soyuz 1, (for which Gagarin was back-up crew) and the death of its cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, a close friend of Gagarin.

After qualifying as a fighter pilot Gagarin died on  March 27th 1968 when a routine flight ended in disaster, killing both Yuri and his flight trainer Vladimir Seryogin.

The crash has been grist to the conspiracy-mill ever since.

In 'Starman', by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Yuri Gagarin has a written testament as valuable as any of the many medals and awards that he has received over the decades and shows how even the man who flew higher than anybody else can fall down a rabbit hole.

As usual take the ISBN, 9781408815540, to your local bookshop, its in mine!

 Another rabibit hole soon.

Roger and Cathy fly down a very deep rabbit hole..

'Golden Age' is a term full of warmth and comfort so to see it in a book title next to the word 'hijacking' meant I had to read it and I'm glad I did because I found Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow, who fell down a very, very long rabbit hole in 1972.

When they met Roger was a disgruntled veteran of four tours in Vietnam where he had been seen as just another black 'grunt'. Cathy was working in a massage parlour.

Roger's anger found it's focus in the trial of radical Angela Davis, a plan formed in his head. Cathy was rootless and looking for fun.

The rabbit hole took shape.

Roger drew up a plan, they would hijack a plane, demand half a million dollars and the release of Davis. They would fly to Vietnam together then move to an idyllic life in Australia.

Mechanical reality got in the way, the plane they hi-jacked, as the pilot patiently explained, could not reach Vietnam.

Fate and asylum landed them in Algeria where they soon became the darlings of the Black Panthers in exile and icons for radical Europeans.

Algerian left wing President Houari Boumediene was intrigued by the pair and met them, took one look, decided they were fakers. They were forced to move to France where they were feted by the radical left, but it turned sour, big time. A rift developed. Roger returned to the US and narrowly escaped time in prison.

In his book Brendan Koerner holds our hands and takes us down the rabbit that was the golden age of hijacking.

It is a strange world, nobody from the hijackers to the airline companies to the FBI to the press saw straight so wildly spinning was the rabbit hole.

The spinning slows when Koerner relates meeting Roger Holder decades after the events took place. Now we have fisrt-hand perspective on a strange, strange time in American history.

And Cathy? After they moved to France she....disappeared.  The FBI would still like to say 'hi Cathy!'...

Brendan Koerner spins an engrossing tale which distils the US of the sixties and seventies in the book and talks about it here.. but for the full experience of this rabbit hole you need to read the book, as usual scribble down the ISBN 9780307886118 and take it your local bookshop, it's on the shelf in mine;)

Another rabbit hole soon..