Gary James' Interview With Bobby Fuller's Friend
Charlene Nowak



Bobby Fuller: A Friend Remembers

In the Spring of 1966, a Texas quartet known as The Bobby Fuller Four were riding high in the charts with "I Fought The Law". On July 18, 1966, lead singer and founding member Bobby Fuller was found dead. Only 23 years old, Bobby's death remains every bit as mysterious today as it was back then, 25 years ago. What kind of a guy was Bobby Fuller? And what were the strange circumstances surrounding his death? Charlene Nowak knew Bobby Fuller. Charlene saw firsthand his rise to fame. We let Charlene take us back to the mid '60s and the days of The Bobby Fuller Four.

Q - Charlene, how did you get to meet Bobby Fuller?

A - Well, I met him when I was in high school out here in Los Angeles. He was just starting out. He'd just come to Hollywood. There was a TV show at that time called Shindig, and there was a spin-off from the show called Shivere. Bobby's first television appearance, at least here in .A., was Shivere. That was the first time I met him. My girlfriend's father worked for ABC, the same company that produced Shindig. He got us backstage passes, which weren't really backstage passes. We got to go in before the regular audience got in. While we were milling around, we saw these guys peeking out from behind the curtains. My girlfriend said, "Go over and find out who that is." We didn't know who they were. We had never seen them before. I walked over and I introduced myself, and asked him who he was. He said, "Bobby Fuller of the Bobby Fuller Four." I looked at him kind of funny and he said, "Never heard of us before, huh?" I said, "No, I'm sorry I haven't." And he goes, "Well, after tonight, you probably never will." I said, "I wouldn't say that. Let's see what you have to offer." They did two songs. Don't even ask what they sang. I can't remember. It wasn't "I Fought The Law". They let a bunch of the girls on stage so they could be surrounding the singers. Since we were friends of the producers, we were right up there. There was a platform and Bobby and the band were right up there on this platform. He sang both of the songs to me, which I thought was very flattering at 17. He got down on his knee during a break in rehearsal and goes, "You're probably one of the sweetest people I've ever met since I've been in Hollywood." I thought how sweet. I told him "Thank-you very much." I could tell he was very sincere about it. Then they did their second song, and went off the stage, and that was it.

Q - What year was that?

A - I think it was December 1964 or January '65.

Q - So what happened next?

A - I didn't see him until I graduated from high school, which was February of 1965. They were doing a record signing at a department store in Burbank. When the band arrived, he made a big fuss over me, like, I remember you. I could tell that he didn't. It wasn't till about a half-hour into the record signing when he looked up and shouted at the top of his lungs, "I remember you. You're the girl from Shivere. And of course the whole store turned round. And I'm kind of standing there, going "Yeah, u-huh." By this time I was carrying on a conversation with Dwayne, Randy and Jim (other band members of Bobby Fuller Four). After the record signing Bobby came up to me and said "We're doing this gig in Woodland Hills at a youth center Saturday night. Would you like to come?" I said, "Yeah, sure." My girlfriend and I went. I started seeing him basically around that time. I guess that was April '65. We started dating.

Q - So, you knew Bobby Fuller pretty well then?

A - I knew Bobby Fuller the man. I didn't really know too much about Bobby Fuller the artist, because I had been to the recording studio a couple of times, but Bob Keane (Fuller's manager and producer) was just a very irritable person and I didn't like being around him. So, most of the time I spent with Bobby was either at his apartment or a nightclub on the strip (Sunset Strip) called "It's Boss", that was for 16 to 20 year olds. Basically Bobby and I had a really quiet kind of relationship. Bobby and I did a lot of talking. It turned out to be platonic, friends, because I was too young to get serious, and he knew it. We dated, but there was like no big romance.

Q - What's the famous story about Bobby Fuller and The Kinks?

A - The Kinks were appearing on Shivere with Bobby and it was their first American performance. They were backstage with Bobby and the other artists who were gonna be on the show. Bobby had come out and I was talking to him. Then Randy came out (Bobby's brother) and said to Bobby, "I'm gonna knock that guy's head off." Bobby said, "Oh, don't worry about it. Forget about it." Bobby was always the peacemaker. And I said "What's going on back there?" He goes "There's a bunch of foreigners and we ought to go back to where we came from." And I'm like, "These guys are from England and they're calling you foreigners? You ought to go back where you came from? These guys are lucky they're in this country!" They were telling an American band to go back to where they came from! I still hate The Kinks to this day.

Q - It's been written that Bobby hated clubs because people didn't pay attention to the music. Did he express that feeling to you?

A - Well, if he hated the clubs, it never showed when he was there. I don't know what it was like at P.J.'s 'cause it was 21 and over. But at the club "It's Boss", which was a teenage nightclub, everybody was very responsive. I mean they loved him. They screamed. They danced. Bobby was popular then because "I Fought The Law" had already been on the charts. He was kind of like the house band. He played there more than any of the other bands. He always had a good reception. He always had a good crowd. He just always looked like he loved performing in front of a live audience.

Q - When did you last see Bobby?

A - I saw him about four days before he died. He was up. He was excited. The band was negotiating to be in another movie. He had appeared in this one movie Ghost And The Invisible Bikini. He had just bought a bigger van for the instruments. They were working on another album. I'd never seen him so happy. He had a tour coming up. His happiness was rubbing off on me.

Q - So when you got the news that Bobby had committed suicide you must've said 'No way.'

A - Well, when I got the news, nobody had mentioned suicide to me. In fact, I guess they found his body early in the morning. Nobody called me until evening. Jim Reese (band member) called and told me "Bobby's dead." I just went numb. I felt all the blood drain out of me. I guess the first thing I said was, "Bobby who? Stop kidding!" He goes, "No. They found him this morning in the car." I just hung up on him. I didn't believe it. There's no way! The man is 23 years old. Bobby was not suicidal. Jim told me what Bobby's body looked like when the police took it out of the car. His arms and legs were scratched. There were bruise marks. The way the body looked when they took it out of the car, he'd been battered. He'd been beaten. Jim told me at one point it looked like he had been possibly molested because his pants were unzipped, like kind of down, lower than his hips. We figured he had been knocked unconscious and left in the car with an open can of gasoline and inhaled the fumes. But, he said the police were going with suicide.

Q - Now, why would they do that?

A - This is just my opinion; Bobby died a couple days after Chief Parker (of the LAPD), and the Police Dept. were getting ready for this major funeral. I just felt like they were too busy. It was like they couldn't be bothered. They didn't care.

Q - The coroner's report on Bobby found no evidence of bruises, cuts, or a beating.

A - They lied. I don't know why they said that.

Q - Isn't it easier to believe that Bobby might have been depressed and took his own life then to believe he was murdered?

A - When they interviewed Bobby's mom in the papers here in L.A., she said something about her son being despondent, and they ate that up. I don't know what frame of mind she was in. I don't even know if she said it. I know there were problems with the band. Dalton (band's drummer) was moving back to Texas. In fact, I was helping him move, him, his wife and little boy. That was causing problems. Bobby wasn't despondent. The man I saw four days before his death was not depressed or despondent.

Q - Why are friends and associates of Bobby's so afraid of discussing his death years later?

A - I think they still think whoever did it is still out there. Right after the funeral, those guys disappeared so fast. Everybody had left Hollywood, Jim, Randy, Lorraine (Bobby's mother), their dad. Rick (Stone - Bobby's road manager) and I have talked, and he's telling me there's like a Mob thing involved in all of this. I do remember when the detectives came to my house to ask me questions about Bobby. They did ask me about the Mob. Bobby had recently come back from a tour in New York and they wanted to know if Bobby had any Mob connections. Mob connections? Get real! Not the Bobby I knew.

Q - Does anybody know why Bobby might have been killed?

A - None of us know.

Q - How about Bob Keane (Fuller's manager), does he know?

A - I think he knows. When Entertainment Tonight did the story on Bobby, I talked with the producer of that particular segment. They went over to Bob Keane's to interview him. They started to ask Bob Keane questions and he got very edgy and nervous, and refused to answer certain questions about why he thought Bobby was killed, and was there any foul play. The interview got so out of hand with Bob, they packed up their stuff and left. They did not feel he was being completely honest with them. He was hiding something. He was evasive. He was covering up. They just felt this man knew more than he was saying.

Q - As I understand it, a movie is being made about Bobby by producer Joe Regis that will show Bobby didn't commit suicide, but it will stop short of saying what happened.

A - The thing is, nobody knows, and you can't finish a movie without an ending and there is no ending to this.

Q - Was Phil Spector at the funeral?

A - Oh, yeah. The thing I remember about Phil Spector was, at the end of the funeral, end of the eulogies and everything, when they asked people to come up and view the body, Phil and another guy walked down the aisle laughing, as if they were at some birthday party. I just thought, you're sick. You're a very sick man. This is a funeral. That's my memory of Phil Spector at the funeral.

Q - What was Bobby's last day like?

A - It was about midnight and Bobby got a call, answered the phone. His mom heard him say, "Yeah, no problem. I can do that." And he left. He was gone all night, which was not unusual for Bobby because he used to go down to the beach and write lyrics. He'd be down there all night. About 10 a.m., he came back to his apartment. Rick (Stone) was just getting up and he saw Bobby disappear into the back bedroom, which was Bobby's room. When he came out from wherever he was, the kitchen or bathroom, Bobby was leaving again. Rick didn't know where he was going. Nobody ever asked Bobby where he was going.

Q - Why was that?

A - They just assumed wherever he was going it was either to write a song or meet somebody. Bobby did most of the negotiating for the band.

Q - So what happened next?

A - Later on that day, when Lorraine (Bobby's mother) went to go to the store, that's when she found the body in the car. She saw Bobby lying on the front seat of the car, and when she opened up the car, the gas fumes hit her. Of course Bobby was blue and bloated. She panicked. There was a lot of screaming going on.

Q - What memories do you have of Bobby Fuller?

A - All I can say is he was probably one of the sweetest, most compassionate people I've ever met.

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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