Gary James' Interview With The Rock And Roll Detective
Jim Berkenstadt



The Detective is on the case! In this case, it's Jim Berkenstadt, The Rock And Roll Detective. Jim has written a highly detailed and exhaustive book on some of Rock's burning questions. We're talking chapters on "Did The C.I.A. Kill Bob Marley?", "Who Really Discovered Elvis Presley?", "Deal With The Devil: Did The Beach Boys Steal A Song From Charles Manson?". Well, you get the idea. These subjects and more are found in Jim's new book, Mysteries In The Music: Case Closed. (Genius Book Publishing)

Q - Jim, I like this name you've given yourself, The Rock And Roll Detective. I should have thought of that! I'm doing detective work too.

A - (laughs) We both share the same interests of looking into mysteries of Rock 'n' Roll. I think it was about twenty or so years ago I was meeting with Neil Aspinall at Apple. I think he mentioned, "You're a Rock 'n' Roll detective." I had found a rare interview that The Beatles were looking for. The company was looking for an interview with John Lennon and Merv Griffin at the Cannes Film Festival. I believe it was around the time of the Help! movie. They just couldn't find that anywhere and they asked me to look for it and I found it in two weeks, (laughs) amazingly. A little luck. A little skill.

Q - I remember Merv Griffin talking about that interview. He said John Lennon had no idea who he was.

A - Right. And you can tell that when you listen to it. I think that Neil may have even brought the idea to my attention. I thought that's kind of a nice branding for what I do. So, I trademarked it and went ahead and it's been a lot of fun. A lot of people just refer to me as "The Rock And Roll Detective" rather than Jim Berkenstedt. We both have a passion. I definitely have a passion of getting to the bottom of Rock mysteries and just telling the story in an enjoyable way for readers.

Q - As I read your book, I came away with the idea that people just take Rock 'n' Roll too seriously, especially when it comes to that song, "Louie Louie". The uproar over that song is very strange. You couldn't even understand what the singer was singing.

A - Well, it's interesting. I think the uproar started with some parents whose kids brought home handwritten lyrics that they were passing around in school. The lead singer did garble his vocals on that song. One of those letters landed on the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy's desk, this complaint letter. Since it involved a question of obscenity, it had to go to J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. Talk about wasting tax payer money! In today's dollars, that three year investigation as whether "Louie Louie" was obscene, cost taxpayers sixty-two million dollars.

Q - Unbelievable.

A - Then later they just dropped the case and didn't let anyone know they failed to find a problem. They really just didn't do a good investigation. It was like dark comedy of the Keystone Cops looking into this issue.

Q - As you listen to "Louie Louie" it's not a song to be taken so seriously.

A - Right. Well, I actually was able to talk to the lead singer shortly before he died. Perhaps the biggest surprise of what he told me was not about how he sung it, which I'll tell you in a second, but it was the F.B.I. never interviewed him. If fact, they never even figured out to discover who was the lead singer. They thought because he had left the band and the band was now touring without him, they thought whoever was singing the song on that night, they followed the band around the country, hoping for them to sing obscenities live, they assumed that was the person who sang it. And he wasn't. So, the real lead singer who recorded it never was interviewed. He explained to me that, and I've talked to other people who record music and they agree, if the microphone is placed way up, straight over your head and you tip your head upward, you don't have enough air to sing and breathe and enunciate properly. And this was not a real recording studio by today's standards. This was like somebody's garage with a long cord and a microphone up in the air. The whole band was in a circle around the singer and his head was pitched straight up. That can cause a lot of issues enunciating the words when you don't have enough air.

Q - I never realized Robert Kennedy got involved in that investigation.

A - As a former trial lawyer I went through hundreds of pages of the governments previously classified documents to really discover how they went about this investigation and all the details.

Q - Let's talk about Dennis Wilson and Charles Manson. Am I reading this right? On page 192, "Dennis Wilson would bring Charles Manson to (Mama) Cass Elliot's house and introduce him to people like Stephen Stills and Eric Clapton."

A - He kind of wafted in and out of this Rock royalty. What I was saying there is these other people would drop by from time to time. I know he met Neil Young and I know he met the leader of The Mamas And The Papas (John Phillips). Eric Clapton wasn't there all the time because he was still in England and he would just stop in on tours. Mama Cass had this real cool kind of salon where she would have anyone drop by at the time. Definitely Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young before they got together as a group, were all sort of regulars at her place. But I know for a fact John Phillips and Neil Young did meet with Charles Manson and he did play guitar for them. It's interesting because I think Dennis Wilson thought that this guy had a lot of potential because of the way he could just sort of make up lyrics.

Q - Cass Elliot had a salon? Was she a hair stylist?

A - A salon not in the manner of a hair salon. Back then a salon was a place where people would go to discuss the issues of the day and just sort of hang out and have serious discussions. It could be about politics. It could be about changing laws. It could be about how should we bring up children. So, that was just the term that was used then, a salon. A place for people to go and reason out different issues.

Q - But, nobody was getting their hair cut?

A - No, not back then. (laughs)

Q - Neil Young thought Charles Manson's songs were fascinating and "He was quite good." But he said, "As a singer he was third rate." Terry Melcher passed on Manson. If Manson had had the right songs to sing, just maybe the Tate - La Bianca murders might not have happened.

A - Right. Stephen Desper, one of the engineers for The Beach Boys, who worked a lot at Brian Wilson's house, said to me when I interviewed him that if Manson had been patient and had been more open to recommendations and suggestions of producers and engineers along the way, that he truly could have gotten a record deal, not because of his guitar playing because that was very simplistic. The guitar was more of an accompaniment to him coming up with ideas. Greg Jakobson, who witnessed the discussion over the song that's the main issue in the book over whether or not The Beach Boys stole a song from Manson, Greg said to me that Manson was perhaps the first Rapper because he sort of rapped out his music. If you're asking my opinion about Manson as an artist or a musician, it's very hard for me to listen to his music and separate it from what he did later on with the murders. I'm predisposed to say he's a lousy artist because he ended up being this awful psychotic cult leader and was responsible for all these murders of innocent people. So, it's very difficult for me to separate that out. Plus, I didn't know him. I never got an opportunity to see him play live. Based on these other people, Stephen Desper, Greg Jakobson, Dennis Wilson and Neil Young, they certainly saw something, some spark of unique talent that maybe Charles Manson could have become a singer/songwriter/guitarist at that time. But, we'll never know.

Q - Would Manson have taken direction?

A - No.

Q - Any record company would have wanted him to promote the record, which meant he would've had to talk to people he didn't want to talk to, go places he didn't want to go.

A - He wouldn't even take direction on one song, like "Why don't you move the chorus over here? Why don't you change this word to that word?" He was vehement about never changing lyrics. He didn't like microphones pointing at him because he thought they were phallic symbols and he was upset he would have to sing into a microphone. So yeah, he wouldn't take direction. Stephen Desper said it's too bad. Maybe a lot of lives would have been saved if Manson had simply been patient and taken direction and learned the craft of being a professional musician.

Q - If Dennis Wilson had told Manson, "Here's $300 for 'Never Learn Not To Love'. You're not getting anymore money. I now own the song," would Manson have understood that?

A - Well, I think the only thing Manson would have understood is if both of these people had put the whole thing in writing. I just don't think they knew what they were doing. I don't think the problem could have been avoided unless Dennis Wilson went to his people and said, "I want to buy this song from Charles Manson. I want you guys to draw up a contract with all the details and transfer everything to me," that would've been the best way to go. That would have solved a lot of problems. But, since they were two guys getting high, playing guitar and talking and chatting, where in those days everything was a drug haze and alcohol, then I think that caused the mystery that I was then able to dig into and explain to readers and ultimately solve.

Q - Let's now talk about Elvis and your chapter of the person who really discovered him, Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips' (Sun Records) secretary. I believe Elvis did give her credit for his success. With that being said, why didn't she go on to bigger and better things? Would Elvis had approached Colonel Parker and said, "I want that women as part of my inner circle."?

A - Colonel Parker, according to Scotty Moore (Elvis' guitarist), who I interviewed for several years in fact; Colonel Parker wanted to separate Elvis from all of his close friends who were originally involved in helping him in his career. He ultimately fired Scotty and Bill, and Marion went off to the military because I don't know exactly why she split from Sun Records, but I have a hunch that perhaps she might have been in a romantic link with Sam Phillips and they had a disagreement or broke up. But whatever the reason was, she left. She joined the military and forged her own way in the world. I think women were held back then. She was such a pioneer as a disc jockey, an engineer, as someone who ran the administrative part of a record company and publishing company. She should be hailed as one of the greats in music history. Instead, she's sort of a forgotten name, and that's a shame because she did so much. She was great at promotion. Basically today, it would be like six people doing what she did all by herself back then. And, the fact that women just didn't have the respect in the workplace. I think many women would say they still don't have the respect in the workplace that men do, nor do they have equal pay. Imagine, here she was in the 1950s and forging her way in what was then an all male industry. So, I like the fact that I could bring out some of the highlights of her career in that chapter while working on that mystery.

Q - What accounts for all of the talent that came out of Memphis? Would we have seen equal talent come out of another city?

A - That's a good question. I don't know that we can definitively answer it, but certainly there was a lot of talent around that Tennessee area. Certainly when Sun Records and Sam Phillips started to make a name for himself, that would attract artists who'd want to go there and audition, some ultimately being signed. That's a hypothetical question. I don't know how to answer that. It could be that if he (Sam Phillips) had started somewhere else, there would've been talent somewhere else, but maybe not. Sam talked about walking through Memphis and seeing men just standing on a corner, playing the guitar and such. So I think there was a lot of musical talent just sort of naturally in that area at the time.

Q - We could compare what happened in Memphis to what happened in Detroit, Motown Records.

A - Well, it's interesting because over time we've seen different music scenes just sort of bubble up in different cities. Think about Grunge and Alternative Rock coming out of the Seattle scene. I'm not a big Heavy Metal fan, but a lot of Heavy Metal came out of Los Angeles for example. It's just really sort of interesting how it comes and goes because these scenes don't last forever. They just pop up in different cities. I never know why that is. Maybe we should ask a sociologist or something. (laughs)

Official Website: www.MusicMysteryBook.com

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