The O'Day Conspiracy

Writing recently about my brief foray into deejaying (radio, that is, not hip-hop) reminded me about the odd experiences I had with a disc jockey named Pat O'Day, probably the all-time best-known jock from this part of the country. (The photo is not of O'Day, but rather Sam Phillips, who was sort of Pat's role model.) O'Day was variously a deejay, a concert promoter, an m.c., a busy entrepreneur, a station manager, and god knows what else, most of those careers overlapping and continuing on for decades--in fact, at 75 or 80 he's still on television doing ads for Schick Shadel!

Here's how I came to know Pat... When I moved on from the University of Washington's Alumnus Magazine to the original Seattle Magazine (circa 1965-1973), I quickly became the local-color writer on staff, impressionistically covering archeological digs, Olympic Peninsula logging, the Black Power movement in Seattle, the then-new Seattle Repertory Theater, and so on. I tended to write multiple smaller descriptive scenes that, combined together, gave a bigger overview.

Anyway, Pat O'Day was THE major force in radio and rock music concerts at the time, and the editors decided to profile him. Pat's ego was healthy enough that he was quite willing to welcome me and a photographer into his life. I interviewed him a few times and visited his station--the regional powerhouse KJR--as well as a concert or two he was promoting (got to meet the guys in Buffalo Springfield at one); I hung out at his home in Bellevue, and so on. Then I wrote up the story.

Now, Seattle Magazine was known then as a wise-ass, full-of-attitude, gadfly-on-the-rump monthly journal, always willing to pry into things and take a sarcastic stand whenever possible. I locked horns with the editors often, as those carpetbagger East Coast snobs rearranged or rewrote my copy to give it an edge, sometimes rather mean-spirited. For example, I profiled an old-time police chief up in Darrington in the Cascade foothills who claimed to have been on the posse that hunted down Bonnie and Clyde; he had lots of other good stories too. And I added plenty of local color and scenic history; the town had been founded by loggers and others from North Carolina, and was still a hotbed of Tarheel culture in a strange and distant place--with tobacco-chewing workers, bluegrass music, Southern food and manners, etc.

Well, I told the chief's story sympathetically, but the editors turned it into a sarcastic piece mocking dumb rednecks. When it ran, we (meaning I) got nasty letters and angry phonecalls, and the old guy lost his job for innocently helping to make a mockery of Darrington. And when I turned in the O'Day story, the churls went to work again, playing up Pat's nouveau riche suburban lifestyle, his motel-like house furnishings, the big-hair look of his wife, his own obvious toupee, and so on. When the article appeared, well, he definitely wasn't happy with me. (In point of fact, I only lasted a little over a year on staff at the magazine; just couldn't stand the editorial policies and general rewrite interference.)

So we parted ways, both and all of us. Several years went by. I was busy with Rainier and other TV and radio ads, working often with a company called Kaye-Smith Productions (the owners being actor-comedian Danny Kaye and businessman Lester Smith). And in the course of things, KJR and other stations Pat was connected with were acquired by the Kaye-Smith parent organization.

Out of the blue one morning I got a call from O'Day, who wanted to talk to me about a writing project; I had continued to write scripts and such, freelancing apart from my regular job (the next blog chapter will discuss that), and someone at Kaye-Smith had recommended me. So I went to see Pat.

This was the post-Watergate era, when many strange figures connected with Nixon and his minions had made it into dubious history. (Which reminds me that I interviewed John Erlichman for an article before he ever went on to D.C. and disaster.) And O'Day wanted me to write what's called a "treatment," meaning a pared-down script with plot and scenes but without most dialogue and camera shots spelled out, expanding his conspiracy idea. Can't remember whether it was E. Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy, but one of those creeps was married to a woman who died in a mysterious plane crash; and there was some speculation that she had been killed to keep her husband from telling all.

That was the extent of it. Pat wanted me to turn this broad suspicion into the script for a feature film. I wasn't too excited by the thing, to tell the truth, but he was willing to pay me $2500 for my time, so I went at it. Dreamed up minor characters, twists and turns in the behind-the-scenes action, showed how and why the wife died, etc. Typed it up clean, about 25 pages of stripped-down story, and turned it over to O'Day, who intended to use his Kaye-Smith and other show-biz connections to get a production going; I'd even get to write the shooting script maybe (wasn't holding my breath). He seemed pleased, told me to submit a bill, which I did.

A month went by; no check. I invoiced him again. Another month; still no money. I phoned a few times as a third month went by, couldn't even get him on the phone of course. Finally I asked a lawyer friend to send him a threatening letter... and was then paid within about a week!

I don't know if O'Day was making me sweat for the long-ago article, or merely being a typical, slow-to-pay producer hustler, but the $2500 check actually arrived at just the right time. I used it as the small down payment due on the house my first wife and I were trying to buy. Sold that house a decade later for big bucks, and I certainly owed some of our good fortune to my prickly dealings with one famous deejay!

The conspiracy movie was never made, of course.

Grad School Days (2)

((I turned 65 yesterday, which is the main reason I've been thinking so much about the old days of school and otherwise. So please forgive the ego stuff--I'll be better soon, honest!))

The first thing a newly graduated male, 18 or older, had to think about in 1964 was military service. Vietnam was starting to heat up, bodies were being called up... There really was a draft back then, and within a couple of years, as some may remember, it became a huge issue--vocal resistance, draftcard burnings, young men fleeing to Canada or using their parents' clout to get exempted somehow (hmmm, sounds like a President or two I've heard about).

I didn't have much to worry about, actually. I had gotten married as a Senior, and my then-wife was pregnant, so I had that solid bit of protection. And if I moved straight on into grad school, that too would serve as a shield of sorts. I had already signed up to continue on at the UW and had proved myself sufficiently as a serious Senior that I received another scholarship and a part-time Teaching Assistant job. (I worked at Safeway stores too. Yeah, those were the days: a 32-hours-a-week job as grocery clerk, a teaching schedule to fulfill, graduate English classes to wrestle into submission, creative writing that drove me to pen and paper, and a fledgling marriage and pregnant wife to worry about.)

What I really hadn't settled for sure, and this drifted in and out of our lives for a few years, was what career I wanted. Working on a Master's Degree, I was in line to become a college professor and publishing poet, but I quickly learned that academia was--sadly? luckily?--not for me. I disliked the over-zealous, competitive grad students, I found many professors arrogant and mean-spirited and boring, I still got A's but foolishly resented the drudgery of lengthy footnoted papers and such. But, really, it was down to me. Back at Northwestern, I had joined and then quickly dropped out of ROTC; and the same stubborn resistance to order-taking I'd felt then seemed to influence my attitude toward academia. I could do the work and often beat out other grads for honors, but I didn't want the results, or the pressure, or... I don't know.

So I was casting about for what to do next. Safeway store clerk didn't seem the answer. A side note for a moment. One of the customers where I worked as stocker and cashier was an ex-wife of country singer Tex Ritter; she would come in from time to time with their preteen daughter. She looked at me one evening and said, deadpan, "There is no safe way," then walked out. (I've split the store name in her sentence, because I believe that's how she meant the layered pun, with which I belatedly agreed.)

Here's where one's snap, or even considered, decisions can affect a lifetime... I'd have a Master's in Lit by summer 1966, trained to do only one sort of thing, teach Lit or write. So I applied for various teaching jobs, and was offered positions at regional community colleges, even at Pacific Lutheran University (where I would be a sort of guest poet teaching creative writing), but turned them all down--in the case of PLU because I didn't want any religious stuff hanging over my head. (Would I have found things that onerous, really? I was desperate for excuses.)

I applied to New York University's famous film school (one of very few existing back in those distant days) and was offered a slot but no scholarship money. Then-wife and I had already agreed that she would be an at-home Mom, so I would have had to work full-time in NYC as well as go to school. (I was too unsure of costs and my stamina and resolve--basically chicken. Another opportunity wasted.)

I applied to a university in the Sussex area of England where I would supposedly continue on towards a Doctorate in English Lit, imagining that the slightly exotic locale might inspire me onwards--was welcomed too, but passed on the opportunity again, still convinced that the money problems couldn't be overcome. (No Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen environments on our horizon.)

Clearly, I just wasn't brave enough to tackle the challenges each opportunity offered.

Finally, lazily, desultorily, I settled for becoming a writer-editor for the University Relations Office at the UW, initially preparing press releases and alumni news for the campus Alumnus Magazine. And I did all right at the small stuff, and soon was writing full-length magazine pieces, and then I moved on to Seattle Magazine, where... but I've already covered that experience in an earlier posting. (See chapter titled A Whale of a Tale, from May 27 last year.)

The point is this: I finally, for better or worse, was off on a full-time writing career--which would carry me into film work, and then advertising and production, in and out of poetry and plays, and eventually around the world and back again, to become a semi-retired bookseller.

But I coulda been a contender. I had my chance at academia, and campus literary lion, and New York magazine stardom, and successful Hollywood screenwriter on strike, and who-knows-what-all might have been... but passed on them all.

Rightly or wrongly, here I sit, blogging. School days do part-shape one's life.

A Whale of a Tale

In its bid to conquer the world, Starbucks recognizes no boundaries.

Rather than corporate maneuvers, I prefer to follow the moves of Starbucks Entertainment: first the company was compiling its own anthology CDs, then it began producing new ones like the Ray Charles prizewinners (and now it's edging into Hollywood moviemaking). The other day in a CD store I found a new Bob Marley/Wailers disc offering (mostly) unreleased live performances from the band's prime early-Seventies period; and lo and behold, it's courtesy of Starbucks! If the company continues to make such great music available to us listeners, I'll certainly find it easier to forgive the other aggrandizing...

But the CD also persuades me to tell my own Seattle/Starbucks story:

"History is lies told by the living to appease the dead"—that’s one poet’s view. Another, maybe more reasonable opinion holds that memory, biography, even history, at best can only approach the truth, because something or someone is always forgotten or missed in the authorial shaping.

Among those who wrote for the original, edgier version of Seattle Magazine back in the late Sixties, both on staff for a year or so and freelance afterwards, was a fresh-from-grad school writer/editor named Leimbacher—your humble correspondent on this sorta-blog--who authored a couple of dozen articles, columns, and reviews between 1967 and 1970. (I also wrote for the Helix underground paper, Ramparts Magazine, Rolling Stone, Fusion, the University of Washington's Alumni Magazine, and various other media as well.)

Seattle Magazine at that time was a mix of Ivy League snobs, heavy drinkers, marketing rejects, and young writers eager to be gadflies on the rump of Seattle. I covered corrupt politicians, the Black Panthers, oil refinery risks ("Oil on Troubled Waters" was the title), and other hot-button issues as well as the Seattle Repertory Theater, modern-day logging, archeological digs, corporate art buying, and certain other cultural matters.

And, soon freelancing, I became the magazine's specialist in writing about the Rock music scene--I actually turned the Seattle Opera's boss onto the Who's rock opera Tommy; and a couple of years after that, the Opera staged a version of Tommy with Bette Midler in a leading role. (She told me later she HATED the experience!)

Around 1969 I teamed up with friends named Gordon Bowker (another Seattle Mag early regular) and Jerry Baldwin to create a brief, season-of-dreams film company intending to write and produce--for the networks, we foolishly thought, in the era before Public Television--a series of films that would document the Music (and musicians!) of the South. Our pilot project, for which I wrote a quasi-script, introduced the richly varied styles of music to be found across Louisiana--blues, jazz, zydeco, Cajun, gospel, and more.

Anyway, I quixotically named our supposed film company Pequod Productions--a bit of whimsy indicating that the company expected to sink without a trace, as had its namesake, one of the ships in Moby Dick. Our documentary proposals were ignored in New York and L.A., and our Pequod thus sank. I continued on freelancing, and the other guys moved on too, to co-found a fledgling coffee company soon named Starbucks, complete with ship’s-figurehead mermaid as logo and a name also taken from Moby Dick, that of Ahab's First Mate. (Melville's whale novel sure did get around. Forget Howard Schultz's version of history; I know that the lost Pequod helped trigger that coffee company's soon-to-be-famous name.)

By then Gordon was also partner with Terry Heckler (ex-Seattle Mag designer) in a then-still-tiny communications design firm named for the partners. Ad work for K2 Skis and JanSport (the Everett backpack company) quickly showed that the team possessed great conceptual flair and creativity. (Actually, and here’s a scoop, one of the two men later told me that his partner didn’t really believe in the inventive, concept-driven, and often weird approach to marketing that Heckler-Bowker immediately became known for--cutting edge in its time, commonplace these days. Who was who? Should be an easy guess.)

However, as often happens, the other people who worked for H-B continue to go unnamed and forgotten. In ’71 or ‘72, when the firm clearly needed a second writer (because providing creative services for both K2 Skis and brand new client Rainier Beer would be a Herculean task), I was invited to join the team. Then when Bowker left a year or so later, selling his share of the business to Heckler (in order to concentrate on rapidly succeeding Starbucks), I became the only writer and agency producer for the renamed Heckler Associates.

Which means that from 1973 to early 1985, about twelve years, I wrote every print and radio ad for the wildly popular Rainier (many every year, with the parody radio spots heard across the Northwest) and produced every television commercial, writing the scripts for many of them as well. (Gee, folks, that means that the famous Motorcycle, Running Rainiers, Mickey Rooney ads, rock music parodies, and all others came through me, after Bowker had left.) And I provided the same writer/producer services for many other Heckler Associates clients--K2, Keystone Resort, Canada's Eatons Department Stores, etc.

And I'm not the only forgotten player. Where would the "golden era" history of Heckler be without all the support people and associate designers and later writers who joined and usually stayed for years? But I’ll just cite Craig Marocco and Dale Lantz, and--especially--brilliant scattered resident genius Doug Fast, who served as key behind-the-scenes designer for nearly 30 years. So it continues to gall me that in the usual fond remembrances of Rainier Beer advertising, for example, only Bowker and Heckler ever get credited or interviewed.

Owners and bosses and successful moneymen aren’t the only people worthy of historical and biographical attention. Just as the true history of Starbucks goes back further than corporate powerhouse Schulz--"Got a whale of a tale to tell ya, lad, a whale of a tale or two..."--so too the story of Seattle Magazine and its unlikely offshoot Heckler Associates includes tales that have never been told!