It is true in life that timing is everything. After the bad experience with my second LP and the need to let people hear the songs from this LP in the way I wanted them to sound, I set out for LA. I felt it was time for me to be a star. At first LA was a magical place, but after a few months it kicked my butt and left me running back to Phoenix with my tail between my legs.
When I first went to LA I got a break from the owner of Café Concerts in Encino (Lee Magid). He seemed to like to give breaks to stray dogs that showed up in his club. He let me set up on the stage on an afternoon when the club was empty. He had the bartender turn the power and lights on the stage and he sat down to read something. I figured I had only one chance to show him I could play in LA. I played a couple songs, and he looked over the top of the paper at me a couple times. He didn’t look impressed at all, so I thought I'd better step it up a notch or call it quits. I decided to play some of my sad folk songs and not my blues numbers. This turned out to be the right move. After a couple more songs he put the paper down to listen to me. There were some people starting to wander into the club and they were starting to listen to me and clap. Lee said he was booked up at the time but wanted to let me play in his club. He asked me if I would do a fill-in warmup act if anyone canceled, and I said sure. He then asked me if I had a place to stay in LA until I had some steady gigs. I said yes (I lied; I was going to camp out in his parking lot). I hung out for three days before there was opening for me to do a warmup act. I got to be the first act of the night and was only playing four songs. Some band I can't remember played, and then Severin Browne (Jackson Browne's brother) was the headliner. I filled in many times after that and met many other top artists.
Lee found out I was living on his parking lot after a couple days when one of the waitresses noticed me. He told me that I couldn’t live on his parking lot, and that I had to get it together and find some place to live. I didn’t seem to have any luck at finding a place to live, so Lee said he would ask around and see if he could help me out. And he did. Another break happened and I moved into a house in Topanga Canyon with another artist that was starting to make a name for himself in a big way. Things were going great for me now and I was playing a lot of small clubs around. And thanks to my housemate I was hanging out with some stars. I met too many people to name them all. LA was the place to be in the mid 1970’s but soon I found myself falling into the dark side of LA. My music started to sound bad as I partied too much, and my writing came to a complete stop.
It was time for me to leave and go clean up my act. This began the next chapter in my life when I decided to leave LA before I made a complete fool of myself.