Chapter Three
It wasn’t easy in 1968 to locate an actual native of Los Angeles in Laurel Canyon. The one I found had grown up in West Hollywood below Sunset Strip. As such, Miss Toni Stern was the perfect person to help me acclimate to my new surroundings.
Toni wrote poems with a lyrical sense that invited melodic interpretation. A friend of hers had introduced her to Lester. On one of our trips to L.A., while Gerry had been working on another project, Lester had brought Toni and me together for a songwriting session at which we began a song and a friendship. After the session, Toni took me to a popular raw-food restaurant on Sunset Boulevard called The Source where we sat outside, sipped sun tea, and ate Chinese salad with chopsticks from a wooden bowl. The scene around us was in constant motion. People streamed past in convertibles or cars with all the windows open while androgynously dressed long-haired pedestrians promenaded in white flowing robes, flowery prints, or jeans and brightly colored tie-dyed T-shirts. Toni and I talked about the people on the boulevard, their clothes, the gasoline fumes, life, love, and other things that were not only interesting topics of discussion but excellent ideas for lyrics. When we left The Source we promised to write again the next time I came to L.A.
Toni was the quintessential California girl. Before we learned how unhealthy prolonged exposure to the sun was, Toni would lie on the flat roof of her little house on Kirkwood Drive soaking up rays on an oversized beach towel. She loved the beach. Her lithe brown body was shown off to flawless advantage by a bright red bikini and a long mane of curly hair that flowed past her shoulders like a thousand sunlit rivers. Sometimes she’d impulsively take off in her Alfa Romeo convertible and drive up the coast to Big Sur, her hair blowing behind her all the way. There she enjoyed long walks in the redwood forests with her devoted German shepherd, Arf. As well as animals and nature, Toni loved books, concerts, movies, museums, plays, and other cultural diversions. Back in the city, Arf always waited patiently, without a leash, outside the restaurants Toni frequented until she came out and released him with a command.
Toni’s lyrics had an unmistakable meter. She expressed thoughts and emotions in a rhythm that pulsated under accented words. The lyrics she gave me always made the corresponding music flow into my brain and out my voice and fingers. After years of interpreting Gerry’s shouted suggestions and channeling his unique style of vocal expression to create the melody toward which he was leading me, I found Toni’s more subtle form of guidance somewhat liberating. Her quiet way of suggesting a melodic direction encouraged me to try her ideas and explore more of my own. I still didn’t know if I could write hits without Gerry, but the easy flow between Toni and me was an important step toward reinvigorating my diminished confidence. We often wrote at the piano in my house on Wonderland Avenue, where we were frequently interrupted by my daughters running in and out of their common room.
Our house in New Jersey had contained so many rooms that each of my daughters had had her own bedroom with designer furniture in a slightly different color scheme. Louise’s was avocado green, white, and pink; Sherry’s was avocado green, white, and yellow. Each of their rooms had been decorated with such accoutrements as colorful curtains, matching lamps, and fluffy duvets with stuffed animals lined up in a row.
Our house on Wonderland Avenue had two bedrooms—theirs and mine. I had furnished the place mostly with used furniture bought at discount on Western Avenue. At first I felt a pang of regret about the change in my daughters’ lifestyle, but I was soon reminded of how adaptable children can be. The feeling faded when I saw how quickly new friends and a new environment overcame their initial disappointment at having to live in more modest circumstances. And there were new pleasures, too—not necessarily material.
Some afternoons the three of us climbed up on our roof. We marveled at the ability of the yucca plants above our house to survive with so little water. We counted the century plants near our house, so named because they were said to bloom once in a hundred years. Later we learned that the blooming cycle of a century plant is closer to twenty-five years, but that was still pretty impressive for a plant.
Sometimes I drove Louise and Sherry to Topanga Canyon, where we rented horses and rode up and down the trails as part of a group led by a seasoned trail leader whose pace was reliably followed by our horses no matter what we did with our heels or reins. And when we went to the beach in the winter, the girls especially relished the experience knowing that in New Jersey they would have been slogging through slush.
The first time my girls and I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway, each segment of the California coast seemed to have slightly different flora and fauna than other segments. I didn’t know the word “ecosystem” then, but each of those segments must have been one. The entire coastline is a larger ecosystem that not only comprises the smaller ones but connects land biology with marine life. I was eager to see all of it. We loaded up the car and drove from Laurel Canyon to Malibu, then headed what started out as west and then became north on Highway 1, past Oxnard to Montecito, then Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria. At Pismo Beach we dug in the sand with our bare heels until sunset to find grapefruit-sized clams, then we spent the night. The next day’s drive included San Luis Obispo, Hearst Castle, Morro Bay, Cambria, and other stops just to take in the dramatic views along the coast. But our ultimate destination was Big Sur. Toni had recommended Pfeiffer Beach and Nepenthe as “must-see” places. We spent exquisite time in both locations and then took a walk in the forest east of the highway. Feeling very small in a grove of titanic coastal redwoods, I looked straight up and saw blue and gray sky peeking through the spaces between the clusters of small green needles. I couldn’t help but wish that more people who think they’re the most important thing in the world would come to that forest and walk among those redwoods. Then again, the people most in need of humility would tend to avoid places that might make them feel humble. As we walked to our car, the constantly changing interplay among the ocean, cliffs, and fog, and my happiness in being with Louise and Sherry in that place of incomparable coastal beauty made me never want to leave.
My daughters’ delight in discovering California helped us get through some of the rougher patches. Gerry’s and my prolonged absences from our home in New Jersey followed by our move to two separate homes was difficult for them. Knowing our actions had caused Sherry and Louise pain, I suffered for and with them. I kept remembering, missing, and, by then, idealizing our former life with Gerry. The breakup of our family was one of the most difficult things I had experienced in my relatively short time as an adult. It was all the more painful for me because it echoed my own experience as a child of divorced parents. And yet I remember those first few months in California as a simple, almost idyllic time. For one thing—a very important thing—I was in a better financial position than most divorced women. Enough money was coming in from my share of songwriting royalties that I didn’t have to worry about making the rent, but not so much that I could afford to adopt the lifestyle to which so many people in the music business were praying to become accustomed.
I had experienced a taste of that lifestyle soon after I arrived in L.A. when Lou Adler invited me to a party in Bel Air at the home of John and Michelle Phillips. I wasn’t keen to go, especially not alone, but curiosity trumped reluctance. Following a misunderstanding by my teenage babysitter about when she was supposed to arrive, I drove to Bel Air feeling self-conscious about arriving an hour and a half late. When I saw the line of cars parked the entire length of the street I thought I’d have trouble finding a space, but a valet waved me forward to another attendant who took my Mustang along with my keys, gave me a ticket with a number on it, and directed me to the house. Through the open front door I could see that the large entry hall was crowded with people dressed in what might have been considered rags or costumes had it not been the late sixties. Some of the clothes looked like torn pieces of cloth adorned with sequins, rhinestones, and glitter, but because the outfit in question had been purchased at great expense at one of the trendy stores on the Strip, it was not only okay to wear such an outfit, it was mandatory.
In contrast, I was wearing my standard “when in doubt” uniform: a pair of jeans, black high-heeled boots, and a long-sleeved black cotton T-shirt. It’s okay, I told myself as I scanned the crowd for Lou, my unexceptional outfit will help me disappear into the background more easily. I found the bar, got a glass of carbonated water with ice, and continued looking for Lou. It was so crowded that moving from room to room was not easy. I managed to wriggle behind a couple making out and then I squeezed around a large caped person of indeterminate gender until I found a few inches of space halfway up the stairs where I could look out over the banister. There I stood, more an observer than a participant, sipping my drink and watching the parade of partygoers moving below me in a slow stream that reminded me of eastbound morning traffic on the Garden State Parkway. Above the din of recorded music, with the bass pumping at high volume and the shouted conversations among the guests struggling to be heard over the hubbub, I could almost imagine everyone thinking, I wonder how I look? Am I making a good impression?
Of course the correct answer was, “Darling, no one is looking at you. Everyone is too busy thinking, ‘I wonder how I look? Am I making a good impression?’ ”
I didn’t know what my scene was, but this wasn’t it.