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WORK TITLE: Revolution’s End
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.brashcyber.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.brashcyber.com/resume.htm * http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/11874-9781510714250-revolutions-end
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and educator. Storytech Literary Consulting, vice president; North Mission Road, Court TV, creator; Jungle Shuffle (animated film), writer, 2014; has taught fiction and nonfiction at numerous colleges and institutes, including University of Wisconsin-Madison, American Film Institute, Pixar Animation Studio, University of Southern California, and California Institute for the Arts, among others; has sold a number of scripts and written for television and radio shows, as well as advertising copy for advertising agencies.
AWARDS:Awards from California Writers Club, for The Company Story; National Audio Theater Festivals, for The One Who Waits; and Stages Theater Festival, for Express Lane; L.A. Press Club National Entertainment Journalism Award; fellowships from National Press Foundation, Edward Albee Foundation, and Dorset Colony House.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Career Opportunities in Writing, Ferguson Pub. (New York, NY), 2006. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Daily Variety, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Back Stage, Writer, Los Angeles Reader, and Entertainment Weekly, among others.
SIDELIGHTS
Brad Schreiber is a Los Angeles-based author, screenwriter, literary consultant, and writing teacher. He is the author of half a dozen works of nonfiction, including Weird Wonders and Bizarre Blunders: The Official Book of Ridiculous Records. In an interview for Write On Online, Schreiber commented on how he is able to balance the various projects and elements of his career: “I’m disciplined about writing, networking, and promoting. I don’t do as much journalism as I used to do. I have the ability to move from one task to the other without losing focus, which I think is the greatest challenge for a lot of writers who work on multiple projects. I don’t take on projects that either do not appeal to me, require large commitments of time without pay or involve people who I do not trust or personally like.”
What Are You Laughing At? and Stop the Show!
Schreiber brings his personal experience as a screenplay writer to his instructional volume What Are You Laughing At? How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories & More, a nuts-and-bolts guide to adding a sense of fun and humor to screenplays and stories. Schreiber begins with a first chapter on comedic structure, examining situations that might bring a laugh–including pain and confusion–and what to watch out for, such as overused motifs and timidity of presentation. The author also offers chapters on screenwriting, fiction and nonfiction writing, and aspects of all story elements, including character, plot, and dialogue. Schreiber additionally includes chapters on humor styles, including satire and black comedy; forms of humor, from the monologue to poetry; and tips on marketing. A Bookwatch contributor noted that these “tips come from an insider’s hand.”
Schreiber offers a gathering of sometimes humorous, sometimes scary, and sometimes just strange tales of things that have gone wrong during stage plays both in the United States and in the United Kingdom in Stop the Show! A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater. This gathering of theatrical bloopers comes from actors, playwrights, directors, and technicians from the nineteenth century to the 2000s. Unscripted onstage battles, incorrect exits and entrances, improvised lines, flops with props, and practical jokes that go badly wrong make up part of the contents of this work. “Theater lovers will get a few chuckles from this book, and perhaps some stories to pass along over cocktails,” commented a Publishers Weekly contributor. Such embarrassing moments are “elegantly retold by Schreiber” and “now preserved between covers for posterity,” commented Bob Gutowski in the online Talkin’ Broadway.
Becoming Jimi Hendrix
In his 2010 biography Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius, written with Steven Roby, Schreiber details the musical life of the iconic rock star and consummate guitarist, with a focus on his early years. As Schreiber noted in an interview with Chris Neal in the online Rockonomix: “Jimi’s life story has been covered in several biographies. Some emphasis has been given to his early career, but the main goal for most authors was to document the familiar years with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In Becoming Jimi Hendrix, however, we show how and where he developed that ‘hellish and robust sound,’ as one reporter called it.”
The authors show how Hendrix was devoted to his guitar as a youth, even sleeping with it. They follow Hendrix from his hardscrabble youth in Seattle to his miserable time in the army, his work as a sideman in numerous bands, and his ultimately developing a unique style in both dress and music. Schreiber and Roby demonstrate how Hendrix was in part influenced by another outsider, Bob Dylan, and how Hendrix’s time spent in Greenwich Village led to his success in greater New York and in London, where Hendrix died in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven. To create this biography, Schreiber and Roby interviewed more than one hundred people who knew Hendrix in the years before he was a rock star. The authors also used court transcripts, letters, unpublished photos, U.S. Army documents, and files from the FBI for this work.
Reviewing Becoming Jimi Hendrix in Booklist, June Sawyers called it an “insightful look at an iconic star.” A Bookwatch reviewer termed it a “key acquisition for any rock music history holding.” Further praise was offered by New York Times Book Review writer David Kirby, who noted, “Hendrix’s career as a superstar has been well chronicled; the more interesting details of how he became one are told here. … While it tells its subject’s story, it also makes a case for the preparation that every originator should go through: follow your passion obsessively, so that when you encounter the person or thing that will change your life, you’ll be ready.”
Revolution's End
Schreiber takes on another iconic counterculture moment in Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA, a new look at the 1974 Patty Hearst kidnapping, focusing on the role of Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque, head of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the radical and militant leftist organization that carried out the abduction. Here Schreiber argues that DeFreeze and the SLA were actually created by the CIA and the California Department of Corrections in an attempt to discredit leftist agitation. As Schreiber has it, DeFreeze, a career criminal, was turned by the CIA and basically allowed to walk out of Soledad prison in California. Thereafter, he took to the streets of Berkeley, infiltrating the Black Panthers initially, and then, with no success to show his handlers, he turned to revolution himself and formed the SLA. Schreiber contends that Hearst actually had a relationship with DeFreeze while he was still in prison, and this led to the kidnapping.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that Revolution’s End offers “conspiracy buffs plenty of red meat, but general readers may find his evidence unconvincing.” Online Dissident Voice contributor Kara Dellacioppa, however, had a higher assessment of the book, calling it a “a careful examination of the relationships among various government intelligence, police and prison agencies that colluded to create a synthetic terror group called the Symbionese Liberation Army.” Lavenda added: “While other researchers of the shadow state have examined the SLA and the Patty Hearst trial in depth such as Paul Krassner and Mae Brussell, Schreiber’s exposure of government involvement in the creation of the SLA is nothing short of explosive.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American History, April, 2001, Gene Santoro, review of Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius, p. 73.
Biography, fall, 2010, David Kirby, review of Becoming Jimi Hendrix, p. 888.
Booklist, September 15, 2010, June Sawyers, review of Becoming Jimi Hendrix, p. 12.
Bookwatch, February, 2005, review of What Are You Laughing At? How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories & More; January, 2011, review of Becoming Jimi Hendrix.
New York Times, October 17, 2010, David Kirby, review of Becoming Jimi Hendrix.
Publishers Weekly, June 20, 2016, review of Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA, p. 147.
ONLINE
Brad Schreiber Home Page, http://www.brashcyber.com (March 5, 2017).
Daily Republic Online, http://www.dailyrepublic.com/ (August 7, 2016), Ryan McCarthy, “Book Claims CIA, State Created SLA.”
Dissident Voice, http://dissidentvoice.org/ (October 28, 2016), Kara Dellacioppa, review of Revolution’s End.
Publishers Weekly Online, http://www.publishersweekly.com/ (September 4, 2006), review of Stop the Show! A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater.
Rockonomix, https://rockonomix.wordpress.com/ (August 27, 2010), Chris Neal, “Q&A: Steven Roby & Brad Schreiber; Becoming Jimi Hendrix.”
SF Weekly, http://www.sfweekly.com/ (September 20, 2016), Bob Calhoun, “Yesterday’s Crimes: LAPD Snitches, CIA Mind Control and the Birth of the SLA.”
Talkin’ Broadway, http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ (March 5, 2017), Bob Gutowski, review of Stop the Show!
Write On Online, http://writeononline.com/ (September 7, 2010), author interview.
Résumé
Books
Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA (Skyhorse)
Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius (Da Capo/Perseus)
Stop the Show!: A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater
(Running Press/Perseus)
What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories and More
(Michael Wiese Prods.)
Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner
(Da Capo/Perseus)
Weird Wonders & Bizarre Blunders: The Official Book of Ridiculous Records
(Simon & Schuster)
Career Opportunities in Writing (foreword) by Jim Parish and Allan Taylor
(Facts on File)
The Cost of Living (monologue)
One on One: The Greatest Men's Monologues for the 21st Century
(Applause)
Now Write! Screenwriting:(contributor)
Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (contributor)
(Tarcher)
Consulting
Vice President, Storytech Literary Consulting
founded by Christopher Vogler
Awards/Honors
Kingman Films KASA Award nomination for The Couch
California Writers Club for The Company Store
National Audio Theatre Festivals for The One Who Waits (NPR), adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story, directed by David Ossman, Firesign Theatre
Stages Theatre Festival, Dallas, TX for Express Lane
L.A. Press Club, National Entertainment Journalism Award for "Athol Fugard: Art Battling Apartheid and AIDS"
Fellowships
National Press Foundation, Washington, D.C.
Edward Albee Foundation, New York, NY
Dorset Colony House, Dorset Theatre Festival, VT
Television
Creator, North Mission Road
(Court TV)
21st Century L.A. Productions, Los Angeles/Jakarta:
One hour pilot Robotica
One hour pilot Rock and Roll Detectives
KCET-T.V., Los Angeles (PBS):
Writer-Producer, L.A. County Holiday Celebration
Writer-Director, Explore with Alan Muir
Writer, On-Air/Special Projects
Consultant, Broadcast Programming
Film
Jungle Shuffle (2014 release)
Arty (in pre-production)
Scripts sold:
Pythagoras (Kevin Connor Prods.)
Boys at War (Kevin Connor Prods.)
Romantech (Michael Wittlin Prods.)
Our Island (Ampersand Prods.)
The Freak (NuAmerica Prods.)
Jonathan Kaplan, Shufflelufigus Prods., LA: Director of Development
Journalism
Daily Variety
Huffington Post
AOL
L.A. Times
Back Stage
The Writer
Written By
Script
L.A. Reader
Ross Reports
Entertainment Today
Black Clock, CalArts
Radio (partial list)
Hollywood Theatre of the Ear: Writer, The Proud Robot, 2000X radio series (NPR) starring Arte Johnson (series awarded Nebula Award, Science Fiction Writers of America)
CBS Radio, Los Angeles:
Radio comedy writer, national Morning Circus service
KCRW-F.M., Santa Monica (NPR): Producer-Head Writer, Planet X News Service
Sci-Fi Radio, Ft. Worth, TX: Adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Sales Pitch (NPR)
Advertising
L.A. Gear, Los Angeles: Sole in-house copywriter: Radio, T.V., print, industrials
Euphoria Productions, Hollywood: Copywriter, radio/TV/print advertising for film
Phone Lines
Fun Lines, L.A.: Writer, national phone line Dial-an-Insult
Theatre (partial list)
Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Mill Valley, CA: Production of Pearl, Workshops with Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, others
Theatre of Note, Los Angeles: Co-founder, productions of Sunshine Sermonette, others
Playwrights' Center of San Francisco: Co-founder, numerous productions
STAGES Theatre Festival, Dallas: Production of Express Lane
Member, Playwrights-Directors Unit, Actors Studio, Los Angeles
Teaching
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Fiction and Nonfiction
MediaBistro, Los Angeles and online: Literary Agents, Humor Writing
American Film Institute: Story Analysis and Creating Characters for TV/Film
Panamerican University, Mexico City: Screenwriting
Pixar Animation Studios, Emeryville, CA: Animation writing
Gotham Writers Workshop, New York City: Humor Writing
Columbia College of Chicago, CBS Studio Center, Studio City: Screenwriting
UCLA Extension Writers' Program: Writing Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction (Beginning and Intermediate)
Screenwriters Expo, Los Angeles: Screenwriting, Story Analysis
California Institute for the Arts: Animation Writing
Masters of Professional Writing Program, USC: TV Writing
Santa Monica College: Playwriting and Story Analysis
Desert Dreams Writers Conference, Scottsdale: The Writer’s Journey
Great American Pitchfest, Los Angeles: Story Analysis, Adapting Material for TV/Film
Pikes Peak Writers' Conference, Colorado Springs, Colorado: Lecture and Consultations
Surrey International Writers' Conference, Vancouver: Lecture and Consultations
Whidbey Island Writers Conference, Washington: Lecture and Consultations
Poetry
New Rhymes About Animals (Simon & Schuster)
New Adventures of Mother Goose (Simon & Schuster)
Yesterday’s Crimes: LAPD Snitches, CIA Mind Control and the Birth of the SLA
Bob CalhounTue Sep 20th, 2016 4:39pmNEWSYesterday's Crimes
Security camera photo of Donald DeFreeze aka Cinque and Patty Hearst robbing the Hibernia Bank on Noriega Street in San Francisco on April 15, 1974. (Images Courtesy of Skyhorse Publishing)
By the end of the 1960s, future Patty Hearst kidnapper and SLA leader Donald DeFreeze aka Cinque was a career criminal with a long rap sheet. He was busted with homemade bombs in both New Jersey and Los Angeles. He was also arrested for stealing cars, possessing stolen guns, kidnapping, shaking down a prostitute, and bank robbery.
Psychiatrists in Ohio recommended that DeFreeze be locked up because his “fascination with firearms and explosives made him dangerous.” A California probation report said that he had “strong schizophrenic potential.”
Despite such damning assessments, when DeFreeze “was convicted or suspected of serious crimes he was placed on probation or charges were dropped,” according to the Los Angeles Times. His luck ran out when he was wounded while trying to rob a Bank of America branch in Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 1969. He was sent to the California state prison in Vacaville for that.
By December 1972 he was transferred to Soledad, where he just walked out an open door, hopped a fence, and headed for Berkeley.
In “American Heiress” (Doubleday, 2016), bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin writes that prison officials “noted DeFreeze’s escape but made virtually no effort to find him.” Toobin doesn’t explain why nobody came looking for DeFreeze, an African-American man with a history of violence and increasingly radical political views.
Author and former Bay Area resident Brad Schreiber, however, offers 260 pages of explanations in his new book, “Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016). With his focus on DeFreeze’s lost years, Schreiber’s book serves as both a supplement and rebuke to Toobin’s more mainstream “American Heiress.”
“Donald DeFreeze’s psychology fascinated me from the start,” Shreiber explains during a recent interview. “I wanted to do justice to who he was, and why he was put in this unique position.”
According to Schreiber, DeFreeze was “a former LAPD informant running guns to set up Black Panthers” and “a behavior modification victim at Vacaville.”
Schreiber describes the California Medical Facility at Vacaville in the 1970s as “a house of horrors.”
“The CIA had funding to set up drug experiments and other coercion against black prisoners specifically,” Schreiber adds. “There was psychosurgery done there.”
2Schreiber explains that most prisoners at Vacaville were not subjected to these extreme treatments but were evaluated there and moved on to another prison. DeFreeze, however, was there for nearly two years.
While at Vacaville, DeFreeze was befriended by Colston Westbrook, an African American linguist with a penchant for macramé outfits and harsh language, who oversaw the Black Cultural Association (BCA) at the prison. Prior to his work in the California prison system, Westbrook worked in Vietnam during the war for Pacific Architects and Engineers, a private contracting firm that provided cover the CIA’s Phoenix program there. According to a May 17, 1974 New York Times article, the Phoenix program “included assassination teams.”
Westbrook’s BCA at Vacaville was a group that would take black prisoners and introduce them to liberal, white college students who could then talk about the black prison experience according to Schreiber.
“This was unheralded in the prison system,” Schreiber says.
Several of the white leftists that visited DeFreeze in Vacaville went on to form the SLA with him. Five of them burned alive with him during a shootout with the LAPD in South Central Los Angeles on May 17, 1974.
“Westbrook was looking for a black prisoner who would cooperate with elements of the California Dept. of Corrections and be the head of a group that could then either infiltrate or discredit the Black Panthers and the rest of the radical left,” Schreiber continues. DeFreeze was “the ideal person” for this role because “he had already been an informant, he was cooperative, and he was willing to do anything to get out of jail.”
Jeffrey Toobin disputes any connection between DeFreeze and counterintelligence operations.
“Donald DeFreeze was a two-bit, incompetent criminal who, in Los Angeles, tried to work off a beef, like a lot of criminals do—by telling the cops what he knew about other criminals,” Toobin says during the interview for last week’s Yesterday’s Crimes. “The idea that he was some sort of secret agent for the government is just absurd.”
DeFreeze “had no particular contacts in the black power movement,” Toobin adds. “All he knew were these students who were coming to commune with him at Vacaville.”
Toobin and Schreiber don’t dispute that DeFreeze was allowed to have sex in trustee trailers with white radical women who came to Vacaville as part of the BCA program. Among these women were future SLA members Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik, who DeFreeze turned to after escaping Soledad.
“They’re the only people who’ve ever been nice to him,” Toobin says.
Schreiber also alleges Patty Hearst also had a relationship with DeFreeze at Vacaville before he stormed her Berkeley apartment and kidnapped her on Feb. 4, 1974, but the evidence for this appears to be mostly from secondary interviews with other prison inmates.
“Those prisoners did not know each other,” Schreiber says, “and those prisoners corroborated Hearst’s visits and Hearst’s close relationship with DeFreeze.”
While the evidence of Hearst visiting Vacaville may be be lacking, DeFreeze’s strange history of getting out of jail outlined in “Revolution’s End” is harder to ignore.
“Those five followers never knew that he was a police agent,” Schreiber says, “and they were destroyed as well.”
Book claims CIA, state created SLA – possible psychosurgery in Vacaville
By Ryan McCarthy From page C6 | August 07, 2016
FAIRFIELD — The CIA and the California Department of Corrections created the Symbionese Liberation Army of the 1970s, contends a new book that also claims it’s possible SLA leader Donald DeFreeze underwent psychosurgery at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
Implementing electrodes into DeFreeze is speculation but not beyond the realm of possibility, author Brad Schreiber writes.
Los Angeles resident Schreiber was interviewed Wednesday night on a national radio show about his book “Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA.”
“I left out even more stuff,” Schreiber told the Daily Republic.
He said some people may see the story as too convoluted to be possible but that his book is based on documents. The late Rep. Leo Ryan, who was killed in Jonestown in 1978, knew of CIA links to the medical facility in Vacaville, Schreiber said.
The author said then-Gov. Ronald Reagan’s administration directed a CIA official to create the Black Cultural Association at the Vacaville facility as part of developing the SLA – “a phony left-wing group” Schreiber said the government used to discredit radicals in the 1970s.
The SLA kidnapped 19-year-old newspaper heiress Hearst in 1974. DeFreeze, along with SLA members, was killed four months later in Los Angeles. Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, spent 22 months in prison for her role in a bank robbery.
Ryan Trapani, CIA spokesman, said Thursday that the agency declined to comment on “Revolution’s End” but noted that extensive congressional investigations during the era established no conspiracy. Specific details contradicted the conspiracy claims, Trapani said.
Schreiber said people skeptical of his account about federal and state involvement in creating the SLA are not naive but haven’t heard the truth.
“If you don’t have access to information, I don’t know that makes you naive at all,” the author said.
He said that what he said happened in the 1970s is no longer possible.
“We don’t have the CIA and the CDC running intelligence operations involving prisoners anymore,” Schreiber said.
The author in his book thanks people that include Angela Bell of the FBI in Washington, D.C., and Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Elliot Daum.
FBI spokeswoman Bell said Wednesday that the agency provided a wanted poster of DeFreeze at Schreiber’s request.
Daum, an attorney in Northern California during the 1970s, said Schreiber asked him about a man who claimed to have information about the Patty Hearst case.
“There were a lot of conspiracy theories going around at the time,” the judge said.
Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University, praised Schreiber’s book and said it provides the kind of information that is often deeply buried.
“People haven’t heard it before,” Miller said. “It’s not the kind of thing we want to believe.”
The professor said some conspiracy theories are ridiculous – but cited Watergate as an example of a genuine conspiracy.
“Revolution’s End,” he said, contrasts with writer Jeffrey Toobin’s new book “American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst.”
“Brad looks at the dark corners,” Miller said. “That makes us uncomfortable.”
Schreiber said Wednesday on the radio program “Coast to Coast A.M.” that he is working with a producer for a 10-part series based on “Revolution’s End.”
Reach Ryan McCarthy at 427-6935 or rmccarthy@dailyrepublic.net.
QUOTE:
Jimi’s life story has been covered in several biographies. Some emphasis has been given to his early career, but the main goal for most authors was to document the familiar years with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In Becoming Jimi Hendrix, however, we show how and where he developed that “hellish and robust sound,” as one reporter called it.
Q&A: Steven Roby & Brad Schreiber; Becoming Jimi Hendrix
August 27, 2010 by Chris Neal of Midway, UT
“Becoming Jimi Hendrix”
When I read in the recent Rolling Stone that Brad Schreiber had just written a book with my friend Steve Roby about the early years of Hendrix, I clicked the BUY button on Amazon and purchased “Becoming Jimi Hendrix”. Then I reached out to Steve to see if the authors would participate in a Rockonomics Q&A. But first, I want to mention that I know Steve Roby from my early days at Rhino Records. We worked on a compilation of Jimi Hendrix’s early recordings as a session player that we had hoped Rhino would license and make available. These recordings showcased Hendrix’s back-up work with Rosa Lee Brooks, Little Richard, The Isley Brothers, etc… Although it was never released, it was a great idea, and really put the evolution of Hendrix’s guitar playing into context.
Q: Steve It seems as though Jimi Hendrix was very determined to be successful, doing whatever it took to get his break. He backed up lots of famous musicians, was there one in particular that championed his playing?
A: King Curtis. When I interviewed Cornell Dupree, he said Curtis gave Jimi two or three songs to spotlight his playing during the regular nightly sets they did in 1966. Jimi would always launch into an Elmore James blues number, and the crowd loved it. Curtis really wanted to be a guitarist, and I gather he liked his unique style.
But like the many other regimented R&B bands he played with, Jimi had to adhere to a strict dress code or face fines, or even termination. It was not uncommon for backing musicians at the time to polish their shoes with Vaseline for the ultimate shine, but more importantly to keep the nagging leader off their backs. While Jimi was with King Curtis, it was a case of showing up at a gig, and not wearing a tuxedo. Curtis not only fired him, but humiliated him on stage in front of his fellow musicians and the audience.
Brad, please see this quote below…
Michael Bloomfield was quoted in Guitar Player, August 1971 Jimi Hendrix
“Sound was his thing. He played the guitar, but he could get any sound in the world through it, and sound was what he was looking for. I think that he was the most advanced. There was no one near him in any way. He had everything: speed, control, and on and on. The cat was the most amazing guitarist I had ever met in my life. I think his work will be studied for years and years.”
Q: In a few sentences what makes Jimi Hendrix so “studied” today?
A: No one would deny Jimi’s unparalleled ability to get a stunning variety of sounds
out of the electric guitar. But he loved all kinds of music and showed a willingness to explore each genre, be it rhythm and blues, rock ballads, acid rock, fusion, jazz and so on. He could listen to a silly pop song and hear the one section that was truly sonically interesting and catalog it in his head.
Q: Steve, as I mentioned I ordered “Becoming Jimi Hendrix” but I’m a huge fan… If I were just an average fan, please tell me why I’d be interested…
A: Jimi’s life story has been covered in several biographies. Some emphasis has been given to his early career, but the main goal for most authors was to document the familiar years with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In Becoming Jimi Hendrix, however, we show how and where he developed that “hellish and robust sound,” as one reporter called it. For example, listen to “Fire,” and that classic R&B riff. Where did that come from?
Success would have never happened for the often-shy guitarist if he’d given up early and returned to Seattle, settling for a job at a brewery or at Boeing, like many of his classmates did. Jimi had this amazing fortitude, and tolerance. He was determined to play his style no matter what others told him to do. He’d rather starve.
We interviewed his friends, lovers, and band mates, and developed this extraordinary story of Jimi’s rocky journey on the R&B circuit, discovery of LSD, and for those that relish information, there’s a complete tour listing and sessionography that spans the various groups he played with from 1962 to 1966. It took about four years of research to compile this book, and I know even the average fan will walk away with a different impression of the Hendrix they thought they knew.
Q: One last question for Brad, who were a few of Jimi’s influences? And was there someone in particular he tried to seek out and perform with while backing bands up?
A: Jimi, during his development in R&B, met and paid careful attention to players like B.B. King, Albert King, Albert Collins and Curtis Mayfield. But what is important to remember is that Jimi loved all kinds of music and utilized the blues of an Elmore James as much as he did the surf guitar of Dick Dale. He was an alchemist of sounds and of all genres.
Click Here For More Information
Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius [Paperback]
QUOTE:
I’m disciplined about writing, networking, and promoting. I don’t do as much journalism as I used to do. I have the ability to move from one task to the other without losing focus, which I think is the greatest challenge for a lot of writers who work on multiple projects. I don’t take on projects that either do not appeal to me, require large commitments of time without pay or involve people who I do not trust or personally like.
Write On Online
Author Q&A: Brad Schreiber, “Becoming Jimi Hendrix”
September 7, 2010
Brad Schreiber is a screenwriter, producer, consultant, and author of six books, including What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories, and More and the newly released Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius, which he wrote with Hendrix-historian Steve Roby. Schreiber created the TV series North Mission Road for CourtTV, based on his book on the LA Coroner, Death in Paradise. For 11 years, he was the VP of Storytech Literary Consulting, founded by Chris Vogler. Schreiber is in discussions to adapt Becoming Jimi Hendrix as both a film and a musical.
Join Schreiber and Roby on Friday, September 17, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave, Los Feliz, for a guitar raffle, reading, PowerPoint presentation of rare Jimi photos, and Q and A.
How did you get involved writing Becoming Jimi Hendrix?
I reviewed Steve Roby’s book Black Gold: The Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix for a weekly in LA, loving the way he followed Jimi’s musical evolution solely through his released and unreleased recordings. We became good friends and I helped him edit an article about Jimi playing with Little Richard. He did a rough draft of the book and that’s when Becoming Jimi Hendrix got going.
What was your process writing the book? How did things work with your co-writer?
Our deal allowed me artistic control. We discussed a few things that did change a little but my draft was about 90 percent there.
How did you decide what to include, how to structure the material, and how to keep track of all your research?
Steve’s draft was already structured to cover 1962-66 with each chapter representing six months. I added flashbacks and flash-forwards only on occasion, when it thematically fit and seemed important. I also added a prologue in Seattle about his childhood and a very free-form epilogue outside of our timeline, from his discovery in the United Kingdom to his death. I have scores of articles, interview transcripts, websites, and notes from all the books Steve lent me on Jimi. It was daunting and the hardest and most rewarding thing I have ever written.
What was your favorite part of working on Becoming Jimi Hendrix? The greatest challenge?
Favorite moments: Discovering Jimi set his guitar on fire for the first time in 1964, not at Monterey Pop, and learning he was arrested at a civil rights demonstration in Nashville in 1962. It was very difficult to take an existing manuscript and adapt it to an agreed-upon, new direction, emphasizing his racial identity, psychology, and the women behind the scenes who helped him survive. I’m exhausted, but happy.
You write in multiple mediums. Which is your favorite and why?
I love all forms of writing. It is the process of collaborating with others to bring the work into being that makes the experience more or less satisfying. Not only was Steve a pleasure, I worked with the single most knowledgable music book editor in New York, in Da Capo’s Ben Schafer, and he was tip top.
How was Becoming Jimi Hendrix different than/similar to your previous writing projects?
Extremely difficult. I usually write alone, so I had to edit a lot, I had more research materials than any other project. I thematically changed the original a great deal. I also had a strong obligation to honor the truth, even if it portrayed a hero of mine in an unflattering light, which it occasionally did. In the end, I am amazed at what Jimi overcame to become a success at all.
How do you balance all the different projects that you work on/the multiple elements of your career?
I’m disciplined about writing, networking, and promoting. I don’t do as much journalism as I used to do. I have the ability to move from one task to the other without losing focus, which I think is the greatest challenge for a lot of writers who work on multiple projects. I don’t take on projects that either do not appeal to me, require large commitments of time without pay or involve people who I do not trust or personally like.
Additional advice for writers?
Act like what you do is valuable and people will treat you that way or they will go away and try to take advantage of another writer.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started writing?
Whether you write for screen, stage or the page, educating yourself about industry contracts and standing up for your rights is an essential part of being a working writer.
QUOTE:
conspiracy buffs plenty of red meat, but general readers may find his evidence unconvincing
Revolution's End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
Publishers Weekly. 263.25 (June 20, 2016): p147.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Revolution's End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
Brad Schreiber. Skyhorse, $24.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-5107-1425-0
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Schreiber (Becoming Jimi Hendrix) claims that Donald DeFreeze, the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)--the radical organization responsible for the sensational 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst--was the creation of both the CIA and the California Department of Corrections, offering conspiracy buffs plenty of red meat, but general readers may find his evidence unconvincing. It is not always evident which sources Schreiber draws on to piece together his theory. He presents Hearst's pre-abduction state of mind about her eventual kidnapper, whom she allegedly visited in prison, without being clear about his basis for doing so. Hearst was not one of the people whom he interviewed for the book, and yet he states that she "suddenly realized that her exciting, secretive, political prisoner love affair [with DeFreeze] was out of control." Elsewhere Schreiber provides thin analysis of sources, accepting uncritically, for example, prisoner Robert Hyde's statement that an officer in the Department of Corrections "ordered" him to recruit inmates to form the SLA. Schreiber credits the SLA with destroying "the credibility of a legitimate progressive movement that protested racism, sexism, the Vietnam War and any form of societal inequality," but the holey research leading up to these claims makes them hard to believe. (Sept.)
QUOTE:
key acquisition for any rock music history holding.
Becoming Jimi Hendrix
The Bookwatch. (Jan. 2011):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
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Becoming Jimi Hendrix
Steven Roby & Brad Schreiber
Da Capo Press
c/o Perseus Books Group
11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
www.perseusbooksgroup.com
9780306619100, $17.95, www.dacapopress.com
Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the untold story of a Music Genius provides the first in-depth story of the formative years of Hendrix, pairing over 20 photos and a complete sessionography with a tour itinerary and survey of Hendrix's early musical influences. Over a hundred interviews with those who knew Hendrix best during those years makes for a key acquisition for any rock music history holding.
QUOTE:
insightful look at an iconic star
Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius
June Sawyers
Booklist. 107.2 (Sept. 15, 2010): p12.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius.
By Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber.
Sept. 2010. 288p. illus. Da Capo, paper, $17.95
(9780306819100). 787.87.
As a boy growing up in Seattle, Jimi Hendrix and his guitar were inseparable. He even slept with it. And when his father objected to the young boy playing left-handed the elder Hendrix called it the devil's work--Jimi learned to play right-handed "upside down without changing the strings." These are the kind of details one learns in Roby and Schreiber's entertaining biography, which follows Hendrix from his troubled childhood in Seattle, his disastrous stint in the army (he refused to conform to regulations), and on to New York and London, where he died under rather mysterious circumstances. From his earliest days as a sideman in various bands, Hendrix was different, creating weird wailing sounds on his guitar, which often got him fired. They also examine his dark side; despite his typically gentle demeanor, Hendrix had a violent streak. When the black community rejected both his music and his flamboyant style of dress, Hendrix spent more time in Greenwich Village, where, inspired by the success of another iconoclast, Bob Dylan, he found acceptance. An insightful look at an iconic star.--June Sawyers
YMS: Hendrix speaks to each new generation of teens, who will want the true story behind the legend. JS.
Sawyers, June
QUOTE:
tips come from an insider's hand
What are You Laughing At?
The Bookwatch. (Feb. 2005):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
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What Are You Laughing At?
Brad Schreiber
Michael Wiese Productions
11288 Ventura Blvd. #621, Studio City, CA 91604
www.mwp.com
0941188833 $19.95 1-800-833-5738
Produce winning comedic screenplays using fiction and nonfiction alike with Brad Schreiber's What Are You Laughing At?: How To Write Funny Screenplays, Stories, & More. Included are over 70 excerpts from top screenwriters and pairing them with writing exercises and details on the differences between writing comedy for TV versus stage. There are eleven modes of comedic dialogue, 13 common problems screenwriters encounter and valuable insights into the rhythm and sound of words in What Are You Laughing At? Brad is himself a L.A. screenwriter, so his tips come from an insider's hand.
Hendrix, Jimi: Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius
David Kirby
Biography. 33.4 (Fall 2010): p888.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/t-biography.aspx
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Hendrix, Jimi Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius. Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2010. 274 pp. $17.95.
"Where did all that sound and fury come from, though? Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, the authors of 'Becoming Jimi Hendrix,' don't impose a view the way a master like Greil Marcus or Peter Guralnick might, but in a brick-on-brick manner they describe the run-up to Hendrix's electrifying appearance on a world stage. Hendrix's career as a superstar has been well chronicled; the more interesting details of how he became one are told here."
David Kirby. NYTBR, Oct. 17, 2010: 13.
Becoming Jimi Hendrix
Gene Santoro
American History. 46.1 (Apr. 2011): p73.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 World History Group, LLC
http://www.historynet.com/magazines/american_history
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Becoming Jimi Hendrix by Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber (Da Capo). The psychedelic guitar god on the chitlin circuit.
Santoro, Gene
QUOTE:
a careful examination of the relationships among various government intelligence, police and prison agencies that colluded to create a synthetic terror group called the Symbionese Liberation Army
While other researchers of the shadow state have examined the SLA and the Patty Hearst trial in depth such as Paul Krassner and Mae Brussell, Schreiber’s exposure of government involvement in the creation of the SLA is nothing short of explosive.
Excavating America’s Forgotten History of Political Repression
A review of Brad Schreiber’s Revolution’s End
by Kara Dellacioppa / October 28th, 2016
America is a Haunted House.
– Peter Levenda, author of Sinister Forces
There is probably no other historical era more misunderstood by Americans than the 1960s and 1970s. From the political assassinations of major political figures and political assassinations of ordinary civil rights and antiwar activists to the emergence of government secret intelligence programs designed to monitor and ultimately crush dissent in the United States, most Americans remain vaguely, if at all, aware of how this hidden history impacts our lives today. And this lack of awareness has unfortunately allowed for these same forces to deal some crushing blows to our “democracy.”
The American public learned of the FBI’s Cointelpro and the CIA’s Operation CHAOS and MKUltra through the Senate Hearings on government intelligence abuses led by Senator Frank Church in 1975 as well as through the work of independent journalists after the break-in of FBI offices in Media Pennsylvania in 1971.1 These government and journalistic investigations brought to light an array of systematic abuses of government authority against Americans, partially illuminating the covert and ruthless attacks against the movements of the era.
The Johnson administration’s failure to deliver on its promises of genuine and meaningful civil rights reforms led to a series of urban riots beginning in Harlem in 1964 and were followed by those in Watts, Detroit and Newark as well as in a host of other cities across the country. These riots terrified the establishment and prompted the government to create programs designed to federalize local police departments rather than address the underlying social problems that gave way to the riots in the first place.2 Through the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965 and the subsequent Omnibus Safe Streets Crime bill signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) was created as a mechanism to launch an unprecedented “War on Crime.”3 The purpose of the LEAA was ostensibly “violence prevention. ” The LEAA funded the creation and training of SWAT teams in Los Angeles in order to destroy the Black Panther Party and other perceived political threats. The LEAA funded “anti-violence” research in prisons and hospitals and worked alongside the CIA’s MK ULTRA program engaging in such delightful activities as drug experimentation, surgical, and chemical lobotomies on prisoners and psychiatric patients. LEAA funds also went into the school system and developed testing of young black children to “predict” whether or not these children would become violent in the future.4 (For more information of how the LEAA funded projects in schools that led to the psychiatric drugging of Black and poor children, please see the work of psychiatrist Peter Breggin).
The other widely misunderstood factor in the development of America’s police state is the relationship between the deepening of America’s involvement in a genocidal enterprise called the Vietnam War and the growth and over-determination of the American National Security State on political life in the US. While it is a fact that the United States lost the Vietnam war, the lessons learned by the military/intelligence establishment were employed in future counter-insurgency campaigns in El Salvador and Iraq and in the United States as well.5
revendThis is where Brad Schreiber’s Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA comes in. Revolution’s End is a careful examination of the relationships among various government intelligence, police and prison agencies that colluded to create a synthetic terror group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Their assassination of Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster and subsequent kidnapping of heiress and closet revolutionary Patricia Campbell Hearst dominated the news cycle for years. While other researchers of the shadow state have examined the SLA and the Patty Hearst trial in depth such as Paul Krassner and Mae Brussell, Schreiber’s exposure of government involvement in the creation of the SLA is nothing short of explosive.
Schreiber was handed a folder full of documents from Dick Russell, the legendary journalist and author of The Man Who Knew Too Much. These documents came from private investigators working on Patricia Hearst’s defense team including the private detective and former Las Vegas police officer Lake Headley who was hired by Dr. L.S. Wolfe, father of slain SLA member Willie Wolfe. Schreiber utilizes the contents of that file to great effect. They include startling facts such as Patti Hearst’s pre-SLA relationship with Donald Defreeze (the petty thief, turned LAPD informant, turned provocateur and fake revolutionary). Using a college friend’s student ID, Hearst was allowed to visit Defreeze in prison at the Vacaville Psychiatric Unit as a part of a project called the Black Cultural Association (BCA). BCA was ostensibly a rehabilitative project but in effect it was a behavior modification program run by Colston Westbrook, a former CIA officer who worked with Pacific Architects and Engineers, a known CIA front company that was responsible for building the prison interrogation centers (PICS) in Vietnam as part of the CIA’s deplorable Phoenix program. The Phoenix program was a covert CIA coordinated program of counter-insurgency/counter-subversion against the South Vietnam’s civilian population.6 And here lies one of Schreiber major achievements, exposing a direct link between the Vietnam pacification program as Phoenix was euphemistically coined, and America’s pacification program at home.
The BCA received many visits from a prison rights group largely associated with another shady “revolutionary” movement of the era The Venceremos Organization, a Maoist group based out of Stanford and at the time led by English Professor H. Bruce Franklin. Venceremos had originally had a Chicano leadership but this leadership was displaced in the wake of the split of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU). BARU included H. Bruce Franklin and Bob Avakian. Having formed the organization after the destruction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Franklin and Avakian split over disagreements about the role of armed struggle in the United States. Venceremos, was, along with the August 7th Guerrilla movement, the bases from which the SLA drew its white cadre. In the last few years before the dissolution of Venceremos, many of its members became involved with the United Prisoners Union (UPU) created by Popeye Jackson.7 It is within these circles that Patti Hearst becomes connected with Vacaville and Defreeze. During the visits to Vacaville, Patty Hearst was able to carry on a sexual relationship with Defreeze with the blessing of Westbrook. As Schreiber tells it, as Defreeze starts to become more unhinged as his treatments continue at the hands of the Vacaville prison authorities, he gradually changes his identity to that of Cinque, the Black revolutionary. He speaks of violence and kidnapping to Hearst. She becomes understandably unnerved and breaks off the relationship with Defreeze. Here according to Schreiber begins the plotting of revenge against Hearst. Importantly, Schreiber points out that Vacaville as a psychiatric hospital was a way station for inmates going on to serve their sentences in other facilities. The vast majority of them were passing through receiving their “treatment” and then moving on. Defreeze, in contrast, stayed at Vacaville for well over a year which was highly unusual. Defreeze’s situation even caught the attention of “thorn in the side of the CIA” Congressman Leo Ryan who investigated Defreeze’s case and the prison authorities use of mind control experiments.
Defreeze, a failed criminal, who couldn’t find consistent work to take care of his children and who had been handled by the forces of the state for a number of years was sent on a mission at the behest of Colston Westbrook, to assassinate the first Black superintendent of a public school district in the United States, Dr. Marcus Foster.
Schreiber points out that the political targeting of Marcus Foster was beyond bizarre. Foster’s assassination has never been fully explained. SLA members Russ Little and Joe Remiro were convicted of the crime but Schreiber reveals that it was Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik along with Cinque (Defreeze) that actually riddled Foster’s body with nine cyanide tipped bullets. Schreiber speculates that the reason that Foster was targeted by Westbrook was that public schools were coming under attack for doing too well a job at educating Black and other minority children. After his election in 1966, Governor Reagan’s California launched a crusade against political activism in schools regarding them (along with the California prisons) as a breeding ground for radicalism.8
Schreiber’s casts Donald Defreeze in a rather compassionate light. A failed criminal, Defreeze like thousands of others, was recruited by the LAPD to become an informant and provocateur. This is the story of thousands of others who are pressured with time in prison for noncooperation. Or if they were in prison, they often were threatened with chemical or physical psychosurgery or indefinite solitary confinement. Yes, many did it for the money but as Schreiber points out Defreeze hardly earned a living from what was paid to him by the LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS).
The one revelation that nearly made me fall out of my chair as I was reading it was the revelation that according to Schreiber’s research, the SLA was created within the California Department of Corrections (CDC) as an interracial prison gang that would spy on the other gangs and provide intelligence to the leadership of the CDC. There were chapters of the prison SLA at San Quentin, Vacaville, and Soledad. Inmate Robert Hyde, a long term prisoner, was pressured to become the head of the prison SLA and he was told to inform on any legal action inmates were planning against the CDC regarding abuses against prisoners. Hyde decided that becoming an informant inside the prison was a death wish so he refused. Eventually Hyde appeals to the FBI for help. At a certain point, Hyde was informed that there was to be an SLA formed outside of the prison to infiltrate dissident groups. Schreiber then discusses the effect of the assassination of George Jackson and the effect that it had on the climate inside the California prison system.
Schreiber provides many other fascinating insights into the formation and eventual destruction of the SLA. He points out that most of the left viewed the SLA with great suspicion, accusing the SLA of having been created by the CIA. So their mission to infiltrate the left was largely a failure. However, in the Bay Area, there were many in the urban poor communities that helped hide them from the police. Schreiber highlights how the SLA was able to artfully manipulate the media into broadcasting their communiques including the demand that William Randolph Hearst fund the People in Need (PIN) program. Hearst spent millions to fund this food distribution program that led to chaotic scenes of distribution workers tossing palettes of food off of truck beds to angry and hungry people.
On the fateful night of May 17th 1974 in a house in South Central Los Angeles, located, as Schreiber points out, a mere 3 miles from the epicenter of the Watts Riots, six SLA members lost their lives. Nancy Ling Perry, Camille Hall, and Patricia Soltysik died from gunshots wounds. Angela Atwood and Willie Wolfe died from smoke inhalation. Defreeze reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Schreiber goes into the serious inconsistencies of the official reports of the SLA deaths. His research shows that, in fact, the SLA members were not given a chance to come out alive. Nancy Ling Perry, it would later be shown, was shot in the back presumably as she was trying to turn herself in. He also found evidence that incendiary/explosive devices were thrown into the house by the LAPD. Given the secret origins of the SLA and Defreeze’s relationship with the LAPD and the CDC, it is very plausible that the LAPD had decided ahead of time that there would be no peaceful resolution to the standoff.
Lastly, Schreiber makes a critical point that the live television broadcast of the police shootout and bombing of the South Central Los Angeles SLA hideout was the introduction of the LAPD SWAT team to America’s night time television viewing audience. The live broadcasting of the LAPD destruction of the SLA could be seen as a terrifying prelude to our current War on Terror.
Revolution’s End is a remarkable book. However, it would have been even better if Schreiber had included some of the documents he cites. More thorough footnoting would have improved it as well. However, footnoting would have made it a less readable book. I hope that Schreiber (if he hasn’t already) made copies of the documents he possesses and donates them to a local university or library. The information age has inundated the public with information/disinformation overload. And due to increasing government restrictions with regard to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), documents like these are becoming more difficult to get your hands on and they are just too precious for any one person to keep to themselves.
Revolution’s End is a highly readable book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in unearthing the secret history of government repression in America. Schreiber had to decide where to go in-depth. His focus on the background of Defreeze and Westbrook are laudable choices as is his focus on the assassination of Dr. Marcus Foster. There are many threads of research that can and should be followed up on including Congressman Leo Ryan and his research into the mind control experiments in prisons, and the post SLA creation New World Liberation Front (NWLF) which according to Schreiber was credited with many more domestic bombings than the Weather Underground. One wonders what shadowy origins the NWLF had. Schreiber’s book is a great contribution to the study of the government repression and the shadow state. Importantly, it has the capacity to inspire people, especially young people, to learn about this history in depth and allow this history to inform their analysis of what is happening today.
QUOTE:
elegantly retold by Schreiber, is now preserved between covers for posterity.
Stop the Show!
A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater
by Brad Schreiber
Book Review by Bob Gutowski
Stop the Show!So here you are, the holidays weighing heavily upon you, looking for a suitable stocking-stuffer or outright gift for a theatre-lover. I happily suggest Brad Schreiber's compilation of awful and wonderful little moments of theatre history, which he's collected from previously printed accounts (and more on that in a moment) and from all four corners of the world, from all kinds of people. In fact, my own night of horror at Doctor Jazz, elegantly retold by Schreiber, is now preserved between covers for posterity.
Do I sound disparaging if I say this is an ideal volume for the bathroom? I thank heaven for books like these, which let you begin with any section or page at random and be entertained. This particular volume comprises chapters entitled "At a Loss for Words," "Who Are You Wearing?," A Drastic Change of Scenery," "Noises Off," "Hard Shoes to Fill," and "Who Asked You?" The book spans hundreds of years of stagecraft, and I feel it would be churlish to spoil any story by previewing it for you, but I will mention the names Mike Nichols, Lunt and Fontanne, Irving Berlin, Debra Monk, Gwen Verdon, and Nicol Williamson to whet your appetite.
My only caveats are those which apply to legions of books today: copy editing and fact checking. An account of a 1960 production of the Passion play The Christus mentions the crucifixion scene, with Schreiber stating that near the actor playing Christ, and "similarly affixed [,] was the character Barabbas." Now, unless David Mamet has run out of overlong British plays to condense and has already begun combining characters in the New Testament as part of his next project (surely the perfect production with which to re-open the Mark Hellinger!), I must respectfully protest. Neither of the thieves who were crucified along with Jesus were Barabbas. As you may know from your catechism (or the four-thirty movie), Barabbas was the criminal who was set free in Christ's stead. I'm willing to bet this error appeared in the original source; it would have been terrific if Schreiber had caught and corrected this mistake before he rewrote the anecdote. By the way, the tale, in part, deals with how unseemly it can be for an actor playing Jesus to be convulsed with laughter while He is supposed to be suffering and dying for the sins of mankind. Object lesson, I'd say!
But I had promised I wouldn't give anything away, and so I'll simply end by recommending this delightful little book, minor blemishes and all. Happy holidays!
QUOTE:
theater lovers will get a few chuckles from this book, and perhaps some stories to pass along over cocktails.
Stop the Show!: A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater
Brad Schreiber, Author Thunder's Mouth Press $15.95 (262p) ISBN 978-1-56025-820-9
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Stop the Show!: A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater
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The first book from Schrieber, a theatre professional and columnist for the LA daily Entertainment Today, has a fun idea that doesn't quite hit its mark. A collection of theater anecdotes meant to be both bizarre and funny, the execution suffers from an overload of voices, inside jokes and lame commentary. At over 250 pages, the short tales-most less than a page each-tend to blend together. And while the better anecdotes feature stars such as Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier, Schrieber has relied on far too many stories from and about virtual unknowns, presumably Schreiber's friends and acquaintances, whose gossipy stories may play well at parties but fall flat on the page. Schrieber's biggest misstep, however, is his own faltering humor; too often, he uses obvious, glib irony to pad out or wrap up tales: after an actor forgets all her lines, another goes to the hospital at intermission, and another falls down a flight of steps on-stage, Schriber quips, ""But other than that, opening night was an utter success."" Though it frustrates, theater lovers will get a few chuckles from this book, and perhaps some stories to pass along over cocktails.
QUOTE:
Hendrix’s career as a superstar has been well chronicled; the more interesting details of how he became one are told here.
while it tells its subject’s story, it also makes a case for the preparation that every originator should go through: follow your passion obsessively, so that when you encounter the person or thing that will change your life, you’ll be ready.
Before He Was Experienced
By DAVID KIRBYOCT. 15, 2010
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In 1967, a music critic called Jimi Hendrix’s music “robust” and “hellish” in the same review, which is like describing God as “outstanding” and “divine.” “Robust” just doesn’t cut it — that adjective might apply to a Sousa march, but not to such sulphurous anthems as “Manic Depression” and “Foxy Lady.”
Hendrix’s music was a hellfire that swept across global culture, alarming the Three Ps (parents, preachers and politicians) and ravishing a youth ready, as youth always is, for something fresh.
Where did all that sound and fury come from, though? Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, the authors of “Becoming Jimi Hendrix,” don’t impose a view the way a master like Greil Marcus or Peter Guralnick might, but in a brick-on-brick manner they describe the run-up to Hendrix’s electrifying appearance on a world stage. Hendrix’s career as a superstar has been well chronicled; the more interesting details of how he became one are told here.
The story begins with a tortured Seattle childhood. Young Jimi took up with the wrong crowd and, after a minor scrape with the law, was given the choice of military service or jail. He soon found himself in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and if he didn’t turn out to be much of a paratrooper (Private Hendrix “requires excessive supervision at all times,” read one report), he used his considerable downtime to indulge his obsession with the guitar.
Photo
Jimi Hendrix at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 1968. Credit © Jeffrey Scales/HSP Archive
How obsessed was he? As a child, he had taken a broom to elementary school and strummed it so constantly that a social worker worried about his mental health. His father found him a discarded ukulele with one string on it, and from there he worked his way through a series of cheap twangers until he could afford a decent instrument.
And he never stopped strumming. After an early discharge from the Army, Hendrix did essentially nothing except play, starve (he claimed to live on orange rinds and tomato paste at one point), learn from the many masters who took to a driven pupil, and cycle in and out of group after group. “Admired, hired, fired” is the apt phrase the authors use for this period of Hendrix’s life; he played rhythm-and-blues covers in Little Richard’s band and many others, but his penchant for “wrong” notes and impromptu solos got him the boot even when his unprofessional conduct didn’t.
Then came the cross-pollination that is always part of artistic evolution. For Melville it was Shakespeare; for Picasso it was African masks. Hendrix’s leap forward came when he discovered Bob Dylan. When “Blonde on Blonde” came out in 1966, Hendrix spent his last food dollars on the album. Among other lessons, Dylan taught him that you don’t have to sing like a choirboy to have hits (in fact, it’s better not to).
Within a year, Hendrix was a star; within four, he was dead of what appears to have been an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and wine. Roby and Schreiber give only a few pages to his mature career; “Becoming Jimi Hendrix” is just that. And while it tells its subject’s story, it also makes a case for the preparation that every originator should go through: follow your passion obsessively, so that when you encounter the person or thing that will change your life, you’ll be ready.
Then add your own ingredient, which, in Hendrix’s case, was volume. After losing an early guitar duel to a rival with a bigger amp, he vowed never to enter the fray with any other than maximum power, and later he said: “I don’t play guitar. I play amplifier.” That’s not true, of course, but when I saw Hendrix at Hunter College in 1968, the first chords of “Purple Haze” fell like artillery shells on an audience whose members, their ears perhaps more attuned to the acoustic caresses of Joan Baez or Peter, Paul and Mary, stared at one another in disbelief and then joy.
BECOMING JIMI HENDRIX
From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius
By Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber
Illustrated. 274 pp. Da Capo Press. Paper, $17.95
David Kirby is the author of “Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
A version of this review appears in print on October 17, 2010, on Page BR13 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Before He Was Experienced. Today's Paper|Subscribe