034 - Everybody's Got a Story: James David Weinstock
Making "monkey juice" with an aging hippie in the middle of the woods
“Did I tell you about Baba Ram Dass?”
I’m standing in the living room-slash-bedroom-slash-open concept kitchen of James David Weinstock, who has made it clear I can call him James, Jim, or Jimmy… but under no circumstances am I to call him “Late for Dinner” — and I wouldn’t dare.
I’m in a beautiful fake town called Pine Mountain Club in Southwest Kern County, California, roughly 60 miles south of Bakersfield and 6,000 feet up in the Los Padres National Forest. Jim’s home is one of about 2,000 housing units developed in the early 1970s as a planned residential mountain community by a multi-national, multi-industry conglomerate called Tenneco that, despite being 85 years old and pulling in nearly $20 billion in yearly revenue, I had never heard of until reading PMC’s Wikipedia page.
Jewlie1 had booked us a self-fashioned “weekend writers retreat” via AirBnb in this delightfully strange and romantically remote place as a stopover on our way up to San Francisco. After a leisurely brunch of pancakes and stewed eggs we took a break from our laptops to explore the Great Outdoors, driving out to the Eagle Pass Ridge trail for an afternoon hike with Buscemi (the dog) along the San Andreas fault.
Navigating back to our car without a trail map or cell service, of course we wandered off course and ended up in someone’s backyard. That someone happened to be James David Weinstock, who upon seeing Buscemi, immediately invited us into his home to meet his own canine companion, a similar-looking Chihuahua mix named Joy.
That’s how we got to talkin’ — and if not for a standing dinner date with my cousin and her boyfriend that night in Oakland, we’d still be talkin’.
I can’t tell you precisely how or why Jim ended up a resident of Pine Mountain Club — our meandering hour-plus conversation revealed only that he had been in the house for 30 years, which makes me think the life-sized, cardboard cutout of Mariners-era Ken Griffey, Jr. inexplicably standing up in the corner might very well have been a housewarming gift — but I can walk you partway down the path (no less meandering than our convo) that took Jim from dancing on television as a teenager in the suburbs of Philadelphia to rocking out in front of “30,000 screaming Muslims” (his words) in the jungles of Java.
This is James David Weinstock’s story, in his own words — condensed and edited in places for clarity, and in other places left purposefully in its ambling, verbatim glory:
HIS ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL YEARS
Growing up I was a dancer. Rock n’ roll dancing. Did you ever hear of Jerry Blavat? The Geator with the Heater? The Boss with the Hot Sauce? He had a TV show in Philadelphia called The Discophonic Scene — “Don’t dare leave this screen, it’s the Discophonic Scene!” — which replaced Dick Clark’s American Bandstand when Clark went out to California. Dick Clark was important, but he wasn’t cool. Jerry Blavat was the epitome of cool.
I danced on The Discophonic Scene with a girl that I met — I used to go to record hops every weekend. Friday it was at Chez Vous, Saturdays was at The Cathedral, and Sunday it was Wagner’s. Chez Vous was in West Philadelphia, 69th and Market. The problem was back in those days, the Jews and Italians were like the Sharks and the Jets, so I couldn’t use my real name when I went out to Chez Vous. I called myself “Terry Burns,” because he was the coolest gentile going to Cheltenham High School.
Chez Vous was a fabulous place to be dancing, but it was actually somewhat dangerous going out there, because to get back from West Philadelphia to Elkins Park where I lived, you had to take the subway. And getting on the subway late at night, dressed up to be dancing, we’d get chased by people trying to mug us. I don’t understand people who try to hurt other people, so I don’t understand where they’re coming from…
The Cathedral was in Roxborough, and that’s where I met Sandy — the girl I was dancing with on TV. I’ve never said to this to anybody else, but I lost my virginity to Sandy. She was Italian, and I would have continued with her, and we would have kept going, but when I would come to pick her up, I realized her mom was sleeping with a guy who was not her husband. Italians couldn’t get a divorce — they’d throw you out of the church! So that broke me and Sandy up, because how was I going to live my life going forward with that situation? How was I going to introduce that to my mom?
HOW HIS DAD CAME TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED WITH MARILYN MONROE
My dad was a first generation American, the oldest of ten kids. He had to quit high school to support his younger brothers and sisters. He made his living pushing a pushcart down the streets of Philadelphia selling Polish sausages. He went from that, all on his own, to becoming the most successful printer on the east coast (American Business Systems).
Back in those days, every dollar you earned over $100,000 was subject to a 91% tax. So my dad, like anybody with a brain in their head, anything over $100,000 he gave to charity. And the charity he was giving to was Israel, so that’s where that picture of my dad with Marilyn Monroe came from.
HOW TO MAKE MONKEY JUICE
Can I make you something? I was going to make you Monkey Juice. It’s a version of coffee. I drink several cups a day. I mix hazelnut creamer and almond milk, heat it up, and then I put in a spoonful of Folgers coffee. But then I add the key ingredient: Nutella. It’s just delicious — and especially good for you, too. I’ll make you a cup.
HOW RAM DASS ENDED THE LAOTIAN CIVL WAR
Before the Vietnam War, there was the Laotian War. The French owned Laos, and they were sending their pilots to drop napalm over the forest out there where the locals were growing… whatever it is you have to grow to make opium.
Baba Ram Dass opened a discothèque in Laos while this war was going on, and he got the five hottest girls he could import from France. Of course, with the five hottest French girls, all the French pilots were coming into his discothèque, where he was spiking all the drinks with LSD… and you can’t drop bombs on people when you’re stoned on LSD.
So that ended the Laotian War, and it moved over to Vietnam.
HOW HE JOINED AN INDONESIAN ROCK BAND
Two of those French girls from the discotheque got stranded. One of them, Eve, married Shane (Sweeney). Shane was playing rock and roll in Australia when he was a youngster, and at the age of 14 his parents sent him to England, but he jumped ship in Spain and just wandered around, so he had experiences like none of us had. He was the first hippie to move into Bali after Indonesia opened.
The other girl, T-Bone, she married Django who played guitar in the band that I later joined called Prophecy.
We had a modern house in Java, but it had no electricity. The guy whose father invented ionization — Olof Arrhenius — he brought the electricity into the facility, so the band could set up with their electric instruments. Every night we weren’t performing on stage, we were in the backroom of that house smoking pot and playing music. And when you play with each other every single night, night after night, you get to know the other guys, you know the next note they’re going to hit, so you don’t even have to think about what you’re doing; you just do it. We loved each other.
The drummer was Spunky (Peter Bash), the lead guitarist was… he became a problem; he’s a shrink now. Sky Walker, he was the number two guitar player. The number three guitar player was Django, and the horn player was the best horn player alive — you can look him up on the Internet, he later played with the Hamburg Philharmonic — Ward Ashman.
The band couldn’t go to North America because Django had gotten in trouble for sending hashish back to the States, but they got huge in Indonesia! I’m telling you, we were playing and dancing in front of 30,000 screaming Muslims! We played all the big clubs and festivals.
THE SHAGGY DOG STORY OF HIS ‘EPIPHANY’ IN INDIA
We had a manager who was not cut from the same cloth as we were. He was in it for the money. When he became very difficult to hang with, we all went down to Bali. In Bali I was the king, because I was one of the first tourists to arrive in Bali in the late 60s. So when we had to go to Bali because of the problems we were having, the band all went to Sanur and they were playing at one of those bed and breakfasts where they got free food and a place to stay as long as they played music. But all I had to do was go to Kuta, where the mayor loved me to pieces because I had given his daughter English lessons.
So I’m walking up from the beach wearing my Prophecy outfit, which Django had put together — all orange with billowing sleeves — and this girl comes up to me and grabs me from the elbow from behind and drags me up the beach. Today there are big hotels there, but back in those days, there was only one structure in Lebak, and it was a Hindu temple.
Hindu temples are a stage with two structures underneath: one for women to change clothes and one for men to change clothes. The girl who dragged me up the beach, her name was Suzie, she had one of those rooms. And so she dragged me into that room, and all we did was make love. If you were to look up in the Encyclopedia of Making Love, that was the night that… it was just ridiculous what we were doing.
Well, one night Flo came up to where I was (Flo was the name we had for Olof Arrhenius) — I don’t know how he knew where we were — but he came up to that Hindu temple and took out some LSD and said, “This is a gift from Mick Jagger. Could I give him some of the cocaine in exchange for it?” This is the cocaine Django purchased from that Chinese pharmacy in Singapore for six bucks a gram. Of course I could give him some of the cocaine for it!
For some reason, Suzie’s visa expired in Bali, and they were going to deport her to Penang. So I left Prophecy to join her there, so that’s why you’re not going to see my name on the Internet associated with Prophecy. I was with them for a few months, I don’t even remember how long, but I put together a reunion in the Year 2000 for the band, and I found all the guys — I found Sky, I found Ward, and Spunky — and they came up here to the house.
Anyway, Suzie told me to come to the bus terminal in George Town in Penang, and I’m waiting for Suzie but she’s not showing up. However I see another girl at the bus terminal who caught my eye, she was absolutely gorgeous. She asked me how to get to Batu Ferringhi, and I told her how to get there. And I went up there with her!
Her name was Lynn, and when we got on the bus to Batu Ferringhi, I asked her “How would you like to go to Kathmandu instead?” And she said, “Yeah, but I gotta go back and get my camera.” I said, “If you back, you’re going to chicken out.” She didn’t go back, and — can I show you pictures?
Ok so we get to Nepal, but we don’t stay in Kathmandu. You go outside of Kathmandu and there’s a Buddhist village there, do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like a Buddhist temple in the mountain there, and it’s full of monkeys. And you can go right up and climb to the top of it… and uh…
Oh, there was a whole bunch of us, and all we did was smoke hashish all day long. Hashish in India is very inexpensive and very good, and we’re all just playing music and getting stoned all day long. But we had to get our visa renewed, so we had to back in to Kathmandu, and I don’t know what she did but did something to get us thrown out of the country.
Anyway, we work our way down to Goa, and we’re there with about twenty Canadians. And clearly all these Canadians are doing are buying hashish and sending it back to Canada. There’s this one night where we’re all supposed to go to this place, but the night before Lynn is playing guitar with this guy who is better looking than me and he plays guitar better than me, and I’m feeling a little queasy about the whole thing. But the next day we go in there — and I don’t know how it was that I had it — but I took some acid, and as we’re going over to where the music is playing, there was like a hill. And that’s unusual in a beach town in India. And as we’re going up this hill I remember, “If we get to this hill we’ll know that we’re halfway home.”
This was 1970 maybe, and the Beatles were just coming out, and of course we’re stoned as stoned can be, and people were leaving. Lynn left. And I couldn’t leave because of the acid. Finally when I could leave, I got up, and I started going down the steps… and — I know it’s a hallucination — but there’s a wall of brambles. That’s the Lord telling me, “Turn around!” But when I turn around, there’s a wall of Doberman Pinchers barking and growling at me. I know that’s an illusion, too, but that’s what I’m seeing. Of the two, I’m going to the brambles! So I tore myself through the brambles, and I’m bleeding — not really, but I felt like I was bleeding — and I go down and there’s another bunch of brambles. And when I get back to where that hill is and I know I’m halfway home, I looked up an the moon was directly over my head. I mean the moon was right there, I was on LSD, and I felt like I was being hugged by the Universe.
I don’t know if this is true but when I tell the story I say, I peed in my pants, and I haven’t looked back.
That was the epiphany.
HIS PARTING WORDS OF WISDOM
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