Russell Buddy Helm

The pin spot was on Tim, so I left the stage.

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

1973. The pin spot was on Tim, so I left the stage. Let him finish the encore without me …The tradition had evolved that the rest of the band would leave the stage and I would finish up the encore with just Tim vocalizing and me drumming. He would sing, talk, yodel, in tongues, making up sounds and words, reaching for high notes standing on his tiptoes, in thrall, while I pounded out a vodoo beat. It was a crowd pleaser. But lately, Tim was getting this star attitude.. I let it ride for a while but in Houston, at Liberty Hall, he forgot to introduce the band. The whole night was spent in shadows because they didn’t light the band. I wasn’t going to put up with this second class citizen treatment.  So at the moment in our duet encore that had evolved spontaneously over the months of doing it live, I would drop out and let Tim get the people to clap, then I would come back in and bring everybody up to a frenzy, then applause, standing ovation, etc, etcetera, etcetera…Only tonight I was pissed, so at the moment when I give Tim and the audience a moment together without the drums, I slipped off  the drumset, no one noticed because I was in the dark. I went upstairs to the dressing room. When I entered, the other band members almost puked. “What are you doing up here! He’s still on stage!!!”

I listened and the applause was confused and sporadic. There was silence. Then we heard the clopping of Tim’s platform shoes up the steps. The band stood back, afraid of a real fight. Tim burst into the dressing room, anger flashing from his Irish eyes. “What the….”

“Don’t you EVER do that again.” I interrupted him. It stopped him cold.

“What???” He was angry and completely baffled.

“You forgot to introduce the band.” I said slowly and distinctly.

His eyes lowered but he was still pissed. The others wouldn’t look at him or at me.

Thirteen years later, Tim’s widow tracked me down, and gave me bootleg recordings that Warners was distributing. She asked me, in my capacity as a film executive at Lorimar, to get some money for the widow and the orphan. I figured I could do that. I read the newspaper articles from across Europe; ‘Tim Buckley, Godfather of New Wave, etc…’ I listened to the tapes, and I heard Tim’s voice.

“…and on drums, my good friend from Coconut Grove,  Mr. Buddy Helm….” Then with some anger and threat in his voice he added,

“Let me hear some RESPECT for my people!” The crowd dutifully cheered.

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

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Ric O’Berry’s Dolphin Project

7.

“Jim, wake up. You’re under arrest”

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s history”

Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

1969. “Jim, wake up. You’re under arrest.” I said to the sleeping keg of dynamite called Nasty Neiman by those who know, in the back of the school bus spreadeagled on a cot in front of the cases of drums and band equipment. I ducked out of the way after nudging him a little. He woke up swinging. The Asylum school bus was parked in Peacock Park down at the bottom of Macfarlane Avenue, overlooking Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove. The old park had plenty of banyan trees, grass, hippies and Miami police. Animal had pulled the bus up and opened the door to let the morning bay breeze clear out the smell we had acquired driving through the everglades. The yellow school bus had also acquired a black spray painted biker insignia above the windshield. A Miami police officer strolled up to the open door of the bus and looked in. Animal was a huge biker, with missing front teeth, a beard, a dog collar, and ‘Animal’ tattooed across his forearm that was wider than my thighs.

“Is that thing loaded?” The police officer asked nervously, pointing to the double barreled shotgun behind the driver’s seat.

“Yeah.”  Animal said flatly.

“Break it open. Let me see what its loaded with.” The young officer said with nervy control, his hand slid toward his own side arm. Animal got up from behind the steering wheel, pulled the shotgun around, and leveled it at the officer at the bottom of the steps. The young guy went white. Animal cracked open the gun and pulled out two pumpkin balls; lead balls the size of a large marble. Going in made a big hole, coming out, quite a mess. Animal had shot one round off to scare off the dogs last night. But also, we had come through easy rider country and long hairs had best beware of the redneck tradition of, ‘ Get the hippie’.

When the cop had regained control of his bowels, he said,
“I have to arrest  you. That is against the law to have a loaded firearm in the city limits of Miami…I’m sorry, one of these hippies could go crazy and grab it, then I’d have to shoot someone. I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“I bet you wouldn’t.” muttered Animal.

“Do you have registration for that weapon?” The officer struggled to regain control of the situation.

“It’s not mine. It’s his.” Animal jerked a thumb toward the back of the bus.

“Then get him out here.” The cop said, getting pissed off at the insouciance. Normally, the  Coconut Grove cops were pretty cool, but we didn’t know that. We had just arrived.

I explained things to Jim as a crowd of hippies gathered around our bus wanting to know what was going on. Soon a paddy wagon showed up. Jim took his everloving time getting dressed. He looked out the bus window at the growing crowd and decided to play it to the hilt. He put on his American Indian outfit, knee high moccasins, headband, braids, shades, bone necklace. When he finally stepped out of the bus, all the hippies in the park cheered, he waved at them and smiled heroically receiving their Marlboro cigarette donations like he was the great Indian warrior being taken off to the white man’s jail.

“Fuck the pigs!” All the kids were screaming.

Christian had already found two beautiful young women who owned an apartment duplex in the grove. They were fans of the Bethlehem Asylum, so they gladly escorted me down to Dade County jail to bail Jim out. His gun registration for his father’s shotgun was in order, only it was from Pinellas Park. It took a few minutes for the desk sargeant to do the paper work. He was smiling with a wry look, “You’re here for Cochise?”

“Yes, Sir.” I said and pushed the girls forward. They were very pretty and graciously signed for the bail. The sargeant appreciated that. On the other side of the bars, we could see cells holding various guys of doubtful character. Jim was hanging on the bars of his cell like Mighty Joe Young, yelling at the guards,
“Get me out of here, you filthy screws!” He was quoting James Cagney. They loved it. He had a plate of food in his cell, hand delivered to the rock star. He was getting room service in Dade County jail.

I forked over the one hundred and fifty dollars my mother had given me for ’emergencies’ when we had left St. Pete. Jim was a free man, the two girls giggled and cuddled up to him like he was a gangster. The cops waved good bye to the girls as we left. Everyone had a good laugh. Jim was famous. I was lighter in the hip by a yard and a half.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s history”

Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

www.buddyhelm.com

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s Story” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

1975. Big Mama Thornton and Howlin’ Wolf lived in Santa Cruz and had a group of local players that would back them up around town. They were getting up there but could still rock the house. The local band leader was Joe Garcia, and he hired me to play with his blues band in a small Mexican bar in Gilroy. We really packed the house after word got out that it was a cooking band. I would have done the Howlin’ Wolf gig with him, but I was off my game.  I would settle into a moody funk in between sets, sitting in my car behind the dusty bar in the Santa Cruz foot hills. The farm worker patrons would come out and just look at me, offer me a beer, but I just thanked them politely and sat quietly until the next set. I wasn’t in a party mood after Tim’s death. Joe explained to them that I had lost my music partner and they nodded respectfully. They were very sweet and actually showed concern after they heard us play. I could still play like a rock star.

Bruce was a Santa Cruz psychotherapist with a reputation like a rock star in the therapy world. He was head clinician at the San Jose State psychological counseling center where Katherine ran the office. The rest of her time was spent painting and taking care of me. Bruce’s staff handled exotic cases and the mundane. He assembled a group of thinkers up in Los Gatos; astronauts talking about their experiences in space, psychic experiments in orbit, yogi’s, meditation teachers, realized masters from various studies but there were no drummers, so they were kind of square. Drumming was not on the screen yet, in terms of being a healing, integrating tool. It was discrimination based on fear. People are sensitive about their sense of rhythm, worried that they may not even have one. They feel vulnerable when exhibiting their supposed lack of rhythm. This is a cultural mindset that we have inherited from the Dark Ages of Europe. One reason it was called the Dark Age was because people were not allowed to dance and feel their sense of organic rhythm. The Roman church expunged sacred tribal grooves from European society. As a result, those of us from those tribes have a hole in our souls. Today we are realizing what is missing and we are struggling to fill that emptiness. If you have a heart, you have rhythm. There might be some trauma in the way of experiencing your own grooves, but you can still drum. There are no wrong notes in this process. Each note is a clue as to how each of us perceives and interacts with the world. Just move the stuff in the personality that interferes with your soul playing directly. It’s easy if you have the right help. Just lay back the groove. This is a great art form in Rhythm and Blues; laying back the downbeat means being ‘late’ to the metronome concept of timekeeping. We are brainwashed into being on time, being correct. That is where a great deal of our stress comes from. Where there is stress, there can be illness. Telling our system to relax, using the secret of laying back the groove, gives us permission to release in a mechanical, physical manner, not just intellectual. Using the intellect to relax is like trying to fix your car while you are driving it. Drumming in a laid back fashion, with the beat gradually slowing down, moves our attention out of the survival mind and into a larger sense of universal awareness and objectivity. This was my discovery when I came back to the drum as a healing tool instead of just a musical instrument. The Downbeat is the cornerstone of this protocol for healing and most people don’t understand how simple that concept is. The Downbeat is the beginning note of any repeated rhythmical phrase. For healing drums, we play that note simply with our full hand, using palm and fingers, in the middle of the djembe drumhead; hitting it quickly, not hard, rising up to release the vibrational tone to move through our bodies. if we lose the repeating downbeat, we just pick it up again and get back on the groove.This is the great healing lesson for recovery. Everybody loses the Downbeat, but you can get back on it again and keep going. No blame, no shame. We are instinctively drawn to the drum as a way to heal but we often think that we have to be trained by an expert. The problem with expert drum teachers is that many of them are traumatized by their teaches and transfer that anxiety on to their own students. It shows up in their playing. You can tell if you like a drummer just by how their playing feels to you. When I first sat down at a drumset with Tim Buckley, it took him all of about three minutes to realize that I was his drummer for the rest of his life. It worked for him. There was no tension, or fear, just flow and confidence. That is the one area of my life that I am a master. I owe it to my teachers and the people who have given me love, but what I give when I drum is a service. It is not me showing off and asserting myself as a great performer. That happens on it’s own when I can get out of my own way.  My first drum teacher was a woman and that had a great impact on how I drum. I have great technique and can read difficult music, and perform all of the rudimental drumming that is essential to be a competent professional drummer, but Ailleen Trafford also gave me the meditation tools as well as all the medals for excellence.  She was the best therapist I have ever had.

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s Tale” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

www.buddyhelm.com

Yuri Geller sat in a car at the stoplight on Grand Avenue

excerpt “Drummer’s History” by Russell Buddy Helm

© 2013 all rights reserved

1970. Yuri Geller was in a car at the stoplight on Grand Avenue in the heart of Coconut Grove. He watched a young man carrying a large piece of window pane glass across the street in front of their car.

“Who is that?” Yuri asked his local driver who had picked him up at the airport. Yuri  was performing his psychic show at the Coconut Grove Playhouse that night.

“That’s the drummer for the Bethlehem Asylum.”

This seemed  ….strange.

As a drummer I have always looked for meaning in ritual. It is a part of drumming; to help convey the unknowable. The Asylum and Coconut Grove defined the new concept of sacred drumming in our culture. There had been no definition before this.

Across from the stoplight on the far left corner, where the road splits  into Main Highway, sits the Drug store/coffee shop in downtown Coconut Grove.  It looked like Schwabb’s drug store and coffee shop in Hollywood, California, where Lana Turner was discovered. The waitresses in the Coconut Grove version had no illusions about being discovered by Cecil B. Demille. They were more matronly. This was where the fine art of being seen was developed.

Coconut Grove was a confluence of grooves from all over the Caribbean, South, North  and Central America, Europe,  Africa. The way New Orleans was the gathering spot for the birthplace of the Blues.

Miami had not quite become the musical nexus but it did soon enough. Deep in the heart of this dangerous mix of peoples and cultures, hidden down in the jungle south of the city, was the fetid breeding ground for the deeper energies of our new world culture, the grooves, the magic, the soul of survival. There were places I could not go because I was white. I looked down the barrel of a forty five automatic pistol sticking out of the passenger  window of a sixty five rustoleum colored GTO on Saturday night on Calle Ocho,

“Goddam hippie!” They sped off.

Christian could go where I was not allowed. He was black enough. Usually a piano player, even a jazz piano player would not be interested in sacred drumming, but Christian was more than a jazz keyboardist. He was a magic man. His childhood in India in the Brahmin caste molded him for life, as well as whatever else he had seen. He brought back information to me about what the secret drumming rites were  about. It showed up in the Bethlehem Asylum’s music.

excerpt “Drummer’s History” by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

www.buddyhelm.com

Loggins and Messina were boogieing on stage

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm

all rights reserved copyright 2013

1973. Loggins and Messina were boogieing on stage at an outdoor Stanford University concert in Palo Alto, California. This was the end of our tour after Europe. And this was where I was saying goodbye to the rock n roll world. We had just finished playing, so me and C.C. Collins, Tim’s old friend and percussionist were just cruising around. A hippie girl with grannie dress and frizzy hair came up to Carter C. C. Collins. He was dressed in Black Panther fatigues, black beret, a stern look on his black face.

“Are you Buddy Helm?” She asked him innocently.

He almost blanched. He struggled not to be offended. He silently pointed to me. I had to laugh. That’s the first time CC Collins was ever mistaken for a white drummer. She smiled, “I’m a friend of Katherine’s. She said you were going to be here, so I’d like to welcome you to our neighborhood, and also invite you to our Boulder Creek house for a party and also invite you to come to our work to see what we are doing at Stanford Research Institute.”

S R I; the place where every top secret wacked out super expensive spy gadget was being designed by genius inventors working under top secret conditions.

I had to bring my passport to SRI. After they cleared me, I was escorted up to my new friend’s office. He was a middle aged, long haired, post hippie wearing a sport coat, flowered shirt and a tie.. On my way into his area, I passed a few open doors, some showing rooms with big screens displaying maps of the world, being looked at by generals in uniform with lots of ribbons on their chests. This was Dr. Strangelove land. This was nineteen seventy five. There were no desk top computers, there were only mainframes, no laptops, no internet, except for the department of defense, Bank of America,  ARCO, etc… and a few universities that had government defense contracts. This was the dark ages. James sat me down at a terminal,

“We want you to learn how to use our system. It will teach you..Just ask questions…here is a classified clearance for  you….now see what you can do.” He walked away.

I have never been so high as when I got on line and actually talked to people around the world, live, by typing in messages. This was something that no one had done. It did not exist in the regular world. This was science fiction but real life. I started to get the hang of how this behemoth worked, I asked for the sponsors of SRI and got a very interesting list; Vandenberg Missile  Research Facility caught my eye. I started to poke around.

“Who is on this computer?” scrolled across the top of the screen. James came back in a few minutes, “That’s pretty good.” he said nervously. “Vandenberg, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said excitedly, “You have data storage in Langley  and in Tucson.” His eyes widened, “How did you figure that out?” It’s right behind you on the wall, the map with all the pins and ribbons on it.”

But the thing that I picked up on that was really outrageous, was something I did not even know that I had picked up on. It was their Psychic Research division on the other side of the wall where I was sitting. Yuri Geller was involved. I was soaking up their top secret project in the other room, sometimes referred to as Stargate.  I didn’t know that I was an empath. But, the worldwide computer network was the coolest thing I had ever seen.  Another dimension opened up for me.

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm

all rights reserved copyright 2013

Hugh Downs donated the first dolphin.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013

all rights reserved

Marchetti and his radiant earth mother wife and their five month old baby lived on a clean and simple vintage all wooden twenty two foot cabin cruiser fishing boat. The kind that shrimpers have been using in the shallow Florida waters for many decades. Their home was tied up to the new dock, inside the dolphin lagoon out on Key Biscayne. Marchetti was a hippie new breed of old salt. He had trekked across India with a set of tabla drums. His pen and ink drawings of angel sprites hung on a place of honor on Banana’s wall. He talked to the dolphin, in their language. The dolphin hung out with us a little. Mostly he cruised around the big lagoon. This was the biggest body of water he had been in for many years. His dorsal fin was bent to the side in a grotesque droop from swimming in a circle in a small tank for God knows how long.  He would come over to the side of the boat when Marchetti got the mackerel pieces prepared; jammed with a big dolphin vitamin into the section of cut fish.

When Marchetti would thump on the side of the boat, he would cruise over but stay away. Ric had explained that in order for the dolphin to hunt in the wild, he was going to have to relearn how to keep his nose down, to get sonar signals back from schools of fish in front of him, instead of raising his head to beg for food from a human. Marchetti tossed it out there and let him go get it himself.

The baby talked a lot with the dolphin. They chattered back and forth with each other, the baby just strong enough to hold himself up against the bulkhead, the dolphin up close to the hull; they were connected. Some of their gurgling and chirps sounded like the vocal improvisations Tim Buckley was doing on stage in his trance singing, but with the huge sound of the drums driving him. Here it was quiet. The breeze through the pines sounded like whispering violins in a French movie..

Marchetti was telling a story about crewing on a huge sailboat crossing the South Atlantic. In the middle of the night while he was on watch, with the huge star filled sky overhead, sitting up the bowsprit with the foam dancing under his feet as the prow cut through dark water, he found himself having a conversation with himself. “What is your name? What do you do?…” He looked down and saw a dolphin riding the bow wave looking up at him with a twinkle in it’s eye. “He was talking to me. Asking me questions..”

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm ©2013

all rights reserved

www.buddyhelm.com

Helmone

Mother tottered back from the mailbox, She looked at me sternly; the school teacher look.

“Why am I getting a letter from the CIA?”

My heart jumped as we stood in the Clearwater sunshine on our driveway in tract home heaven. I had come back from L.A. to try and reconnect to my family and a life outside of ….that.

“I asked them for information about dad.”

She blew up. She never blew up. “He wasn’t in the CIA!”

“He was in the OSS.”

“No he wasn’t!”

“You were introduced to him by another OSS officer in Philadelphia during the War, the fiance of your college roomate.. You told me that.” I pleaded, “At the Ritz Carlton. He was in his white Navy off…”

“Never mind.” she snapped.

1998. The Stella Adler acting coach said, “Now do it without the Anger”

I had no idea I was angry.

Tim Buckley paid Phil Ochs’ rent

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

Phil Ochs’ rent was paid by Tim Buckley as well as rent for the guy that murdered Tim. We had just finished a short tour in Houston. I left Tim and the rest of the band at LAX and flew up to Santa Cruz.  “See you later, babe.” he said to me with a wave. We were all in good spirits. Art Institute teachers came down to our ranch by Santa Cruz for a picnic at our victory garden. Tony, head of the art department at San Jose State picked me up at the airport. Tim had gotten rave reviews. They referred to his band members by name. He was respected as a musician, composer, arranger, bandleader and unique singer. Next week we would meet in Aspen for a fun week of playing, then we would start principal photography on the feature movie, ‘Bound for Glory’, the Woodie Guthrie story with Tim in the lead and me playing a minor role as Cisco Pike. We had been in Wally Heider’s and the Record Plant in L.A. cutting new tracks for the upcoming album. I was getting song co writing credit with Tim. That meant a lot to me. It’s great being a drummer, but seldom do drummers get recognition for what they bring to a song’s arrangement. So as a result, they get no royalties.

The horses were curiously watching Katherine set up red checkered picnic tables along the corral, everyone was encouraged to pull their own ear of corn from the victory garden. There was every vegetable, fresh and ready to eat, including okra in honor of Mizz Hudson back down in Macon, Georgia.

“What happens if the bubble pops?” Chris, the sculpture/conceptual performance teacher at San Francisco Art Institute asked thoughtfully.

“There is no bubble.” I answered in what I thought were pragmatic tones, “It is just more work.”

In less than an hour, everything changed. Katherine said Joe was on the line.

“Did you give Tim any drugs in Houston?” he asked.

“Of course not. Why? What happened?”

“He’s in a coma. Nobody knows why. They dropped his body off at the  apartment in Venice. Judy called the paramedics, They don’t know…”

“Who dropped his body off?”

“JR and his girlfriend…” An acquaintance of Tim’s from the days before I was around. Jeff, the bass player had dropped him off there when he couldn’t reach his wife at home, assuming she might be there. I didn’t really like the guy. He claimed to be an ethnomusicologist from UCLA. He was a flake. Tim had paid his rent on several occasions as well as the rent for a troubled Phil Ochs.

Tim was so healthy that his heart refused to stop beating even though he was mysteriously brain dead. In the years that I had worked with him, I never saw him do drugs. His four octave vocal range was the most critical part of his creativity and he protected it. He had a beer when there were a few days off. He was a professional and I respected that. His old pals were not so sober. The news stories claimed he had overdosed and he had committed suicide. I knew it was murder and so did Joe. The news stories were being manipulated.

JR had disappeared. We staked out his place, finally locating him on Muscle Beach in Venice. The police considered it an overdose/ suicide. Joe insisted that it was murder. There was a trial. The culprit got one year in prison for third degree manslaughter. The judgement was a legal maneuver orchestrated by the lawyers calling it, ‘Death by misadventure’ a term that enabled the ex manager to collect on a hefty insurance policy that we had been paying the premiums on for years with the ex manager as beneficiary. He had power of attorney over all of Tim’s affairs and had bought the insurance policy without anyone’s knowledge.

Judy called me, close to tears. “They’re taking everything…the tapes, all the masters. They’re taking everything right out of the house!”

I got a strange call decades later at our store in Santa Monica from the old road manager that had been fired for stealing money from us. “You want to know how Tim was killed?” he offered. “A combination of orange juice, vodka, valium and cleaning fluid.” He hung up and I never heard from him again.

excerpt “Drummer’s History” Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

www.buddyhelm.com