Thanks Bill. Nice of you to stop by.

July 19, 2013
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MEETING A MONSTER and LIBERACE’S TAILOR

May 31, 2013
Events of the Sixties Gazzari's Hollywood Hullabaloo Afterhours Pink Carousel Rag Doll Red Velvet Southern California Stark Naked and the Car Thieves The Sixties THINGS WE LOST IN THE NIGHT Memoir
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Eddie Nash, Jimmy O'Neill, John Lieu, Liberace, North Hollywood, Rag Doll nightclub, Seymour Heller, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves

Stark Naked and the Car Thieves, Rag Doll, 1968

Stark Naked and the Car Thieves – Rag Doll/John Lieu designed suits

By 1968, Stark Naked and the Car Thieves’ home base in LA was the Rag Doll at Lankershim and Victory in the San Fernando Valley. The club owner, Tony Ferra, promised the band a week’s paid vacation for helping his nightclub become the most successful night spot in the Valley and among the most successful in LA. It was going to work out perfectly for Mickey, our bass player’s plans for deer hunting season. Unfortunately, when we got there late in the year, it was the LAST DOLL. Tony had sold the Rag Doll to Eddie Nash, owner of the Seven Seas on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Most people who read the book won’t know who Eddie Nash was, and I don’t explain because at the time, I didn’t realize who Eddie Nash was either.

(For several decades, Adel Nasrallah [Eddie Nash] was the wealthiest and most dangerous drug dealer/gangster operating on the West Coast.
– Allan MacDonell: In Too Deep. LA Weekly, 2 October 2003)

CLICK HERE TO READ A SIX PAGE EXCERPT
(from Chapter 36, THE CAT, THE COS, AND THE FAMILY STONE of Look Back In Love, tales of A Naked Car Thief) Hope you enjoy it.

ALSO INCLUDED IN EXCERPT:
Following our last engagement at the Rag Doll, Seymour Heller, who managed Liberace, was gradually assuming our personal management from Jimmy O’Neill. He’d used his influence to get us a cherry, long term engagement headlining the Flamingo Hotel’s new Skyroom. It was a combination dance and show room, overlooking the Las Vegas Strip at Las Vegas Boulevard at Flamingo Boulevard, the most important crossroads in town. He wanted us to look great and he knew how to make that happen. He arranged for Liberace’s tailor, John Lieu, to help us design new suits (Burgundy ones pictured above). I thought you might like to read about how that fitting went as well.

EXTRAS:

Some other mentions of Eddie Nash:

• The character Rahad Jackson (played by Alfred Molina) in the 1997 movie Boogie Nights is loosely based on Eddie Nash.

• The 2003 movie Wonderland, in which Eric Bogosian played Nash, revolves around the Wonderland murders.

There are many more details about Eddie Nash, born Adel Gharib Nasrallah in Palestine, at his own Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Nash. Included here are the surprising number of well-known night clubs he owned in the LA area.

Cartoon showing Stark Naked and the Car Thieves opening at the Lemon Tree

The Lemon Tree – Honolulu HI 1968

I’ve been doing a lot of research for the Hawaiian chapters that’s now starting to pay off, even though I’ve finished writing these chapters. It mainly will help me go back to the chapters and enrich them.

I’ve had excellent help from a researcher named Alexis who has dug around at the state library for a lot of stuff, including this cool little cartoon that was in the April 1, 1968 Honolulu Advertiser, on the front page of the Perspective section, Hawaii’s Week In Review, Section D.

Another outcome is a chance to contact one of the surviving owners of the Lemon Tree who is also helping me add detail.

These nine weeks in Hawaii are among the most important in the book. An amazing number of highs and lows are compressed into this engagement.