Out of Paradise, a Hitchhiker's guide to the World - An autobiography by Gregg Greening

Preface

It’s 1972 - The Vietnam War is all but a bad blotch etched in the depth of the American psyche – Richard Nixon has just ordered the break in of the Watergate complex and Jimi Hendrix has drowned in a pool of his own vomit – But, hey, Kurt Cobain’s only 5 years old – and Dark Side of the Moon has yet to be conceived – And me, I’m standing at the on ramp of California State Highway 99, knapsack on my back, thumb pointing south…Read more

Chapter 1: Out of Paradise

1972 was the longest year in the history of man. It was a leap year and the Coordinated Universal Time committee added 2 leap seconds to the clock. It was a time of bell bottom pants and drive-in movies. A time of vinyl LPs, 8 track tapes and pet rocks. A time of Monty Python, Led Zeppelin and digital watches. It was also a time of war. The 1972 Vietnam draft nominees are about to be called and I’m not about to take any chances...Read more

Chapter 2: Marysville is Nothing but a Wide Spot in the Road

“Where are you going?” the driver asks.

“Uh, Europe?" I say. "Don’t suppose you’re going that far?”

“Europe? That’s ambitious,” he says with a chuckle. “How ‘bout Marysville?”

“Marysville it is.”

The drive south through the Northern California Sacramento River valley is dotted with small towns and farms, mostly farms. Big farms, small farms, dairy farms, cattle farms, pistachio groves (in fact, my brother Gary, a bearded, rodeo supplies dealer following horse shows around western United States with a mouth full of chewing tobacco and a talking parrot on his shoulder has a pistachio grove in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story), tomato patches (in fact my brother Gary and I and a band of his misfit friends used to pick tomatoes in a tomato patch in the Sacramento River valley - but that's another story), almond groves (in fact, my sister Gae, whose husband, Doug, had built the fastest Chevrolet powered AA fuel dragster on Earth has an almond grove in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story), rice paddies (in fact, my good friend Raleigh Singh, rumored, at the time, to be among the 10 richest men in America has the biggest rice paddy in the Sacramento River valley – but that’s another story) – you get the picture – Ah, yes, the Sacramento River valley - Fond memories tying a half dozen or more inner tubes together in a convoy filled with the baddest band of drunken and depraved kids known to man, drifting along its shores, lost in the ebb and flow of the rippling current with a case of Budweiser on the side, a lid of pot and a pack of zigzags in a water tight baggie. Damn, life doesn’t get better than this...Read more

Chapter 3: Headaches and Hospitals - Or By the Time I get to Lompoc

My first destination is actually Lompoc along the California coast about 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara. I'm on my way to see my father, an amateur Jazz musician, professional photographer and high school math teacher turned vice-principal, before setting off on my epic journey to Europe. I can still remember, as a toddler, toddling 'round behind him to smoke infused Jazz clubs around Tucson, Arizona listening to him belting out jazz classics on the trumpet. As you can imagine, I was weaned on Jazz - the likes of Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Harry James, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat and Cannonball Adderley to name a few - little did I know at the time I would actually be working with most of them in years to come...Read more

Chapter 4:

America

My next destination is San Diego to see my grandparents in Pacific Beach before setting off on my mission to the Matterhorn. I bid farewell to my grandmother in Goleta and make my way south down 101 through Santa Barbara and on to Los Angeles. My step-brother, John Balzar, a career journalist with the L. A. Times, acclaimed author of "Yukon Alone" - a compelling account of the Yukon Quest dog sled race across the northern wilderness of Alaska - and future Senior Vice President of Communications with the American Humane Society in Washington, lives somewhere in the maze of towns and suburbs that make up this sprawling metropolis. I manage to locate him and spend the next couple of days recuperating from my bout of headaches, smoking pot, listening to John Denver on the turntable and helping him (my step-brother, not John Denver) shape the kayak he's building from scratch in his garage...Read more

Viva Las Vegas

The last time I was in Las Vegas was a couple of years earlier with my folks on a summer camping and water skiing trip to Lake Meade and the surrounding areas. A couple of years prior to that, I had met this cute little Vegas chickette while on another summer camping trip with my folks through western Canada following Highway 101 back down the Washington, Oregon and Northern California coastlines (we did a lot of camping when I was a kid). We met up somewhere in between while wandering around on this desolate and windswept Northern California beach. She was also on a camping trip in the neighborhood with her folks and was similarly out wandering around on this desolate and windswept Northern California beach. We ask each other what the hell we're both doing out wandering around on this desolate and windswept Northern California beach and after chatting and strolling and telling each other all of our worldly knowledge, we trade addresses and vital statistics and end up staying in touch over the next couple of years. So, here we are two years later, on a summer camping and water skiing trip to Lake Meade and the surrounding areas. I give her a call. I tell her I'm at Lake Meade camping with my folks and invite her to come out skiing with us the next day. I drive into Vegas in my folks' '68 Mustang, pick her up and spend a superlative day skiing and swimming and basking under the scorching Nevada sun together. That evening I take her back to Las Vegas and we end up at the drive-in watching "Woodstock"...Read more

Rocky Mountain High

My next couple of rides take me up I15 to St. George and into Zion National Park with a young couple from LA off on a camping holiday with their 3 young children. We introduce ourselves - There's Richard and Betty Gum - I go, "Whoa, my parents names are Richard and Betty-Anne and our last name is Greening." They tell me they are both school teachers. I say, "Get out of town, my parents are both school teachers". They introduce me to their three children - There's Gary, the oldest, Greg, in the middle and Gail, the youngest. I go, "Shut the fuck up" (not verbatim, but something to that effect) "My older brother and sister's names are Gary and Gae and my name's Gregg." We all shake our heads in amazement...Read more

Kansas City Here I Come

 I spend the rest of the afternoon and into the night cruising down Interstate 70, past farmland after farmland after silo after barn, Country Western radio stations fading in and out of range, towering across Kansas in my regal shotgun perch atop Bob's 18 wheel Kenworth and over the miniature sedans and station wagons we pass along the way...Read more

Chapter 5: New York, New York - Or Joey Gutierez Revisited

"So, where 'bouts you going?" the driver asks.

"New York," I say.

"We've been in New York for the past hour," he counters.

"Er, I dunno. New York. I'm on my way to Europe. Gotta get me a ticket."

With that, he drops me at Grand Central Station and with a menacing shrug and a worrisome grin, bids me, "Good luck."...Read more

Chapter 6: Europe - Now what?

Can’t thank Avi enough as he drops me at the curb under the departures sign of JFK International airport. I sling my pack on my back, make my way inside and, ticket in hand, locate the Icelandic Airway check-in counter...Read more

Chapter 7: Arbeit Macht Frei

Back to Amsterdam, I bid my two compatriot cohorts adios and start hitching my way south toward the nearest Alp.

Not far out of Amsterdam, I get a lift with a middle aged couple on their way home to Scheveningen...Read more

Chapter 8: Matterhorn or Bust

I collect my pay, say so-long to Ahman the Algerian (which he doesn't understand anyway), grab my gear and catch a ride with the hotel shuttle bus out to the nearest intersection heading south toward Austria, the Tyrolean Alps and beyond. I’m let off not far away in a blinding snowstorm in the village of Klias and within minutes of my drop off, my skis, boots, poles, knapsack, shoulder bag and me are neatly stowed aboard a Mercedes-Benz 10 wheeler semi on our way into the soul of Tyrol...Read more

Chapter 9: Smoke on the Water

His name's Claude Nobbs, Assistant Director of the Swiss National Tourist Office in Montreux, part-time music promoter, master chef and founder and organizer of the Montreux Jazz Festival. On our way into Montreux, cruising along the Lake Geneva shoreline in this 1965 metallic silver Aston Martin DB5, we’re all about music – all about jazz and blues and rhythm and blues and about how I used to toddle around the smoke infested jazz clubs in Tucson, Arizona behind my amateur trumpet playing father and about how I was weaned on the likes of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry James, Miles Davis and more, and about all of the jazz, blues and rock legends that he had promoted over the years (Claude, not Miles Davis) - Charles Lloyd, Keith Jarrett, Nina Simone, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Chuck Berry, Santana, Aretha Franklin, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and more, and about the Rolling Stones live performance in Montreux where nobody knows who they are and about how he has to scour the streets to give away free tickets, and about the Montreux Jazz Festival and the upcoming Rose D’Or Festival and about the prospect that I stay on and lend a hand with it all...Read more

Chapter 10: Stella by Starlight - Or The Road Not Taken

With the last of the musos and festival goers either on their way home or on to their next gig and my recording studio dismantled from the convention center and reassembled back on home turf, it’s time for a break.

My folks have planned a European package tour that puts them in Rome next month, so, my girlfriend, Stella, a sweet little English honey I’d met in Montreux and the current love of my life, and I decide to take Claude’s battered up old VW Bug on a road trip to meet up with them along the way...Read more

Chapter 11: Burn

 September, 1973, is a busy month for us back in Montreux. We go about establishing Montreux Sounds Co. Ltd. dedicated to concert promotion throughout Europe – I’m given the task of accounting. Accounting, uh, let me look that up, accounting, what the fuck do I know about accounting? Uh, let me think about that for a minute, absolutely fuck all - and we are also appointed European Artist Relations and Audio Video Planning Division for WEA International – now that’s more like it. Now, WEA International is a recently formed subsidiary of Warner Communications founded, chaired and CEOed by Stephen Jay Ross, parent of Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Music, Electra-Asylum and Atlantic Records. Talk about a true entrepreneur, Stephen Jay Ross, while working a menial job at his father-in-law’s funeral parlor, takes it upon himself to rent out the funeral parlor’s idle limousines after hours and parlays his car rental business along with his New York parking lot concessions he obtained from a couple of gangsters, into the world’s largest entertainment company...Read more

Chapter 12: In a Club with You in 1974 - Or Murder in Mallorca and the Shipwreck Blues

1974, Patricia Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and is later photographed wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. Procedures get underway to impeach Richard Nixon – but he resigns beforehand and Gerald Ford grants him a full pardon anyway. Speed limits are introduced throughout Europe and the US in response to the escalating oil crisis and gold continues its record upward spiral, climbing from its opening price of $106.48 an ounce, reaching a peak of $197 in Paris before closing at $183.77, a record gain of 72.59%. Bet you wished you had invested in gold in 1974. Gasoline is rationed in the Netherlands and the Loch Ness Monster is "photographed" for the first time in Scotland. People magazine sells its first issue featuring Mia Farrow on its cover and Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris. Mount Etna erupts in Sicily and George Foreman TKOs Ken Norton in the second round to take the heavyweight boxing title in Caracas, Venezuela, but loses it in October in the infamous "Rumble in the Jungle" to Mohamed Ali in Zaire...Read more

Chapter 13: It's Only Rock 'N Roll (and Blues and Jazz and Sex and Drugs) - Or 3 Months with Keith Richards

The 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival is just as awesome as the previous one – represented, not only by Jazz, but, of course, Blues, as well as Gospel, Soul, Samba and The Dating Game. That’s right, The Dating Game. The chosen couple of the American ABC TV show, The Dating Game, is presented with an all expense paid ‘date’ to Switzerland and the Montreux Jazz Festival – Christ, they hate each other and I have to be their chaperon – fucking terrific. But they do enjoy the music and joining me in my center stage box seat recording studio with the bank of Sony Umatic ¾” video decks on one side of the room, the bank of Revox 1/4" reel to reel audio decks on the other with me in the middle and spending time in the backstage musicians bar. This is what we heard:...Read more

Chapter 14: Last Ferry to Ibiza

The summer of 1976 I decide to take a trip down to Ibiza again to make sure Syd and Paul haven’t murdered each other and, in the meantime, do some sailing – on holiday this time. I drive my VW hippie camper van down to Barcelona and while waiting in line behind these two drop dead gorgeous French Canadian girls to get a ticket for the ferry, the guy directly in front of them buys the very last remaining ticket available and the Sorry, Sold Out sign gets hung in the window. The two drop dead gorgeous French Canadian girls get all freaky, wondering what the fuck they’re going to do now – and me, too. They’re looking at me, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders. I’m looking at them shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders and say, “Listen, I’ve got a VW hippie camper van that I just drove down from Switzerland in – Wha’da’ya say we all climb aboard and we’ll wing a road trip down the Costa Dorada and beyond, instead? Wha’da’ya say?”...Read more

Chapter 15: Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves and Sputnik - Or Going for the One with Rick Wakeman

Back in Montreux with my new Québécois girlfriend, I am now in the employ of a variety of elements – The Swiss National Tourist Office, Montreux Sounds and WEA International. The production and promotion of The Montreux Jazz Festival and other related business concerning Montreux and its environs and visitors come under the guise of The Swiss National Tourist Office. Independent concert promotion in and out of Montreux is carried out under Montreux Sounds and WEA International business is carried out under WEA International – makes sense...Read more

Chapter 16: A Shrug is as Good as a High Five to Ray Charles

1978 kicks off with the release of "Saturday Night Fever", bolstering disco mania to new heights. Chic produces "Le Freak" on Atlantic Records and goes on to become Warner Communications all time biggest selling recording to date. Over the past couple of years, the Warner group has nearly doubled in size and 1978 sees record revenues of over 600 million dollars. Stephen J. Ross is amazing how he turns his family funeral parlor business into one of, if not the world’s largest entertainment organizations. New Wave and Punk are coming into their own with releases by Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats as well as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, Devo, Blondie, Talking Heads, The Ramones and The Pretenders, all distributed by WEA International. The Stones release "Some Girls", their biggest selling album since "Exile on Main Street", distributed by Atlantic Records and Abba is still churning out hits for Atlantic in The States as well. Van Halen and The Cars both release self titled debut albums on the Warner Bros. and Asylum labels respectively and Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, George Benson and Randy Newman all have new albums out on the Warner label as well. Joe Walsh and Jackson Browne both release new albums on Asylum and the soon to be teen heart throb, Leif Garrett, has his first hit on Atlantic...Read more

Chapter 17: May the Circle be Unbroken - Or Return to Paradise

In January, 1979, we’re back in Cannes for the annual MIDEM convention, this year commemorating The Pointer Sisters who have just released their album "Energy", the very first artists to be signed to Richard Perry’s new Planet label, distributed by Elektra/Asylum records, and have a big hit with their Bruce Springsteen cover, "Fire". Nesuhi is on hand as well, and throws a lavish party for them at his palatial villa up in the hills above Nice...Read more