CARL
FRANZONI
2002
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CARL FRANZONI

While researching Vito, Szou, & Franzoni, I encountered the following Franzoni interview.

Last of The Freaks: The Carl Franzoni Story
       (As Told To John Trubee by Carl Franzoni)
http://www.united-mutations.com/f/last_of_the_freaks.htm

  The following interview excerpts concentrate on Carl's Sunset Strip years in the 60's.

Carl: "...and then after I was (in LA) a year and a half, two years, I met Vito. I was in Ben Frank's (coffee shop on Sunset Blvd.) with my business partner Joe, we were having lunch, and across from me in another booth were these three good looking young girls and one of them kept staring at me. As we were leaving the place I walked over to her booth and I said 'I noticed you've been looking at me' and she said 'Yeah, you're cute' and I said 'You're pretty cute yourself--how do I continue this?' --So she gave me an address--she said 'I paint at this studio. If you come there and the door is locked, knock on the door or use a key on the door and someone will come and open the door.'       I did it--I went down there with my business partner--this is '63--I go there and it's a dress shop. Dresses and sculptures are in the windows--this is at Beverly and Laurel...so anyway somebody lets us in, we go down through the shop and go down some stairs, and this place is all lit up with fluorescent lights and it's painted like a Mayan tomb, Mayan things painted on the walls...it's a school for clay models. One whole wall on the left was filled with political satire--words about particular things--capital punishment, something called 'the marriage'--newspapers in the United States (peopled with) guys working for corporations. ...Now Vito had classes there three nights a weeks in this modeling of clay and his wife had this dress shop upstairs. She became, in the 60's, THE person of elegant things for freaks to wear. They all bought their clothes from her and when we went out dancing you would see these bright colored people. Women all wore see-through, no panties, no bras--and that was it. She just wore a dress--you could just look right through her—and that was it--(with) high heels or whatever.
My attire was tights and tops--stuff like that--flowing things. I spent a long time checking Vito and his people out. It took me at least 6 months to just go on a dance floor and even to go out with them. We would go to Ben Frank's--there were huge booths, you had 15 people fitting into one booth--after Vito would have a class we would go out and go to the restaurant. But we started going out to nightclubs and dancing and then go to Ben Frank's. Our 'movement' became really big. I remember coming in there at night after 11 o'clock and movie stars would be sitting at the counter-- Caesar Romero, Sal Mineo.

Carl: We don't have any bands yet--we're dancing to a band about every 2 weeks or so called the Gauchos from Fresno--a top 40 band and it wailed its ass off." "See, right across the street (Sunset Blvd.) from Ben Frank's was a building--Lenny Bruce played in this club--it was a strip club upstairs, then downstairs was another club. It became The Trip. The other club I don't remember its name but that where we used to dance to the Gauchos. The one that Lenny's people vacated became a rock 'n' roll club. It didn't last very long. Then they opened The Trip downstairs.
Someone came to Vito and said 'Listen we know about this band (the Byrds), it's a really good rock 'n' roll band and they need a place to rehearse. Are you interested in letting them rehearse in your studio?' And he said 'Yeah, I let people come in the daytime when there's nobody around and they can rehearse.' So these guys were a little bit different and they said 'We like to rehearse in the evening.' The first time they were supposed to do their rehearsal they never showed up. Vito said 'If you guys pass my muster I got a gig for you.' So they didn't show up.
  So McGuinn, I don't think he was there, but he heard about it. So he decided, well, let's go. The only thing that had happened to them before that was they had taken a station wagon and had gone up to San Francisco and they had played a gig in a club. After the gig they put all their stuff in the station wagon, they parked it somewhere, and somebody took everything--even the tires. Ripped off all their equipment. That was pre-us."
 
John:  "At that time had the Byrds had records out yet?"
Carl:   "No. They were trying to get it together. And in the end they fought so much--in the end they used professionals. Don't ever think they were the Byrds because they used  professionals."
John:  "You mean like Hal Blaine on the drums?"  
Carl:   "Yeah. Whoever. And the tracks--those guys did something like 72 takes to get one track done.      
John:   "Because they were perfectionists?"
Carl:    "No, because they hated each other. (Producer) Dickson was there and they'd have fights with each other and Dickson would hit them...so the Byrds had just gotten ripped off, they were depressed, living in a cold water flat, they had a couple of groupies that would visit them, they were Beverly Hills kids--most of them were from Beverly Hills.
David Crosby was still doing minstrel work, so were the other guys—except Michael was a drummer that was on the beach, Venice beach. They had all worked out of the Troubadour. But they were all depressed guys, they had just lost all their equipment, but the company was gonna buy 'em new stuff, it doesn't matter. All of them were fine musicians, David Crosby used to do solo stuff and I went to a club he worked one night and heard him. You knew they were talented guys; there was no question about their talent. They just didn't like each other. They had so much ego going, so much ego bouncing around those rooms."
John:   "Who were they guys with the biggest egos?"
Carl:    "It was David Crosby, of course. He wasn't the leader. Jim McGuinn was--I call him Jim because I knew him as Jim. He changed his name to Roger for what reason I don't know."
John:  "So it would be McGuinn and Crosby, essentially, fighting all the time?"
Carl:     "Well, I think it was all of them, y'know. Gene Clark seemed to me like he could kick ass, too--and he was from a southern state like Tennessee or somewhere like that so he wasn't gonna take any shit."
So Vito told them that night 'OK, I got a place in mind that I can rent and we'll do a dance. Now, who's hangin' around that place were some freshmen and sophomores from Fairfax High School. They always came to Vito's. By that time I had an apartment upstairs. It was an old theater, it was like on the roof and it was like a penthouse apartment. I painted the place and got new furniture...so when the Byrds came over there Vito gave them a gig. The gig was on Melrose Avenue where all the shit is happening today. Y'know, if you go to LA the street is Melrose--all those clubs and boutiques and restaurants. There was a store in front and you went around in back and you went upstairs and there was like a church scene up there. It was not a real church but somebody had rented it and put in pews. So Vito went up there, checked it out, rented it, we put up posters around, word of mouth--200 people showed up, from those teenagers. The Byrds and another band--I don't know who the other band was. A dollar and a half at the door. Vito made placards all over the walls in that place, he had tacked up 'Stop The War In Vietnam'—now this is '64. Nobody was saying shit like that. Because of us, later on, the Fondas took it up, and Jack Nicholson.
   
 So it was a successful dance, everybody was happy, everybody talked about it. And then the Byrds said, as they're on the stage, 'Tomorrow night we're starting at Ciro's. If any of you can get in the door at Ciro's you're welcome to come." Well, we brought 15 people and we went to the door and they let us in. Walk into this room of Ciro's on Sunset Boulevard--next door today is The Comedy Store--I don't know if we paid at the door, it was a red room, the Byrds weren't on yet, it was a discotheque, a woman playing discotheque music--we got in there, the place was packed. She started playing his black music, soul, nobody got on the dance floor. I said 'what's going on here?'--because everybody in the clubs would get up and dance to whatever in between bands and that's what we did.  But for some reason--I didn't have any partner at the time--no woman partner--I just went on the dance floor, and I started dancing. I did maybe one song, then I saw Vito and Sue and a couple of those dancers come out and about that time you could see the Byrds get onstage and by the fourth song--beautiful dance floor, raised dance floor, big, large, very large--the dance floor was PACKED. The Byrds are up there, they're tuning up, didn't tune up very long, and they got down and that place from then on...the thing about it was that it had lighting that was advantageous for the band and the people. They could SEE each other. You're scoping out somebody on the dance floor and because there's so many people on this dance floor dancing you realized who you were dancing next to. Now everyone of the young movie stars at that time--Sonny & Cher, Sue Lyons--were in that room because they had heard about what had happened. The teenagers couldn't get in there because they were too young. But they had heard from the young kids and the word got around that this was a hot band--'get over there!' There was a merge there--people were dancing with each other—it didn't matter--you just to get out there and do that thing with these guys that played this fantastic, crazy music.
Vito said before he died 'THAT was THE band. The dance band of the 60's was the Byrds. To me it was a revolution. No white band had ever done that before. If it boiled down to it, the Gauchos were really a better band and gave a better rendition and you could go crazy with their music because I remember going to that club--The Trip was downstairs--and dancing on tables you got so fucking frantic. And what are they playing? They played 'La Bamba' like nobody played 'La Bamba'. I heard it with them before I heard Ritchie Valens. 
The Byrds music was comparable--their music for dance was comparable, in a red room...so Vito said to them 'Listen, I want to do a second one in about 2 months. Will you do a second thing for me?' "
John:  "At this point they still don't have records out?"
Carl: "They're on the verge of 'Tambourine Man'. Maybe at their second stint there (Ciro's) you see Dylan showing up and he plays with them.
So he (Vito) put on the second one and he got busted for it."
John: "In that place like a church?"
Carl: "Yeah, same place. The cops busted them. I had left the building. Within 15 minutes of me leaving the building the police came in there and said 'This is an illegal dance. I'm citing you'--gave him a citation, he had to go to court. He pleaded nolo contendre. The judge gave him a suspended sentence and said 'You will not do a teenage dance again in Hollywood.'...but we tried to rent 'Moulin Rouge'--it was at Vine and Sunset Boulevard. There's a place that's been there for years that's a rock'n'roll place. They did 'Queen For Day' (ancient TV show) there and a lot of other things.
So we tried to rent that and the guy accepted Vito's money, 400 bucks, we had some bands in mind--around that time we were starting to dicker with Frank Zappa. Maybe right before Frank Zappa. Well, what happened from Ciro's and this dance at which Vito got busted is the Byrds said to me 'Now that we have an album out we want to go out into the hinterlands and we want to exploit this thing. Do you want to go with us?' So I said 'yeah' so I went to Vito and I told him and Vito said 'I can't go. I got my business and I have to take care of whatever.'

VITO & CARL - COTATI, SONOMA COUNTY, CA

May, 1992 (5 months prior to Vito's death)

 Having access to World-Pacific at night, Dickson began recording the folkies who played at the Troubadour, people such as David Crosby, Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn. After the three singers assembled a backing band (Chris Hillman on bass and Michael Clark on drums) Dickson became their manager and, through his show business friends such as Jack Nicholson and Albert Grossman, he created a grass roots following around the band that was able to catch the attention of radio and record industry heavies.

Acting as the Byrds producer for both Fifth Dimension and the 1970 untitled release, Dickson remained loyal to the members of the group when the Byrds splintered, producing albums for the Flying Burrito Brothers as well as both Gene Clark and Gram Parsons.

Carl Franzoni
AMG Artist ID
P 77556

Year Album Artist Credit
1966  Freak Out!  The Mothers of Invention
2001 Preflyte Sessions The Byrds Liner Notes
2006 Mofo Project/Object [4 CD] Frank Zappa Guest Appearance
2006 Mofo Project/Object Frank Zappa