Samantha Juste Post #3: Been A Long Time Since the Party
This week's final post honoring Samantha comes courtesy of a story shared by Chip Douglas. The parties hosted by Micky and Samantha in the '60s and early '70s are the stuff of legend, and the following anecdote proves no exception. With appearances by Ringo, George Harrison, Harry Nilsson, and more, the grace and class displayed by Samantha in the midst of (and following) such chaotic madness set her head and shoulders above the rest, and remind us why we'll miss her so much.
With thanks to Chip for sharing this after Samantha passed in 2014.
“In the mid 1970s, I was living in Laurel Canyon across the street from my dear friend and singing buddy Henry Diltz. Micky and Samatha Dolenz lived down the road nearby, and I spent quite a lot of time with the two of them, as well as Davy and Linda Jones. The two couples were quite close in those days,and I was frequently invited to various gatherings, parties, dinners, screenings and so forth. There was one late night party I particularly remember.
One early evening, the phone rang, and it was Micky:
“Chip…Ringo, George, and Harry Nilsson are coming over! Could you stop by and bring some pot?”
I said sure, and my then-girlfriend Suzie–who had a set of false front teeth–and I hopped in the car as quick as we could and drove down to Micky’s place. We arrived before the celebrity guests did, but soon enough a couple of limos pulled up, and a small entourage consisting of Ringo, George, Harry, Mal Evans, Jim Keltner, Ravi Shankar’s son, and a couple of ladies and other friends came up the stairs into the house.
Remembering the reason I had been invited in the first place, I quickly rolled and lit up a doobie and handed it to George Harrison.
“Oh, no thank you,” he said.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, I tried passing it to a few others with no luck until it came to Harry, who was a friend of mine, and he said “Sure.”
I myself had a hit or two, and my brain began to go into producer mode. In those days, I carried my cassette recorder with me everywhere, and I thought to myself, I’ve got to find a way to get this gang downstairs into Micky’s recording studio, and get a jam session going.
Meanwhile, Suzie was going about the living room with her little pipe, offering everyone a hit of the dreaded angel dust (PCP). At one point, she offered some to George, who again said, “No thank you,“ this time followed by, “And, if that’s elephant dust, don’t give it to anybody I like.”
Harry Nilsson was always happy to try anything intoxicating that came his way, and he had more than a few hits as the evening progressed. Mal Evans was enjoying the stuff too, and Suzie would also have a little hit herself. For a little while, she and Harry and Mal disappeared to return to my house to get more of the ‘stash.’
Finally, at about 6:00 AM, after hours of watching people wandering about from room to room looking for something to be happening, or someone of interest to hang with, I heard that Ringo had gone downstairs to the studio.
This could be it! I thought, and made straight away for the studio.
There I found Ringo sitting alone at the drum set with sticks in his hands, playing a slow rock beat. I quickly grabbed the bass, turned on the amp, and started playing an R&B like riff to what he was doing. So after about 35 seconds of semi-grooving together without anyone singing any vocal, he abruptly stopped, plopped his sticks on the snare drum, stood up and said with a kind of grunt:
“Well ya can’t really get much going with just bass and drums-” and left the room.
Crap, I thought, that may have been the only chance for a jam at this party. The sun is beginning to come up, and pretty soon people will be leaving.
Imagine my joy, however, when a few minutes later Harry came down the stairs and sat down at the piano. Everyone else soon followed, and the jam session began.
Jim Keltner took to the drums, Ringo grabbed a tambourine, George was on electric guitar, Ravi’s son began strumming away on the acoustic, while attentively watching every move and chord his mentor George would make. I pressed the record button on my cassette recorder and proceeded to ‘get into it’ on the bass.
We all began following Harry and what he was doing. He was certainly well ‘dusted’ by this time, and the things that were coming out of his brain were definitely bizarre. He began playing in unusual time signatures like 9/8 and 7/4, which wasn’t exactly easy for everyone to follow, but nevertheless, the entourage had a strange avant-garde musical unity that seemed to continue.
We played on and on, while other normal folks in Laurel Canyon were by now having coffee and getting ready for work. After a while, Suzie, who had been sitting cross-legged but with her face flat on the rug, abruptly stood up and disappeared up the stairs. I remember thinking that I hoped she was all right, but I didn’t want to deprive the gang of a bass player by running after her to check, so I just kept playing.
After a while Ringo, who had been sitting on the floor in front of one of those large, puffy pillow chair-seats,began to nod out from the monotony and the tambourine sounds grew faint. Harry stopped eventually, too, and spoke:
“Rich, you still with us?”
Ringo with eyes closed and reclining on the pillow, raised the tambourine and jangled it sleepily.
The sounds of the entourage started up again. By this time, the tempo count was something that I’m quite sure no human has ever attempted to play before, and I noticed then that Micky, who had been in the control room of the studio all the while, was nowhere to be seen.
He soon returned and seemed concerned and agitated as he rushed over to me.
“Chip, you’d better get upstairs; Suzie is freaking out up there!”
Yikes,I thought. Now what?
I bolted up the stairs from the studio and Samantha grabbed me by the arm and led me over to the living room couch, which happened to be in a darker part of the room, underneath a small overhanging part of a loft above.
There I found Suzie swinging her head violently from side to side and saying “No, no,no, no, no, no, no, no,” repeatedly. It was a constant unstoppable stream of nos at the rate of approximately two per second. I had no idea what to do except to call out to her and try to snap her out of it. I picked her up in my arms and carried her out the door.
Around 4:30 PM that same day, she was still sleeping it off at my place when the phone rang. It was Samantha.
“Chip, could you come over please? I have something here for you.”
She sounded a bit stern and humorless. I got in the car and drove back down to the Dolenz residence. I walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. Samantha opened it directly and handed me what seemed to be a wad of several Kleenex tissues.
“Here,” she said. “It’s Suzie’s teeth.”
My heart skipped a couple of beats as I said thanks, turned and walked back toward my car.”
