Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (6 page)

The Mine Shaft

O
ur romance carried back to the mainland. For our first show back in L.A., an episode entitled “Today I Am a Freshman,” Barry and I had more than the usual number of scenes together, and we couldn’t have been happier. I’m sure all eyes were on us; however, we were oblivious. There was so much electricity between us that I felt the hair on my arms stand up every time we got close to each other on the set. I thought about Barry even when I had scenes with other guys. I used to ask myself how I could ever look in eyes other than his liquid blues and feel such love.

We had real feelings for each other, but at our ages—I turned sixteen in August, and he was eighteen a month later—and given our unique situation, our relationship turned out to be more of an on-and-off-again game. That was trying whenever I saw Barry’s new girlfriend of the month; they were always beautiful; but I wasn’t ready to be tied down to a single guy, not even one I liked as much as Barry.

At that point, I was dreaming of my own adventures—and planning one, too. The previous summer, while I had been out on tour, my brothers Mike and Kevin had ventured off to Europe for a seven-month journey. It had started out as Mike’s trip, and my parents persuaded him to take Kevin. When they left, there were four of them—Mike, his friend Milt, Kevin, and his buddy Drew.

Until that time, my brothers had been close for much of their life, though Mike hadn’t seen much of Kevin while he’d been at UCLA. Once they got to Europe, Mike was alarmed when Kevin and Drew just wanted to get drunk every night. Mike and Milt wanted to travel and meet girls. After a month, Milt returned home. He couldn’t take it any longer.

Mike, Kevin, and Drew traveled through Spain and France. Mike smoked pot with the other two, but he drew the line when it came to other drugs. Kevin and Drew wanted speed and various pills. They also talked about doing heroin, but Mike never saw either of them do it.

While he was in Spain, Mike had fallen in love with a German girl named Hella. Missing her and tired of the druggie life in Paris, he drove to northern Germany and visited Hella for the next few months. When he returned to France to check on Kevin, he nearly got into a fight with Drew, who was so drunk he couldn’t walk. Kevin and Conrad were also out of money.

After lending them cash, Mike returned to the United States. A short time later, Kevin and Drew followed—they needed money for plane tickets wired to them. Kevin was different when he got back. The whole family dynamic changed as Kevin came and went without any apparent direction. By contrast, Mike was focused and in love. His girlfriend visited the summer I returned from Hawaii.

I liked Hella immediately. She was cute, blond, and European. She breathed a new and different kind of life into our family. She took a strong interest in me, probably since I was the only girl and offered a fun perspective on my brother. I loved talking to her and listening to her German accent. I opened up about my desire to see the world. I’m sure I sounded very naive, maybe even silly. But Hella understood. Before leaving, she invited me to visit her on my next break in the fall. She promised to show me a good time and take me on a trip.

Finally, in late September, I flew to Germany. Hella picked me up at the airport and drove me to her house in the country. As soon as she got on the autobahn, I thought I was going to die in a car crash. Like everyone else, she drove wildly fast—much faster than the law allowed in Los Angeles. But it proved to be a fitting start to the trip, like a rocket taking me to a new planet.

We stayed at her house for a few days. It was pure 1970s European vacation; every day I saw something that made my eyes bug out, made me feel older and more mature, or both of the above. Everything was free and open. I can’t remember where we were, a summer-resort-like spot, but I saw people walking around naked. But that was merely a warm-up for our next stop.

Hella took me to Amsterdam, where—well, just oh my God. I uttered those words so often that they became meaningless. For the first time in my life, I got drunk. I also went into my first gay bar, where a couple of young men seemed to recognize me but didn’t care as they hurried off to the dance floor. One especially flamboyant and friendly guy wanted my opinion on his nail polish. He also had me smell his perfume. Since I had already gotten past my shock at seeing guys dancing and kissing one another, I snuggled in for a sniff and made friends.

The next day Hella took me to a lesbian bar. I was fascinated—not just with the women but with what I referred to as “the other side” of life. I think it was a fascination with people who were able to be themselves, something I wasn’t able to be even at sixteen. How, I wondered, did these women know who they were? How were they able to figure out what they wanted and liked? Some were gorgeous, too. I don’t know why that struck me, but it did. Several flirted with me.

“They like you,” Hella said, laughing.

I laughed, too. I was having fun.

Was I also intrigued? Yes. It was impossible not to be intrigued in that environment. It was intoxicating. Hella literally had to grab me and pull me out. As I told her, I wanted to stay there all night.

“Really?” she said.

“Just to watch,” I added.

I
returned full of stories about the places I’d been to and the action I’d seen in the bars and on the streets of Amsterdam. I thought I sounded grown up, but it turned out I wasn’t as worldly as I thought. One day on the set I was describing the gay bars to Florence and Barry. I was my usual gushy self, boasting how I had flirted with gay men
and
women. I was touting my acceptance of homosexuals. I think I even said something along the lines of how amazing it was since I had never met anyone who was gay when suddenly Barry interrupted.

“You know Bob is gay, don’t you?” he said.

Florence nodded.

I stared at the two of them, shocked. “What?”

“He’s gay,” said Barry.

I turned to Florence for confirmation. She nodded again.

“I’m not kidding. I’ve tried to get him excited in bed scenes,” she said. “He’s not interested.”

Apparently I was the last one, or rather the only one, on the set who didn’t know about Bob. Eve shrugged when I mentioned it to her. She didn’t care. She gave me her get-over-it look. Susie said she’d found out the previous season. I was incredulous. I don’t know why, but I would still need a few years before I stopped dreaming that the two of us would run off together someday.

I also needed to work through the episode “Greg’s Triangle.” The plot was exactly as it sounds, with a little cheerleading drama concerning Marcia to complicate matters. Basically, Greg had two beautiful girlfriends. One was played by actress Tannis Montgomery, and the other role went to Rita Wilson, who went on to star in movies and marry Tom Hanks. From my perspective, Barry simply enjoyed himself way too much around both of those girls. Even though we were on again and off again, I got jealous. On the set, I felt proprietary. I gave him dirty looks the entire week.

T
hen I was swept up into something new. After returning home from Europe, Mike opened a nightclub. He had talked about it for a couple years, observing, correctly it would turn out, that the West Valley lacked a cool nightspot where you could hear great live music, hang out, drink, and dance. There were numerous places like that in Hollywood and on the Sunset Strip, but none near us.

Like my father, Mike had a knack for coming up with good ideas. Unlike my father, he had better follow-through. Not that my father was irresponsible. It’s just that Mike was tenacious; he stuck with things for a longer time. I have to give credit to my father, though. He urged Mike to pursue his dream; he was even the one who went out and found a space for the club in Calabasas.

Just like that, it seemed, the idea of this nightclub turned into a reality and it took over our lives. Mike was ready, too. He was living at home, but serious about Hella, who came out and stayed with him. Mike had about $7,000 in savings. He borrowed $3,000 from the teachers’ union. My parents lent him $10,000. And I chipped in another $5,000. With that initial sum, he started the Calabasas Mine Shaft.

Along with his friends plus Hella, Mike set about turning an old schoolhouse into a nightclub. It had a great vibe, and it got even better as the work was completed. Then, a month before the opening, the County of Los Angeles required Mike to pave the parking lot in order to get the permits needed for business. Out of money, Mike was desperate. He went to his friend Milt, who promised to invest but then backed out, though he suggested approaching his nephew Craig.

That turned out to be a good call. Although Craig was, at twenty, underage, his father owned a construction company. In exchange for his father paving the parking lot, Mike gave Craig a 20 percent silent partnership in the club. Work was completed, old barn wood was used to build the stage, and my father and Kevin put the finishing touches on the back patio. My mother came up with the name the Mine Shaft; Mike had wanted a Western theme.

Once all those ingredients were in place, Mike hired kids to pass flyers out across the Valley and beyond, from malls to beach parking lots. As a result, the Mine Shaft was well known before the front doors were ever unlocked.

Maybe too well known. On the very first night, two rival motorcycle gangs, the Hell’s Angels and Satan’s Slaves, showed up and a fight broke out in the barroom. One guy’s ear got cut off. The LAPD and the sheriff’s department arrived on the scene, as did several ambulances. It was a hell of a way to say welcome to the neighborhood. But the club was packed from day one; it was an instant success.

The club held 310 people inside and another 100 on the patio, yet my brother estimated nearly 2,000 people filtered through on a typical weekend. Wolfman Jack nearly used it as a location for his
Midnight Special
series. L.A. scene maker Rodney Bingenheimer also frequented the bar, no doubt drawn by the rockers who hung out there, including members of Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, and America.

Mike and Hella, who got married amid the hullabaloo, lived in the back of the club with their friends Tom and Emilie. Mike worked days around the club, cleaning and doing yard work, making repairs, receiving deliveries from vendors, and picking up supplies. Against his better judgment, he gave Kevin a job at the club. My parents pressured him. It turned out to be the beginning of the end of Mike and Kevin’s relationship. Kevin was unreliable; he only showed up at night to drink with his friends and ask for his paycheck.

There were more problems. Six months after the Mine Shaft opened, a rival bar sent over a posse of bouncers to cause trouble. They jumped Mike and beat up Kevin with brass knuckles. Mike then hired his own group of guards, all of whom were black-belt martial-arts fighters. Drugs also made their way into the scene. The smell of pot was prevalent even though it was against the law, and people toked openly in the parking lot.

Mike worried about that, aware that on any given night undercover cops might be at the club. Cocaine was an even bigger concern. Early on, after a tip from some of the bartenders, my brother caught Kevin’s friend Craig dealing coke from the club. Craig didn’t deny it. When Mike ordered him to stop, Craig threw around his 20 percent ownership and friendship with Kevin, and continued to deal. Everyone knew it would end up a problem, and it did.

I
went to the club on weekend nights and enjoyed a glass of wine. It was very European of me—and also against the law, since I was underage. But that was conveniently overlooked. I usually took Carin or other girlfriends of mine. My brother says he was so busy that he didn’t know when I was there. That was probably true. I kept my presence low-key by staying in the back or hiding out in a nook on the patio or losing myself in the crowd on the dance floor.

After I got my driver’s license, I set my sights on getting an Audi. My parents took me to the dealership in Encino. As we walked around the lot, my father emphasized to the salesman that he wanted me, his only daughter, in a car that was extremely safe. He kept saying the word
safe
. As a result, I drove off the lot in a large diesel Mercedes. It was a beautiful car—chocolate brown on the outside, with a beige leather interior—but at the time I was disappointed. I didn’t think it was cool. From the way it drove—and the way I felt driving it—I might as well have been in an eighteen-wheeler.

But a few months later, I got into a wreck. I left the studio, turned right onto Gower from Melrose, pulled out a cigarette, and reached down for a lighter. The next thing I knew, I had plowed into a car that was making a left turn in front of me. I never saw it. On impact, my face slammed into the steering wheel. After the initial shock, I saw that I was covered in blood and my nose was killing me. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw it was huge and swollen.

Then I worried the light blue outfit I had on was ruined. That was the least of my problems, though. An ambulance arrived. And so did Susan Olsen and her mother, who were on their way home. They calmed me down and notified my parents after the ambulance took me to the hospital.

The emergency-room doctor, who must have spoken to my parents on the phone, recommended an immediate operation on my nose. As a result, my parents showed up in the ER carrying several photos of what my nose normally looked like. My mother wanted to make sure the surgeon kept it looking the same. After more discussion, though, my mom suggested we get a second opinion. It was good thinking. It turned out my nose wasn’t broken, and it eventually healed on its own.

Ironically, my accident occurred on a Friday, and that night’s Brady episode was “The Subject Was Noses,” the show in which Marcia, right before the school dance, gets hit in the face by a football. Looking at her throbbing, Jimmy Durante–size proboscis, she shrieks, “Oh, my nose!”

Although that’s one of the more famous
Brady Bunch
episodes, it’s not one of my favorites because of the memories I have of making it. Practically everyone on the set from the prop man to Lloyd Schwartz threw a Nerf football at my face, trying to get it in the perfect spot. Chris Knight was the one whose toss made the final take, and I couldn’t have been happier when the director finally said, “Perfect! Print that one!”