“Hey all you people in the 

streets, I mean those of you who speak about freedom.  You say you’re getting

together but I don’t see how.  You meet stormy weather with no one around who has

a peace of mind.”  

Michael was always telling us about all of these New York “heavies” who were

convinced that he was going to be the next Jim Morrison, or the next Elvis or even

more bizarre, the next Carpenters (Who would be his Karen?).  He thoroughly

convinced us that the band had a fair shot at making it, taking many business trips to

New York,(while we humbly kept the home fires burning) to consult with recording

agents and famous people. He had a producer who succeeded in getting him signed

with Metro-Media. He would tell us that the best way to support the band was to be

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positive with each other and send a thought force to his success in New York.  A

thought force involved group visualization, directed to a person at the time they

needed support. We would all sit together holding hands, with eyes closed, and send 

visions or prayers of success for the band.  (I would picture Michael on the cover of

Rolling Stone, for instance, with the headline, “New Rock Messiah.”)  He came back

from one trip very angry with us; apparently we had sent a pretty raggedy thought

force to New York.  Not only did it mess up his efforts in the studio, but it apparently

caused a minor power failure in Brooklyn.  We had to be more careful.

He had a powerful stage presence, almost frightening. He was awkward in his

movements; kind of spastic, like Joe Cocker, he couldn’t dance, but yet you found

yourself mesmerized by his riveting dramatic, sudden movements.  I wonder if the

awe with which I perceived him then was part of my brainwashed headset.  I

remember a visitor saying that he was just a “cheap imitation of Mick Jagger,” 

Heresy such as this would be incomprehensible. How could she not see the blazing

truth of Michael’s admittedly Jaggeresque presentation.   To us it was “Electric

Christland,” with Michael making the big sacrifice for humanity, through rock and roll. 

He was channeling God through the illusion of rock music.  We could barely tolerate

any one who witnessed this miracle and couldn’t see it for what it was.

One time the community rented Carnegie Hall for a Spirit in Flesh performance. 

Apparently God was not paying attention when He allowed Michael’s gold velvet

pants, to completely split all the way down the front and up the back of the crotch.  

Michael ran backstage and made one of the guys give him his pants right then and

there, leaving him humiliated, standing there in his underwear.

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His singing was a series of almost painful primal heaves.  He seemed so heroic. 

Throwing his holy pearls before the unenlightened swine. It’s hard to know what we

were perceiving, the projection of our fanaticism or actual talent.  I couldn’t say how

good he was or how mesmerized I was by the group enchantment. Michael said that

the only threat of an obstacle to the band’s achieving worldwide success were lack of

commitment and drive on the part of the band backing him up and the same lack

from the community to back up the band.  If we could all be one with Michael in his

commitment to bringing the  Krishna revelation to humankind we would save the

world.  He told us that because the music was channeling the highest forces of the

universe, just by being open to the music, could take us on an out-of body trip into 

‘the force.’ “ He was constantly threatening, harassing, driving the band to back him

up. 

Although few people have any way of sorting the truth from the hype, it was clear that

one reason his venture failed was because no one outside of the community could

stand working with him.  To scream, to deride verbally, to kick and to threaten his

musicians and sound man was an every day affair.  But outsiders had no reason to

put up with him.  

This contrast between what we would take and what others would take made us look

ridiculous and also pointed to the fact that our reactions had been curtailed to support

Michael, no matter what he did.  Clearly there were two sets of standards between

the two worlds.  Also, he was more reticent to abuse outsiders.  This attitude spread

throughout the community.  

We would give others much more courtesy than each other in the name of public

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relations.  But our kindness was more based on fear than anything else.  I suppose

that this is not so different a dynamic than in a nuclear family. 

Michael strutted about boasting of his great success and carrying on like a famous

star whether or not he had in fact  made it.  He was attracted to the glamour and the

power- the very idea of being rich and famous.  In other words his ego was getting

out of control.  He became more and more overindulgent and sloppy.  However, the

band continued to be the obsession of the community.  He formed a promotion group

that he alluded to as  “the girls” to travel around the country promoting the band-

these were the prettiest girls in the community.  They rarely related to those of us in

the lower ranks without acting like it was some kind of sacrifice, making no pretenses

of looking down their noses at us less desirables.

Roy and I had become friends.  He told me about his Thanksgiving, 1970.  The

community was given a leave of absence to go home for Thanksgiving.  “My brother

David and I hadn’t been home since we first came to the community two months

earlier.  The prospect of bringing the new high that we had acquired through our

intense involvement with the Brotherhood to the heathen of New York, our old

stomping grounds, was quite exciting.  We had found and were living the truth—and

now we would have the opportunity to dramatically illumine that truth to our lost

brothers and sisters.  We were bursting with all of this revelation:  We were going to 

knock New York City’s socks off.  

“We embarked upon our crusade in Long Island, where we would have the

opportunity to confront  David’s old friends; the younger ones who were still into

drugs.  We “knew” that they were subconsciously waiting for us.  We were confident

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that deep within, they felt a calling, and we were it.  So it wasn’t surprising that when

we met their deaf ears and blind eyes that we were “forced” to confront them.  Like

Jesus, overturning the tables of the greedy shop people in the carnal marketplace,

we made our stand:  When we went to Rick’s house, a mixed group of 19 to 22 year

olds were milling around in their smoky haze, listening to such “meaningless” bands

as The Moody Blues and the The Grateful Dead; bands that we arrogantly judged as

technically proficient and psuedo-spiritual.  It was soon obvious that the group

dynamic was suffering from a woeful lack of directness and focus:  they failed to

make eye contact with each other and were not really communicating at all. 

Everyone was in their own separate drug-induced fantasies, painfully cut off from the

richness of brotherhood that we knew they could have if they only gave our message

a chance.  We were indignant at the numbness and the apathy we witnessed in our

lost friends.  We had to awaken them, they were sinking quickly into the quicksand of

negativity that was so pervasive, without purpose, vision, or meaning.  

“We knew about group dynamics and this one was definitely scattered, a waste of

human potential, a sleepy shamble.  We decided to heroically redirect the focus of

this spiritually inept group. We preached fervently and loudly at different people about

the emptiness of their lives, interrupting conversations; having no need to show

respect for their  meaningless ramblings.  

“These people were too confused and intimidated by our intense confronting style to

express any resentments they  may have felt about our obnoxiously righteous

“teachings”.  But to us then, our crazy, brainwashed  friends could not see how

important and urgent that they leave the city and come live an exemplary life with us. 

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Maybe they weren’t really our friends after all.  With broken hearts which turned to 

humble acceptance, that the line is cast but few bite, we resigned ourselves to

raiding the refrigerator.  After a season of   brown rice, oatmeal, (sometimes

exotically complimented by butter) and  squash, a full refrigerator was one of the

decadent luxuries from ages past that we still craved.

“After our bodies were stuffed and our spiritual intensity was diluted from the carnal

indulgence, we were disappointed, and rode the subway to my step-mother’s house

where we were staying.

“ After six weeks of doing practically nothing but confronting people, being direct and

“on,” we just couldn’t get over the way that people were not looking at each other. 

“It might have been ten years that we had been gone, returning to earth to find that

people had not changed.  The contrast  was overwhelming.  It illumined how

unconnected people really are.  Not able to contain my righteous indignation any

longer, I said loudly enough for everyone in the subway car to hear, “Why aren’t

people looking at each other?”  A heavy set black woman  gave me a quick, worried

glance from across the subway car seeming to wonder to what extreme this long

haired bearded  hippie would go to in his quest for the oneness of deep eye contact. 

New York City has always had more than its share of bums, pick-pockets and

religious fanatics on the lunatic fringe.  David and I after only two months in

Massachusetts had now joined ranks with the latter group.

“We thought we were supposed to  bring the reality that we were living in Warwick

out in to the world, maintaining the  high  that we had from the intimacy we shared at

home.  We constantly talked to each other about being open, about Earth Changes,

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reincarnation, and most importantly, Spirit in Flesh and the Brotherhood, believing we

would elevate the consciousness of people around us, and by doing that we would

somehow stay high.

On the bus back to Massachusetts,  I  decided to push my commitment to a new

(bizarre) extreme.  I  spontaneously and courageously launched into an impassioned

reading  from our new-age bible, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.  A

stunned busload of people sat in embarrassed silence as I droned on with fury.  But

they were quickly rescued from my unsolicited sermon by the bus driver’s swift

announcement over the P.A. that it was against company policy to allow religious

proselytizing on the bus.  I bitterly wished the drive, “A Merry Christmas to you too!”

“In the Summer of ‘71 Metromedia had been delaying the much anticipated,(by us)

release of the Spirit in Flesh album. Peter Noonan, the man who had signed the band

one year earlier, and was really the only executive at Metromedia that believed in the

commercial potential of  S.I.F.,  had left the label to work for Berry Gordy at Motown.  

After Noonan’s departure, Metro-media’s attitude toward S.I.F. was not only non-

supportive, but intensely hostile. This was actually a common reaction to this

seriously preachy,  loudly awkward and technically erratic band: You either “believed”

as Peter Noonan did, or you hated, as did the rest of Metromedia.  That negative

attitude would manifest itself in several ways: The  album’s final mix was actually 

much worse than the demo tapes; There was a thin tinny quality, that only

emphasized the sometimes painful screechiness of Michael’s vocals; It seemed as

though the engineers had sabotaged whatever artistic merit the band had. The cover

artwork was atrocious.  Just above a photograph of two hundred  smiling community

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members sitting in the unfinished  Warwick dormitory, was the ugly pink lettering,

which would have been more appropriate for a candy bar wrapper, proclaiming “Spirit

in Flesh”.  And now that the album was completed , the label seemed to be doing

everything in its power to delay its release.  Michael’s incredible solution to this was

to stage a massive protest in Metromedia’s own backyard. The entire Brotherhood

was to  march up Sixth Avenue to their main office on Broadway carrying signs

stating our demands for the release of the album.

“This would be the most important protest march since Martin Luther King’s heyday!

“Bobby Barrett and I went down early to do promotion.  We had no money, so we

panhandled and “crashed” at some old friends’ house uptown.  They were “polite.” 

The truth is, we took up a lot of space.  We took whatever we could get from whoever

was too weak to refuse us.  We went in to black record shops and talked them in to 

playing the record.  Their responses were unanimously polite too. 

“Then, a few days later, we hooked up with David, who also came down early to do

promotion and he was really worn down.    These intrusive invasions seemed to take

a lot out of him.  He was also disoriented a good deal of the time.  What made it

harder for him was that we were always expecting each other to be upbeat and alert,

ready to respond to any inquiry about our cause.  We were putting up posters and

someone stopped by and asked David what Spirit in Flesh is and David said,

“It’s...it’s just...it’s just, uh...you know.  What it is, you know, is...uh...uh...uh.”  Period. 

That was the best he could do.  The more he floundered the more flustered he got.  A

lot of the rhetoric that we were pushing never did make any sense, it only made

sense when you were in the throes of the team spirit that we were programmed to

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accept.

“Poor David had just gotten back from  a promo. trip to radio stations in Philly with

Don and Liz.  It had been very stressful—in fact David remembers it as one of the

worst memories of his life.  Don kept going in to trance.  Liz was being inhumanely

“spiritual.”

“On the big day about 200 of us with signs demanding release of the record, all

gathered in a  circle in Central Park, and I started making a mock speech, like Martin

Luther King;  “How long are we going to wait...!”  “At least we could usually have a

good laugh at ourselves. 

“We marched up sixth Ave. and went inside the Metro building and one of the

honchos was talking to Michael outside about how much he hated the band and how

he was going to do everything in his power to block the release of the record..  That

was before Michael would loose his temper in public.  He took it like a martyr,

besides, he didn’t need to get upset:  He had God on his side.  Then we all piled in to

the back of about six U.Hauls that we had rented for the mission.  All the way back I

kept looking at this new girl, Chi Chi, who was off limits to me because we weren’t

supposed to mess with people who weren’t members.  It was really hard [sic].  I think

it was hard for her too.  We joked about that ride years later.

“Another time eight of us guys went down to New York in a van to put up posters.   

We got to New York at 2 a.m. and put up posters on the West Side Highway and

Crumb would climb up a pole and put up posters with contact cement on the big

highway signs.  Then they had me call up the radio station to ask “what’s those Spirit

in Flesh posters?” for publicity.  The radio station didn’t know us yet.  We brought

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three thousand posters and put them up from N.Y. to California.  We ate peanut

butter and jelly and drank coffee.  I always had paste all over me.

“Around the same time, in New York we had people infiltrate the Johnny Carson

Show.  One member, Dory was sitting in the audience and on stage someone asked

someone else, “What is the answer?”  Dory jumped up and yelled, “It’s Spirit in

Flesh!”

“At Ohio State University we got out of our 1963 V.W.. van with the rebuilt engine,

and some guy came up to us and asked us what we were doing.  We told him we

were putting up posters.  He said, “interesting.”  Turned out he was an undercover

cop.  We got arrested for destruction to state property.  We had to spend the night in

jail, awaiting trial the next morning.  “Aint she a cutey!” the guards mocked at Ritchie,

who had the longest hair of our group.  We were so tight with each other that we

weren’t scared.  Gary, the one of our group who had gone to get coffee, so wasn’t

with us when we got arrested, (somehow, I don’t remember how) found out where we

were and bailed us out the next morning.  We must have called home and left him a

message or something.  So that morning we were awaiting our trial, walking down the

street in Columbus afraid to spend any of our last few hundred dollars on food until

we found out how much we were going to be fined.

“Randy said, “Let’s put out a thought force for food  (That was like a group

visualization or prayer).  We turned a corner and out of the blue, we came upon  all of

these fresh donuts, just strewn on the street!  Although it was stranger than fiction, to

us it was just confirmation of what we already suspected—that we were in charge.  

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Randy says, “Come on guys—we can do better than that!”  

“Then we went to the trial and the judge fined us $500.  So Randy earnestly tried to

appeal to the humane side of the judge, expressing that we weren’t just vandals, we

were doing something very serious and relevant for the kid on the street; we were

trying to help the judicial system clean up the streets, get kids off of drugs, and to

straighten out.  We were on the side of justice !  Inspired by Randy’s plea, I jumped

up, fancying myself like a character in a Jimmy Swaggart movie, proclaiming, “Your

honor!  We’ve been sitting here all morning watching these people come in to your

court room, burdening you with their problems.  We want to HELP you deal with

these people.  We do have an answer, the answer to the problems of this magnificent

city.  So, sir, in light of our sincerest interests, we ask that you find it within your

generous heart to be lenient with us.  That’s all I have to say your honor...I trust that

justice will be dealt accordingly.”  The judge turned red and increased our fine by

twenty five dollars.

“We phoned Michael and he, seeing into our pure intentions in that cosmic way that

he had, praised our commitment to the cause and our outstanding closeness  (which

I must admit, we did have).  We had only one argument the entire time we were on

the road together.  it was about who’s turn it was to drive.  McCarty said, “It’s my turn

to drive.”  And Gary answered, “It’s not in the energy.”  (Which sort of meant that it

didn’t feel right to him and he was tuning in to a higher will.)  Randy cut the argument

short by saying that it wasn’t about “turns”—it was about “energy.”  McCarty

grumbled and  Gary drove.

“He immediately wired us enough money to continue the trip, and told the community

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in a meeting, that if they could all be as “tight as those guys, busting their asses for

YOU” that nothing could stop Spirit in Flesh from saving the world.  

“We finally got some rest.

“Once we got on to Route 66, the sky opened up around us and the desert lay before

us.  We started in San Diego and worked our way up to San Francisco, postering

everywhere.

“I started having asthma.  At one point in San Francisco this cop stopped us.  We

were putting strip posters on street lamps.  The cop said “If I catch you guys doing

this again, I’m taking you in.”  But Randy always had to push the limits.  A few blocks

away we were stopped for putting up posters again by the same cop.  Randy just

looked him in the eye and said, “We got the picture.”

“In San Francisco we went up to Bill Graham’s the guy who owned the Phil more

East and the Phil more West.  We went to talk to him about booking us at the Phil

more.  His secretary went back to tell him what we were doing and she said, “He’s

busy”, and Randy said, “We’ll just wait.”  Finally he came out and said, “You know

what, It’s assholes like you that make this business a drag.  Now get the fuck out. 

Randy said something like, “we’re just looking for an opportunity to expose this

band,” trying to maintain a scrap of dignity.

“There were other poster trips in ‘72.  A bunch of guys went out again.  Michael had

recorded a single called “High Time.”  Mouse and I did posters in Boston.  We

stopped at Duncan Donuts one time and just looked at each other.  The bizarreness

of the situation just cracked us up for about five minutes.

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“The Boston Cops were almost as bad as the mafia in New York.  In N.Y.  there had

been huge construction walls that were used as billboards and controlled by the

mafia.  These guys in a black Cadillac told us to get lost.  When we returned, they

followed us out of the city until they lost us.  In Boston this cop stopped us and

Ritchie Chapman said, “We need to put these posters up:  We’ve got a 45 coming

out.”  The cops said, “I’ve got a 45 coming out too, and pulled out his gun.”

“When I got back home to Warwick I was so depressed.  There were all of these new

people.  It was hot.  We switched to sleeping during the day and staying up all night. 

Coming home was such a let-down.  I had felt that I was in the vanguard of the

community, doing this poster thing.  But upon returning, I just felt suppressed.  I think

everyone did.  I’m not sure exactly why, but part of it was that you lost some of your

power in the larger group.  If a rule like staying up all night didn’t  set right with you,

there was nothing you could do about it.  It was miserable.