After a flurry of e-mails between Sal Serio, coordinator of the Tommy Bolin Appreciation Society - Madison, WI, and myself regarding Gil's story on Tommy, Sal states, "Man, I'd love to interview this guy, is he still around? " The die was cast. Gil is tracked down and contacted through the Internet. A few e-mails later, Gil gladly agrees to an interview with Sal to discuss how he researched and came about writing "Shooting Star." Here now is Sal Serio's interview with writer, Gil Asakawa.
Q: These questions are in reference to your October 1989 (Denver) Westword article titled "Shooting Star". First, a bit about you and your background, please. You're from Colorado, correct? Ever go to Tulagi's? Is it really next to the Fox Theater in Boulder?
A: Yep, I live in Denver. I was born in Tokyo, though (I'm a third-generation Japanese American) and lived in northern Virginia before moving to Denver when I was in high school, in the mid-1970s. Tulagi's is indeed right next to the Fox Theater in Boulder, on "The Hill" -- a popular student area close to the University of Colorado campus. The Fox is an old movie theater, and only recently (like 10 years ago) was converted into a concert hall. Tulagi's is a typically tiny funky place, where you stand on a dance floor and watch the act on a raised bandstand. It was one of the first places to book national acts on a regular basis in the 1970s, when the promoter and manager Chuck Morris took over the bar and started booking acts such as the Eagles and ZZ Top (legend has it for their first gig outside of Texas).
Q: How did you get involved in the Bolin project? Did you know him? Were you (are you still) a fan of Bolin's music?
A. I got involved with Bolin for the Westword article because I was a fan of his music while in high school. He died when I was attending art school at Pratt Institute in NYC, and at that point I owned both his solo records and was aware of, if not familiar with, his work with Zephyr, James Gang (Bang! was a big high school album for me and my friends) and Deep Purple. I hadn't thought about his music too much in the intervening years, but when I first read about the Bolin box coming out on Geffen, my curiosity led me to look into his death. As a local artist, I figured his story would be perfect for Westword, which is the alternative weekly newspaper in Denver. I was music editor and reporter for the paper from 1980-1991, so a big chunk of my life was involved with the local music scene.
Q: How much time and research did you put into that article? It's very well referenced.
A: I immersed myself in Bolin's life and music for over two months -- I read everything I could find on him (which wasn't much), and began contacting people whose lives had crossed Tommy's, starting of course with David Givens. Then through contacts such as Mike Drumm in Denver, I got a hold of many recordings which gave me a fuller view of Bolin's creative output outside of the officially released material. At the time, of course, the albums were long out of print, though I managed to snag CD versions when a label briefly made them available. Most of the research was anecdotal, which is to say I interviewed lots of people. One of the problems doing this type of research is that you often get conflicting memories and stories, so I had to sometimes decide which was more credible, or make the references vague so it would be as accurate as possible. I'm glad to hear the article has gotten around, though I had a bad falling out with David Givens over it. He was pissed off that I had some detail wrong about the first Zephyr gig in the mountains. So, I've always been sort of embarrassed about some of that factual stuff, though I am proud of the investigative work I did around the hours surrounding his death. Man, I lived and breathed Tommy's music...almost like I was there at that concert (listened to a tape of it over and over) and there in the hotel room.
Q: You mention that Tommy was an admirer of Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust". In what way is this documented?
A: I don't know that it's documented per se, though I remember a lot of people talking about Tommy's extravagant personal fashion sense, and if memory serves me correct, Mike Drumm in particular remembered Tommy being into Ziggy Stardust as an inspiration for the androgynous makeup and feather boas and stuff. Mike ran a record store on the Hill at the time, that's when he became Tommy's friend.
Q: If Tommy signed with Barry Fey in 1974 after splitting with the James Gang, did Fey remain his manager throughout the Deep Purple stint, or was Bolin "co-managed" while with Purple?
A: I guess my article doesn't say for sure, but my recollection is that Barry was Tommy's unofficial advisor/manager throughout his career, and I don't know that Tommy had a "co-manager" during his Deep Purple stint. But I can't say with certainty what the business arrangement was. Whatever I got is in the article.
Q: It appears you interviewed a lot of folks for the article. How difficult was it to track people down? Was there a particular chain of connections that lead you from one contact to the next? Who were some of the most interesting people to talk with? Were there people who didn't want to talk about Tommy?
A: I interviewed tons of people from throughout Tommy's career. It was great because the story hadn't been told before, and in any case, I was the first one who had contacted these folks for their memories about Bolin. And, each person led me to other people in the Tommy universe, so I never had a problem tracking down sources. A couple of people remained somewhat elusive, and remember Dave Brown, the friend and guitar tech who was crucial to the insights in the article, got a hold of me only by phone. I never did meet a lot of the people I interviewed, just over the phone. I found Norma Jean the old fashioned journalistic way, by contacting the Detroit Musicians Union, and getting referrals until I tracked her down. People who are still musicians or working in the industry were the easiest to track down, like Jimmy Haslip, Max Groenthal and Jeff Cook. People were generally very happy to talk about their memories of Tommy because they'd never had a chance to share them. The hardest person to track down was the Feyline security guard L.C. Clayton who flew down to Miami to watch over Bolin. I found many references to him and addresses and numbers, but every one was a dead end. As it happened, he called me after the article ran, to deny he had anything to do with Tommy's death.
Q: Who provided the major recollections of the time that Tommy spent in the Miami hotel room early 12/4/76, while in and out of consciousness, detailing the resuscitation attempts?
A: Most of the re-creation of the night in the Miami hotel rooms came from police reports, with narrative elements filled in by the various members of the band that I contacted, along with Dave Brown.
Q: You say that the heroin found in Tommy's body was in the form of morphine. How was this documented?
A: Also in the Dade County police reports, which I got a copy of. It was chilling to read the dry, "official" report, along with the attached autopsy findings. It was very helpful to have a sister newspaper of Westword, Miami New Times, track down these documents for me. I would have welcomed the trip down to Miami to look up the papers myself, though!
Q: You mention to Barry Fey that he's regarded as a suspicious character in Bolin's death, and he snapped back defensively. Do you feel that there might be any substantiation to the charge that Fey had given orders to the road crew to not call an ambulance and let matters take their course? Do you have any idea what may have happened? Did Dave Brown mention a phone call to management that evening?
A: At this point, I don't have much of an opinion either way about Barry Fey's involvement with Bolin's life, career, and death. I reported everything including others' accusations and Barry's denial, in a straight journalistic fashion. I also wrote in the article that Fey got a call in the morning, right? I didn't have any indications otherwise from anyone I spoke to.
Q: If Tommy had survived the '70's and weathered the '80's, where do think he would be in 1999?
A: Bolin was so musically creative that I think he would have been on the forefront of adding world music elements to his songs. He was already heavily into various forms of Latin music -- "Alexis" with the James Gang is a fine samba, and he had lots of congas playing Latin rhythms all over his solo albums. But I think he would've loved various forms of African music, Algerian rai, Caribbean soukous and lots of other world rhythms. I'm sure he'd be along the forefront of contemporary guitarists, and perhaps would have been able to keep lead guitar from becoming so scales-based (just fast riffs, no melody) in the post-Eddie Van Halen era. I do wonder if he'd still be interested in rock or pop music, though. I could easily imagine him becoming a part of the contemporary jazz pantheon, because that's where his musical intelligence was already taking him.
Q: Since you wrote the Westword article, there has been a major resurgence of Tommy Bolin's music into the market via the Tommy Bolin Archives. What are your thoughts on this? Are you an Archives member?
A: I must admit, it's somewhat odd to find out that an article I wrote a decade ago is being passed around by Bolin fans. But I think it's great that someone like Bolin could live on with fans, and especially with the emergence of the Internet, that a network of fans could keep his music and memory alive in such a vital fashion. This is true of all music and creative artists, of course, but especially dramatic in the case of an artist such as Bolin whose career was so tragically cut short. The Archives, with the help of Mike Drumm and others, has also been key to maintaining the awareness of Bolin's accomplishments. I've ordered some of the music that's been released in recent years, and it holds up great! I just signed up for the Archives (they really should put up an online form instead of having people e-mail in their address information, and the mailings should be sent primarily via e-mail, not snail mail).
BY THE WAY, if you want to put a contact e-mail for me, please use and feel free to post my url: Gil Asakawa's Web Page at http://home.earthlink.net/~gillers/
Note: You can e-mail Gil Asakawa at: gillers@earthlink.net
Since writing "Shooting Star" in 1989, Gil Asakawa has gone on to become one of the Denver areas most prominent journalist. Not only in the print field, but in television, radio, and the world of cyberspace.
Gil has been a contributor to major entertainment publications such as Rolling Stone, Pulse, Creem, and Goldmine, as well writing for some of Denver's best known papers and magazines. He also co-authored "The Toy Book" with Leland Rucker, which is an in depth look at baby boomer toys.
Gil's work in cyberspace has included working for Digital City Denver for America Online, and http://www.TRIP.com. Gil also writes a weekly online column, The Nikkei View, which covers popular culture and politics from a Japanese American perspective, something that is very near and dear to his heart. To learn more about Gil and his vast and varied writing career, click on http://nikkeiview.com or email him at gillers@earthlink.net
Sal Serio and I would like to thank Gil Asakawa for generously consenting to be interviewed and take a long and somewhat sad walk down Rock and Roll memory lane, as well as for putting up with all of our endless e-mails. Domo Arigato Gil-san, Gokigen yo!
I would like to thank Sal for inviting me to be part of this project, and convincing me I still had a few good words left in me to write. Special thanks to Scott McIntosh for performing his Web magic and allowing Tommy's fans all over the world to be able to read Gil's great article after all of these years. A million thanks to my wife CJ, who picked up the ball and typed the old fashioned way, when our scanner went "alien". YTF, XOXO : ) To Tim and Terri Martin, God Bless...
To borrow from Gil a moment, the common thread running through all of this, is the man himself, Tommy Bolin! For, it's his great music and legacy which is the tie that binds us.
Let's keep the spirit of Tommy's music alive in the new millennium!
Art Connor - January 1, 2000
"Shooting Star" - Copyright 1989, by Westword Corporation. Reprint-generously permitted by Gil Asakawa.
"An Interview with Gil Asakawa"- Copyright 2000, by Art Connor and Sal Serio. HTML version, Copyright 2000 by Art Connor, Sal Serio, and Scott McIntosh.
DISCLAIMER: All information in this article was either previously published, already in public domain, or was the result of informal interview and speculation. No accusations of actual wrongdoings, illegal activity, slander, or libel are intended or inferred.
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