Richard Bowen | The Source and Circle Sound Studios
’60s Progressive Rock from San Diego, California
Across the years, over 50 bands formed or based in the Southern California city — founded by missionary Junipero Serra in 1769 and Alonzo Horton, the builder of New Town, the site of what’s now known as San Diego, in 1877; Detroit, Michigan-born aviator Charles Lindbergh built his transatlantic-bound The Spirit of St. Louis, there — signed record deals affording them distribution in the international marketplace: an audience certainly aware of the multi-platinum catalogs of the post-punk pop of Blink 182, the MTV-era glam metal of Ratt, the alt-grunge sounds of Stone Temple Pilots, and forever remembering the dramatic ’60s proto-metal of Iron Butterfly (we sadly lost the band’s last surviving member, Doug Ingle, on May 24, 2024).
Then there’s the ethereal career of the Source.
Uninitiated connoisseurs of late ’60s and early ’70s progressive rock wanting a critical description of the Source: American International Records’ producer Harley Hatcher, with vocalist and chief songwriter Richard Bowen, crafted an artful, progressive rock-fusion of folk and gospel with country and bluegrass elements that strike a chord of Harry Nilsson’s soundtrack breakthrough with “Everybody’s Talkin’” from Midnight Cowboy (1969).
There’s dashes of the Monkees’ unjustifiably-scoffed, post-Don Kirshner output in the grooves of the Source’s all-too-brief catalog (one album, two singles) that would work as tracks on either Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. and The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees (and Bowen placed a song on an album by the New Buffalo Springfield). While there’s a pinch of “Jim Morrison,” courtesy of the San Diegan’s best-known single, “Phantom in the Rain,” the Source’s remaining seven-song output is the antithesis of “Doorseque” and more akin to Michael Nesmith’s matured, countrified solo steps with the First National Band.
How the studio guidance of the under-the-radar Harley Hatcher for the A.I.R imprint failed to compete in the radio and retail marketplace alongside his chart-topping doppelganger craftsman in David Alexrod (his stunning the Electric Prunes-era), George Martin, and Don Kirshner is lost to the music journalism ages. Why the soulful growl of Richard Bowen and the Source weren’t nestled into the U.S. charts alongside Gary Puckett and the Union Gap or Rob Grill and the Grass Roots is anyone’s guess.
As with any band fostered during the mere half-decade the Beatles dominated the charts, Richard Bowen entered the music in his teens (possibly with a long-lost 7-inch acetate issued on the Los Alamitos-based Dale Records imprint with “Little Girl Lost” b/w “Heart Ache Is a Lonely Thing”). Forever a San Diegan, as an adult, Bowen gave back to the local music community where it all began by incorporating Circle Sound Studios: a recording studio and media sciences institute in the northeastern outskirts of the U.S. city of El Cajon in San Diego County in the late 1970s.
Working as an independent artist for the remainder of the ’80s — as Circle Sound hosted sessions for both local and national acts — Bowen recorded two albums under his own name, as well as with the Bowen-Jenkins Band, the Dharma Bums: featuring longtime associate Joel Edelstein and ex-Source keyboardist Robert Gilly, then into the 1990s, there was Mission Street: featuring his lead guitar-playing son Richie, his bassist-son Jesse, and other longtime associates in former Source drummer Danny Heald and instrumentalist Nick Garett.
American International Pictures
Richard Bowen’s (as well as Danny Heald and Bowen’s co-writers Harold Finch, Jr., and Robert Gilly) journey as the musical accompaniment to a notorious 1930s U.S. gangster — more so as the voice for an equally infamous 1960s rock singer — begins on April 2, 1954, as former Realart Pictures Incorporated sales manager James H. Nicholson co-founded American Releasing Corporation with entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff.
Making their debut with the U.S. release of the 1953 U.K. documentary import, Operation Malaya, the duo served as the executive producers on the studio’s earliest productions. By 1956 — with a Detroit, Michigan-born industrial engineer named Roger Corman and British producer and screenwriter Alex Gordon on the staff as producers, sometimes adding directing and screenwriting credits to their resumes, American International Pictures’ logo flickered on drive-in screens across the United States, and sometimes in European cinemas.
The first studio to use “focus groups,” the American teenagers and theatre exhibitors polled by Nicholson and company lead to the creation of the “ARKOFF Formula” for producing profitable low-budget films. Each movie that rolled off the A.I.P assembly line — targeted to appeal to 19-year-old males — included:
Action — exciting drama
Revolution — controversial themes
Killing — moments of violence
Oratory — intriguing dialog and speeches
Fantasy — acting out taboos for the audience
Fornication — suggestive sex scene and sex appeal
The first film swinging the new A.I.P shingle was Roger Corman’s car chase drama, The Fast and the Furious (1955). (Years later, producer Neal H. Moritz and Universal Pictures negotiated a license with Corman to use the title for their 2001, Vin Diesel star-vehicle, The Fast and the Furious.) Then, with Alex Gordon producing and Samuel Z. Arkoff’s brother Lou writing the screenplay, the studio made bank with their next film: a post-apocalyptic science fiction film, Day the World Ended (1955).
By the early 1960s, A.I.P reaped U.S. drive-in box office returns on a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations produced by Roger Corman — which crossed the Atlantic to European audiences. A series of critically bashed, yet profitable, “beach party” films starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, followed; the studio fed Americans’ fascination with the burgeoning sport of NASCAR with the likes of Fireball 500 and Thunder Alley, the latter starring teen idol Fabian Forte (1966). That same year, the studio’s smash-hit production of the Peter Fonda-starring The Wild Angels kicked off the sub-genre of motorcycle gang films, with The Born Losers, Devil’s Angels, and The Glory Stompers. “Social Protest” films that fell under the “Revolution” banner of the ARKOFF Formula followed, with the counterculture films Psych-Out starring an up-and-coming Jack Nicholson and The Trip with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra.
In addition to the themes set forth in the ARKOFF Formula to appeal to teenagers (as well as their “Peter Peter Pan Syndrome” formula for targeting the youth market), A.I.P always had hip, happening music in the frames. To produce and market the music, the studio formed the A.I.R imprint, otherwise known an American International Records, on March 19, 1959.
Distributed exclusively, at first, by Mike Curb’s Los Angeles-based Forward Records Corporation, A.I.R’s early catalog comprised of 45-rpm single rock and roll selections from their horror films. Managed by Don Leon, Al Simms would come to replaced Jimmy Maddin — both who recorded for the imprint — as the head of A&R. Eventually, the records would be manufactured by Forward Records Corporation and distributed by MGM.
American International Records
The label’s debut single was the non-film connected “We Love the Dodgers” b/w “Bird Dog” by Jimmie Maddin and the Sundowners. Then, with the Nightmares, Maddin recorded the single most-coveted by 45-collectors of the A.I.R imprint: “(Oooh, I’m So Scared of the) Horrors of the Black Museum” b/w “The Headless Ghost,” both from the studio’s respective 1959 films of the same title. Maddin also appeared in and performed the song “Tongue Tied” for the monster-cum-drag racing spoof, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), which also featured the early A.I.R singles “My Guy” b/w “Promise You” by Linda Leigh and the Treasure Tones, and “Geronimo” b/w “Charge” by the Renegades (produced by Kim Fowley, later of the Runaways fame).
A decade later, then distributed by MGM Records, A.I.R went into business with another Forward Records Corporation-distributed and financed label, Together Records: a west coast concern incorporated in 1969 operated, later in part, by world-renowned producer, Keith Olsen. At this point in A.I.R’s history, while the Together-synergy spawned a collector-confusing, shared sequence of catalog numbers on their releases, A.I.R transitioned from 45-rpms single releases to producing long-play soundtracks, mostly produced by future Richard Bowen associate, Harley Hatcher.
An August 8, 1970, full page Billboard Magazine Advertisement for the A Bullet for Pretty Boy soundtrack. The “It’s Me I’m Running” from single was released to radio and retail in July 1970.
Harley Hatcher
Harley Hatcher’s introduction to the music business occurred in 1960 while serving in the United States Army’s 102nd Signal Battalion in Kaiserslautern, Germany. There, he met fellow soldier and record producer Richard Podolor. While gaining national prominence as the producer for three of the late ’60s biggest bands in Three Dog Night, Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf (the latter benefiting from their inclusion on the biggest rock-driven soundtrack of the era: Easy Rider), Podolor entered the business in 1958 as the producer of jazz drummer Sandy Nelson’s 1958 “Top 5” Gold-charting hit, “Teen Beat.” Nelson also served as the backbeat to the aforementioned Renegades: a band that featured Podolor, fellow A.I.R artist Nick Venet, and future Beach Boy, Bruce Johnson.
Impressed with Harley Hatcher’s performance on the army base, Richard Podolor invited the then 21 year old to Los Angeles to record four songs, with “The Twirl” b/w “All I Need Is You” becoming Hatcher’s first solo-single, released in 1965. The Podolor union introduced Hatcher to an 18-year-old producer and songwriter named Mike Curb, where he became the chief songwriter for artists on the Sidewalk Productions’ roster produced by Curb. Moving into production in 1964, Hatcher made his bones with Davie Allan & the Arrows (“Apache ’65”), then scoring his first A.I.P soundtrack for the biker film, The Wild Angels (1966).
Then nationally-known American disc jockey and promoter Dick Clark tapped Harley Hatcher to write and produce seven songs to the soundtrack of the Clark-produced Killers Three (1968) starring county artist Merle Haggard. It was that B-movie soundtrack work where fans of all things Roger Corman know Hatcher best: for scoring and writing as well as performing songs for A.I.P’s 1967 projects The Glory Stompers and Wild in the Streets (where Hatcher served as the debated-singing voice for actor Christopher Jones’s rock star Max Frost and the Troopers; it’s said that “the Troopers” are Davie Allen and the Arrows), Satan’s Sadists (1969), and the Fabian Forte-starring music-centric Christsploitation flick, Soul Hustler (1973).
Another of A.I.R’s ARKOFF-rock ’n’ roll films was Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969): the A-Side of the Barry Mann-written and produced soundtrack — (contract/distributed by A.I.P to Tower: a Capitol Records’ subsidiary for Capitol’s “lower profile artists”; once Sidewalk Records became a Capitol sub-label, those artists moved to Tower) — served as a showcase for actor-singer Christopher Jordan: he the ex-Wild Ones’ lead vocalist and the future husband of Richard Burton’s ex-wife Sybil (to recoup their losses on the massive box-office flop starring Jordan’s faux-Jim Morrison in Bogart Peter Stuyvesant: A.I.P re-released the film in 1970 as Cult of the Damned to appeal to the post-Manson fascination crowd; and it flopped, again).
Under the tutelage of Harley Hatcher, the concept of utilizing the A-Side of a soundtrack as a mini-album (EP) to promote an A.I.R artist was used on another, early Fabian Forte-starring film. An unknown band from San Diego, California, the Source, was chosen for the task. Recording the equivalent of a full album of eight songs with Harley Hatcher as producer, six songs were used for the film.
A Bullet for Pretty Boy
It began in 1967 when Warner Bros. had a $70 million box office payday on a $2.5 million investment with the Arthur Penn-directed gangster film, Bonnie and Clyde. The Warren Beatty-produced and starring film quickly instigated a slew of “(criminal) lovers on the run” duplicates, which peaked with the U.S. drive-in hits Badlands (1973), starring an up-and-coming Martin Sheen, the trashier/more-exploitive Peter Fonda-starring Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), as well as the production of more traditional gangster films, with 20th Century Fox’s Roger Corman-directed response, The St. Valentine’s Massacre (1967), and music impresario Dick Clark’s aforementioned Killers Three (1968), itself a cost-effective, American International Pictures clone.
So, with the lives of Clyde Barrow and Al Capone committed to film by Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox: American International Pictures co-opted the infamy of 1930’s American bank robber and faux-folk hero, Charles “Pretty Boy” Arthur Floyd.
The actor chosen for the lead in the Larry Buchanan-directed film was A.I.P’s go-to actor to appeal to the teen market: Fabian Forte. Shot and produced in five months between June to October 1969, studio head James H. Nicholson lost faith in Buchanan’s abilities to bring “a level of quality” to the $350,000-budgeted production; Buchanan — who would contract Richard Bowen to supply music to another of his biographical film projects in the early 1980s — was fired and replaced by the studio’s “beach movie” purveyor, Maury Dexter.
The Source
The San Diegans’ debut single, “Yesterday Is Gone” b/w “Phantom in the Rain,” was issued as a standalone release — and not available in any A.I.P film. Of the remaining six songs from the 1969 recording sessions, Harley Hatcher wrote three: “It’s Me I’m Running From,” “I’m Gonna Love You (’Til I Die),” and “Got Nowhere to Go.” Richard Bowen contributed “Gone Tomorrow,” “Ruby, Ruby,” and “Ballad of Charles Arthur Floyd.” A second and final single, “It’s Me I’m Running From” b/w “Gone Tomorrow,” directly promoted the film.
While unknown as being composed or recorded during the Hatcher sessions, Bowen and Terry Furlong of the Grass Roots co-wrote a ninth song, “Trivial Sum,” which appears as the closing track on the lone album by Blue Mountain Eagle (aka The New Buffalo Springfield) issued on Atco Records (1970). (Sure, the lead vocal, guttural blast by ex-Bobby Fuller Four bassist Randy Fuller makes for a rocker, but I sure would have loved Bowen howling over Robert Gilly’s Hammond grinding.)
Another soundtrack contribution by the Source appears in the frames of Joe (1970), an early John G. Avildsen counterculture-revenge drama (later the director of Rocky and The Karate Kid) starring U.S. actor Peter Boyle (of Mel Brooke’s Young Frankenstein fame).
Oh, rock journalists of the web: you’ve mixed up the digital bits n’ bytes, yet again. Let’s fix this.
The Source, aka Source Family
As is the case with today’s online repositories miscataloging albums and singles of bands with similar names: The Source signed to American International Records didn’t record “You Don’t Know What’s Going On” paired with a non-film B-Side, “Hummingbird.” The single was recorded by Pentagram Records’ the Source — a duo fronted by co-vocalist Robin Baker and writer Tim Garon.
Their tuneful venture — alternately known as Tim and Robin and Source Family — were part of the late ’60s San Francisco-based The Source cult (unfairly caught up in the U.S. media’s Manson-mania of the day) overlorded by James Edward Baker, aka Father Yod: a musical concern that created a number of musical recordings written by Baker and Garon that funded the church. Under the moniker Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76, the loose musical congregation released three psych-krautrock-driven gems with Khoutek (1973), Contraction (1974), and Expansion (1974), as well as several more albums over the years.
Press clipping from Page 81 of an October 25, 1969, issue of Billboard. The single was released to radio and retail in May 1971.
While the name of Pentagram Records conveys a mysterious, Manson-esque foreboding: it is actually a legitimate imprint founded by former Capitol and Mercury A&R man Steve Douglas, along with producers Al Schmitt (best-known for his work with Jefferson Airplane; the 23-time Grammy-winning recording engineer and producer has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles, California), and Bobby Applegate (whose career dates to producing Freddie Cannon of “Palisades Park” fame).
Initially distributed by Jay-Gee Records in 1970, then by Viva/Bravo Records, then by Decca/MCA in 1970 to 1971, and finally Warner Bros. from 1971 to 1972, the short-lived label dissolved as result of a lawsuit by U.S. tape manufacturer, Ampex.
In another cinema connection: In addition to placing their cover of Reggae artist Exuma’s “You Don’t Know What’s Going On” on the Joe soundtrack: Tim Garon and Robin Baker, along with James Baker, appear in a “patio scene” — actually the popular, all-natural food restaurant The Source run by the cult — in one of Donald Sutherland’s earliest films, Alex in Wonderland (1970), directed by Paul Mazursky and released by MGM Pictures.
Circle Sound Studios
San Diego, California, was a “small town” in the southern-most part of the state in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so while notable bands formed there, most recorded elsewhere as result of the many bands making the two-hour trip north to record at the numerous major studios in Los Angeles. However, Studio West, owned by Gary Stauffer, was considered among San Diego’s local musicians to be the town’s top studio, courtesy of its “multi-track” mobile truck used for live recording. The next popular recording spot was Farfare Studios owned by Ron Compton, just northeast of San Diego in El Cajon. Then, a little more to the east, stood Straita Head Sound in La Mesa.
Started by Gary Stauffer, from the remains of what was once a bowling alley (just like Detroit’s Pampa Studios where Bob Seger recorded his ’70s hits), Straita Head offered a retail stereo store on the first floor, along with a recording studio and soundstage, and an electronics department where the custom gear was built (just like Tom Carson’s Detroit-based multipurpose facility, Fiddlers Music). Courtesy of Straita Head’s soundstage: many concerts and later, dinner theatre productions (U.S. television actor Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heroes fame, brought his mid-’70s hit stage play, Beginner’s Luck, to the venue) were produced by Stauffer’s team. Prior to its Le Mesa relocation in 1974, Straita Head resided in El Cajon in a strip mall on Fletcher Parkway as a retail stereo store; then came a move to a larger building on Magnolia and Main, which housed a retail outlet and recording studio, with an upstairs electronics department that, too, built custom consoles.
Then Circle Sound Studios came on the scene, opening on the second floor of 3465 El Cajon Boulevard.
Richard Bowen saw a vision in the long-neglected, paint-peeling art deco building first constructed in 1928, its second floor replete with musically-conducive high ceilings, old wood floors and a large stage, as well as its three, large picturesque windows overlooking the former main asphalt artery through San Diego. And it was: In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade made its way down El Cajon as San Diegans lined the Boulevard to catch a glimpse of a man who would be assassinated by mid-November that year.
It was above that building’s street-level hovels-cum-shops — that eventually housed a popular music club — where Richard Bowen constructed Circle Sound Studio in 1977.
Once an elegant ballroom serving San Diego’s growing, mature-adult population and its related nightlife, thanks to Bowen’s vision: the architectural eyesore quickly became the area’s premier recording studio. The 5,000 square foot ballroom on the second floor that served as “Studio A” was used for live recordings and drum tracking, as well as serving as a video tapping soundstage for the burgeoning MTV-era rock video market, assisting in the development of the careers of ’80s power pop, punk and new wave bands.
Notable live recordings sessions at Circle Sound featured Jimmy Buffett (his recording of a live promotional-video version of his 1979 hit, “Volcano”) and Cream’s Jack Bruce’s solo ventures. Artists as diverse as late ’80s U.S. college radio-star Skid Roper and pre-Kyuss bassist Scott Reeder recorded there. Eventually, Circle Sound opened the “Media Science Institute” program to teach recording techniques. It was that large ballroom with video recording facilities that gave the studio its greatest recognition by way of the U.S. Gold-certified-selling series of ’80s “Jazzercise” exercise albums and videos recorded by Judy Shepard Missett.
As did Gary Stauffer’s Studio West in the early 1970s, Circle Sound offered diploma “recording engineer” courses in the early 1980s. Two of the nationally recognized San Diegan artists that earned international college radio airplay through those recordings at Circle Sound were power popsters Manual Scan led by Bart Mendoza and the new wave outfit, the Fingers. Jimmy Crespo, who rose to fame as the lead guitarist for Aerosmith from 1979 to 1984, came to record with the San Diego-based Stress at the studio during their 1983 to 1987 existence.
Then Circle Sound Studios gained a musically-apropos, noisy and controversial downstairs neighbor in 1984.
The Rock Palace
Rock Place opened in the final months of 1984, quickly closing its door in early 1985. During its all-too-brief, yet very successful run, the venue hosted U.S. concert tours by up-and-coming college radio darlings Fishbone and an affectionately-remembered SST Records tour stop featuring the holy, pre-grunge trinity of Husker Du, the Meat Puppets, and the Minutemen.
Then, with Circle Sound and the Rock Palace defunct, the cavernous building was used — courtesy of the building’s unique, architectural anomaly: a jury-rigged outdoor conveyor belt that fed into the building; one that the Rock Palace’s bands used for moving heavy gear — by an electronics company to assemble video games in the 1990s. For reasons unknown — most likely in a similar situation to Detroit’s Fiddlers Music operated by Tom Carson going into bankruptcy — much of the studio gear, as well as years of master tapes, remained stored upstairs in the carcass that was Circle Sound Studios.
Then, “a questionable fire”, rumored to be arson, broke out and gutted entire building, taking decades of San Diego’s music history in the flames. Today, some thirty-plus years later: a January 2024 Google Mapping shows the old girl at 3465 El Cajon Blvd still standing — much worse for wear — adorned in wrought-iron security bars as it displays a “Space available” sign.
The KGB Radio Years
Though his incorporation of Circle Sound Studios, Richard Bowen aligned himself with San Diego’s dominate progressive-rock radio station, KGB-FM.
Once a highly-rated “Boss Radio” outlet during the earlier 1960s (the days of loud, in-your-face fast-pattering disc jockeys spinning “stacks of wax”), KKGB was a stodgy, failing station by 1972. To improve fortunes: KGB hired consistently-successful U.S. radio consultant Ron Jacobs to flip the station to an album-oriented rock format (with realistic speaking hosts).
During those early years of U.S. radio, part of a station’s promotional synergy included the development of a comical, animal-based identity around an alligator, a fish, a frog, a kangaroo, or a pig.
KGB picked a chicken.
None of U.S. radio’s human-wearing fuzzy mascots were as iconic as the dancing “KGB Chicken,” aka the “San Diego Chicken,” whose international iconic status came through its eventual adoption by Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres as their team’s mascot.
Then, when it came time to record an official “fight song” for the team for the Chicken to perform on the field — as most U.S. National Football League and Major League Baseball teams did in the ’80s — Richard Bowen was called out of the audio bullpen to engineer that novelty song at Circle Sound Studios: “Let’s Play Ball” by Buzz Barnaba (1984).
Ten-years early, just after the station’s 1973 programming change, KGB-FM was one of the first U.S. radio stations to create an annual “Homegrown” rock festival competition to promote local music — music that also aired during the station’s rotation with major label bands. Once a year, from 1973 to 1979, seven roman-numerated Homegrown albums were issued; the fifth and sixth, respectively, featured “Pretty Senorita” and “The Boulevard” by the Bowen-Jenkins Band: a duo fronted by Richard Bowen and vocalist, Vivien Jenkins.
In addition to Richard Bowen doubling for Jim Morrison: The film’s Janis Joplin creations “Easy Now” and “No Way” were written and performed by Janet Stover from her 1978 album, Easy Now. The Jimi Hendrix creations “Today or Tomorrow,” “Looks Like You,” “Crystal Wings,” “Three Day Rain,” “Poet’s Reprise,” “Just My Size,” and “Seriously Shot Down” were written and performed by Michael Bloomfield (ex-Electric Flag/KGB) solo band bassist, David Shorey. KGB — the band — was a “supergroup” formed in 1976 around writer-vocalist Ray Kennedy that came to feature the rhythm section of ex-Family bassist Rich Grech and drummer Carmine Appice.
Getting Down with Larry Buchanan
American exploitation filmmaker Larry Buchanan proudly proclaimed himself a “schlockmeister” for his trash-classics Curse of the Swamp Creature, The Eye Creatures, In the Year 2889, Mars Needs Women, and Zontar: The Thing from Venus produced under the watchful eye of American International Pictures. While of questionable quality (or logic), each turned a profit.
A self-studied conspiracy theorist, Buchanan used the income from his A.I.P resume to fund a series of increasingly awkward-to-bizarre conspiracy-based films cloaked in a faux-biographical drama format mixed with unique speculations on a variety of subjects.
While best-known of those films (or any of his resume), because of its connection to Jim Morrison’s mystique was Down on Us (1984), dates to Larry Buchanan’s earlier exposés on the President Kennedy assassination with The Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964) and the gangster chronicle The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde (1968). The long-rumored romance between billionaire Howard Hughes and actress Jean Harlow was not even sacred, as proven in the frames of Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1977). Then Buchanan explored the life of President Kennedy’s “mistress” Marilyn Monroe — twice — in the equally speculative Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976) and Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn (1989). Folklore dinosaurs weren’t immune either, as the depths of Buchanan’s conspiracies belched the The Loch Ness Horror (1982).
No, Buchanan never made a movie about a folklored “Chicken Man” terrorizing the San Diegan countryside.
Cinematic quality and unmitigated box-office failure aside, there’s no denying it was the foresight of Larry Buchanan’s Down on Us (1984) — and not Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991) — that offered Hollywood’s first on-screen interpretation of Jim Morrison, courtesy of actor Brad Wolf lip-syncing the music performed by Richard Bowen.
Industry news of Stone’s vastly superior (but still flawed) biography on the Lizard King allowed Larry Buchanan to finally turn a profit on the five-year-old box office disaster courtesy of its Beyond the Doors home video reboot (1989). Who cares if the film had nothing to do with Morrison’s life — or Janis Joplin’s or Jimi Hendrix’s for that matter — but the long-rumored conspiracy that U.S. President Richard M. Nixon-employed operatives assassinated the countercultural triumvirate in attempt to save the nation’s youth.
Richard Bowen’s 1983 single featuring “Sorcery” b/w “Dear Heart.” The 1984 film Down on Us features the A-Side as background music during a club scene.
Full Circle
In addition to his late ’70s work through his Circle Sound Studios with the Bowen-Jenkins Band and KGB-FM’s “Homegrown” concerts and related-albums, Richard Bowen released the Dharma Bums project (1981), as well as the AOR/Soft Rock solo efforts Heart to God, Hand to Man (1985) and Pictures in the Air (1986). Both of his solo albums returned to U.S. airwaves (well, streams) in 2024 courtesy of a new breed ’70s nostalgic “Yacht Rock”-formatted internet radio stations. Joyfully hearing Richard Bowen’s music stream out-of-the-blue over my smart phone on a cool, spring evening inspired the writing of this career retrospective.
Today, Richard Bowen’s best known work to Doorsphiles the world over, courtesy of his contributions to cinema’s first interpretation of The Lizard King has — as most of Larry Buchanan’s catalog has — fallen into the public domain.
The VHS-version of Beyond the Doors is readily streamed on video sharing sites — as are Richard Bowen’s long out-of-print singles and albums. Today, it’s as easy as hitting the “Shopping” tab on your web browser of choice to search “Beyond the Doors” to purchase DVDs and Blu-rays (of varying quality), as well as triple-digit used VHS copies of the film and its related theatrical and home video one-sheets.
In the wake of the release of Beyond the Doors/Down on Us — courtesy of the “Morrisonesque” qualities of “Phantom in the Rain” and “Knock So Hard” — it was assumed by pre-Internet record collectors that Richard Bowen was “The Phantom” behind the “Jim Morrison solo album,” Phantom’s Divine Comedy: Part 1, issued by Capitol Records (March 1974).
In a world now overwhelmed by compact disc and boutique vinyl reissues of long forgotten recordings by long lost musicians each vying for a megabyte of our memories in the digital milieu, Richard Bowen — along with Source-mates Danny Heald, Harold Finch, Jr., and Robert Gilly — are no longer lost: they are now remembered as ’60s progressive rock troubadours . . . at least, according to this writer’s QWERTY-endeavors on forgotten films and musicians.
END
Resources
Both Sides Now Publications (A.I.R History)
The Boulevard.org (El Cajon Boulevard Tribute Site)
Che Underground Site (San Diego Rock Tribute Site)
KGB Homegrown Albums Tribute Page
Steve Hoffman’s Music Forums (San Diego Recording History)
Straita Head Sound Facebook
VHS Collector.com
Vintage San Diego Facebook
World Radio History.com
