Mill Valley Oral History Program A collaboration between the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Public Library

PAUL LIBERATORE

An Oral History Interview Conducted by Debra Schwartz in 2017

© 2017 by the Mill Valley Public Library

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TITLE: Oral History of Paul Liberatore INTERVIEWER: Debra Schwartz DESCRIPTION: Transcript, 44 pages INTERVIEW DATE: September 5th, 2017

In this oral history, Paul Liberatore recounts his life as a journalist, rock ‘n’ roll writer, and participant-observer in the Marin County music scene over the course of several decades. Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1945, Paul moved to Southern California with his mother and stepfather in the early 1950s, and grew up in Santa Clarita. After graduating from San Diego State University, Paul landed his first newspaper job with the San Diego Union-Tribune. In 1972, Paul moved with his then wife and children up to Marin, and began working for the Marin Independent Journal. He was originally assigned to the Mill Valley Bureau, from which he covered Southern and West Marin. Paul recounts his journalism career over the ensuing decades, which took him to the San Francisco Chronicle for a period, before he returned to the IJ, where he was still working at the time this oral history was recorded. Paul discusses how he became a rock journalist and recalls the various musicians he has written about and — as a guitar player and singer in his own right — played with over the years, evoking the rich history of rock music in Marin County. In 2017, Paul was involved in various events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, including a talk and musical performance sponsored by the Mill Valley Historical Society and held at the Library as well as a concert he produced with Jimmy Dillon at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco. After recalling some of the many famous songs that were written in Mill Valley and Marin County, Paul attests to the importance of preserving Marin’s musical history, a cultural project to which his oral history makes a valuable contribution.

© All materials copyright Mill Valley Public Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Mill Valley Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Lucretia Little History Room Mill Valley Public Library 375 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941

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Oral History of Paul Liberatore

Index Bell, Linda (ex-wife)…p.10 Cacciatore, James (brother)…p.3 Cacciatore, Margaret (mother)…p.2 Cacciatore, Rocco G. (stepfather)…p.2 Caen, Herb…p.22 California Farm Workers Strike…p.8 Champlin, Bill…p.28-29 Cipollina, John…p.27 Committee, The…p.13 Corea, Kathy Sanchez (sister)…p.3 Delaplane, Stanton…p.22 Dillon, Jimmy…p.27, 32-33 Duncan, Gary…p.27 Fariña, Mimi…p.13-17, 43 Bread and Roses…p.14-17 Illness…p.16 Fariña, Richard…p.13 Fierro, Martin…p.27 Geography of Hope…p.39 Goldstein, Sydney…p.34 Hinckle, Warren…p.22 Hoppe, Art…p.22 John Birch Society…p.8 Kent State shootings…p.7 Liberatore, Leslie (daughter)…p.6 Liberatore Sr., Paul (father)…p.1 Lobby Lounge…p.38 Marin County Fair…p.35 Marin Independent Journal…p.10, 26 Strike…p.10-11, 31 McCabe, Charles…p.22 Music scene…p.26-27 Nourse Theater…p.34-35 Patterson, Jeanie…p.43 Peterson, Karen (ex-wife)…p.15 Record Plant…p.35 Road to Hell, The…p.25 San Diego State University…p.5 San Diego Union Tribune…p.6 San Francisco Chronicle…p.17-19, 22 San Pedro News Pilot…p.7-9 Santa Clarita…p.4

Stayner kidnapping…p.17-20 Songs written in Marin County…p.40-

41 Sterling, Robert…p.38 Summer of Love anniversary…p.32-35 Sweetwater…p.43 Vietnam Draft…p.5

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Oral History of Paul Liberatore September 5th, 2017

Editor’s note: This transcript has been reviewed by Paul Liberatore, who made minor corrections and clarifications to the original. 0:00:00 Debra Schwartz: Today is September 5th, 2017. My name is Debra Schwartz, and I’m sitting here on behalf of the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Library and conducting an oral history with rock writer, musician, and all-around community person, Paul Liberatore. Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me and talk. We are sitting in the IJ offices right now at 4000 Civic Center — 0:00:32 Paul Liberatore: Drive. 0:00:33 Debra Schwartz: Drive. And these are offices in — 0:00:37 Paul Liberatore: San Rafael. 0:00:37 Debra Schwartz: In San Rafael. And so, it’s very nice to be in your work world. I know that so many people know you from your work, but before we begin, I’d love to learn a little bit about your family history, a little context to understand what brought you to Marin, and how long you’ve been here. Let’s start where you were born. 0:01:03 Paul Liberatore: I was born in Yonkers, New York in June 1945, and my biological father, who is a senior, Paul Liberatore Sr., died a month after I was born. He was a Marine, he was in the South Pacific, and he contracted cancer towards the end of the war, of all things. And they brought him back and he died at the naval hospital, I think, in Brooklyn. 0:01:35 Debra Schwartz: Oh my. 0:01:36 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, in July 1945. I was a month old. 0:01:38 Debra Schwartz: And how old was he? 0:01:40 Paul Liberatore: 27 years old. So I never knew my biological father. And my mother, several years later, three or four years later, remarried my biological father’s best friend. They grew up together in this Italian neighborhood in Yonkers, and he was in the Army, my father was in the Marines. After the war, my mother remarried him and we moved to Southern California. I grew up primarily in Santa Clarita Valley, which is about 30 miles northwest of LA. 0:02:18 Debra Schwartz: And your mother’s name? 0:02:20 Paul Liberatore: My mother’s name is Margaret Cacciatore, C-A-C-C-I-A-T-O-R-E.

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0:02:27 Debra Schwartz: Wait. 0:02:28 Paul Liberatore: And my stepfather’s name was Rocco G. Cacciatore. Italian names there. 0:02:34 Debra Schwartz: Liberatore. 0:02:35 Paul Liberatore: Liberatore and Cacciatore. 0:02:36 Debra Schwartz: And Cacciatore. From the same region? 0:02:38 Paul Liberatore: They were in the same city, Yonkers, New York, right? They were first generation. Their parents were from Italy. Some of my father’s—my biological father’s—sisters and brothers were born in Italy actually. But he wasn’t. 0:02:56 Debra Schwartz: What part of Italy? 0:02:58 Paul Liberatore: They’re from — where are they from? I’ll have to think. My mother’s from Bari, but my father’s from — can’t recall at the moment, because I’ve only learned this fairly recently, so I don’t know. 0:03:12 Debra Schwartz: Well, that’s interesting. Just that the similarity of the name is a little — 0:03:17 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, well you know, Italian kids. They grew up together. They were friends. They were on the same football team in high school. I have a picture of both my fathers, my stepfather and my biological father, playing together. You can see them both tackling some guy. So they were pals. 0:03:33 Debra Schwartz: Do you suppose that — 0:03:34 Paul Liberatore: And they both dated my mother at the same time, so — 0:03:36 Debra Schwartz: Oh, wait. What? 0:03:37 Paul Liberatore: They both dated my mother. They were all friends and ran around with the same crowd. They always wondered which one my mother would marry and she ended up marrying them both. [chuckles] 0:03:47 Debra Schwartz: I wonder if that helped him to be more open, more available to you, knowing that it was his dear friend’s son. 0:03:54 Paul Liberatore: Who knows? I mean he had two other kids. I have a brother, actually, and a sister. Both live here in Marin County.

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0:04:00 Debra Schwartz: And their names? 0:04:01 Paul Liberatore: James Cacciatore. He’s a photographer and sometimes works for the IJ. So he and I do stories together often, you know. We get paired to go out and do stories, which is really cool. And I have a sister who lives out in Bolinas — Cathy Sanchez Corea, her name is. And they’re kind of an old Marin family. 0:04:20 Debra Schwartz: And that’s from the stepfather? 0:04:24 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, they’re my half-brother and half-sister. 0:04:25 Debra Schwartz: So you’re the elder brother. 0:04:26 Paul Liberatore: They’re my half-brother and half-sister. Yeah, I’m the eldest. 0:04:29 Debra Schwartz: The elder, wiser brother. 0:04:31 Paul Liberatore: Older and wider — wiser I mean. [laughs] 0:04:34 Debra Schwartz: So you ended up in Southern California. How old were you when you moved there? 0:04:38 Paul Liberatore: Six or seven. I was in first grade, whatever that is. 0:04:42 Debra Schwartz: ’Cause you don’t have a Bronx — 0:04:44 Paul Liberatore: No, no. My parents — 0:04:47 Debra Schwartz: Your accent is — 0:04:47 Paul Liberatore: Sorta had a kind of an accent. Some people sometimes do. 0:04:49 Debra Schwartz: Not even an Italian accent. Nothing. 0:04:50 Paul Liberatore: No. 0:04:52 Debra Schwartz: You’re California-ized. 0:04:53 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I’m a California kid, you know. 0:04:56 Debra Schwartz: So you came to Southern California, and this is in what year? 0:05:01 Paul Liberatore: Well, ’50s. 1951 or ’52.

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0:05:01 Debra Schwartz: I say this because of the music scene. 0:05:03 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, 1950 maybe? ’51 something like that. Yeah. So I was six-years-old, seven-years-old, whatever it was. 0:05:13 Debra Schwartz: Do you remember the differences going from the East Coast to the West Coast? 0:05:16 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah. I remember learning to read in New York, actually in Yonkers. By the time I came in first grade I could already read. One thing I really do remember is the kids in my class were much farther behind me. I’m glad I had that phonetic training, reading. So I was kind of ahead of the game from when I started here at school in California. 0:05:41 Debra Schwartz: And this is a while back, the world was different, it wasn’t as crowded certainly. But you were living in areas — I don’t know about El Cerrito and how concentrated — more of a suburban area there. 0:05:53 Paul Liberatore: Santa Clarita? 0:05:54 Debra Schwartz: Santa Clarita. 0:05:55 Paul Liberatore: It was farm country. 0:05:56 Debra Schwartz: It was farm country. 0:05:57 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. It was Newhall Land and Farming. It was alfalfa fields and onion fields and carrot fields. 0:06:03 Debra Schwartz: So, you went from Yonkers, a more concentrated population — 0:06:05 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I went from an urban area to a very rural, Southern California high desert — Tehachapi, foothills of Tehachapi Mountains. Now, it’s completely developed. Those days we had one high school, William S. Hart High School, that I went to, I graduated from. It’s named after the first movie cowboy — silent movie cowboy — William S. Hart, who had a ranch there in the town. So the school was named after him. 0:06:34 Debra Schwartz: How was it for you, making that move? 0:06:37 Paul Liberatore: You know, I was so young. And I’d been to California before for a couple of years. My stepfather went to college here for a couple of years. He started off in junior college, and then went to U.C. Berkeley for a year, and then he finished at NYU. He went back to finish, and then we came back again. So I’d been moving around quite a lot already.

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0:06:58 Debra Schwartz: So you graduated from high school, and then you went on to college? 0:07:03 Paul Liberatore: To San Diego State, yeah. 0:07:04 Debra Schwartz: San Diego State University. 0:07:05 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I was kind of a surfer kid, growing up down there, so that was a natural place for me to go. 0:07:11 Debra Schwartz: What year were you there? 0:07:12 Paul Liberatore: I was there from ’63 to ’68. 0:07:14 Debra Schwartz: How was that? 0:07:16 Paul Liberatore: Oh great. It was great. I think I really grew up there. Plus, it was during the Vietnam War, so that was always hanging over one’s head — Sword of Damocles — to try to resist the draft. My student deferment ran out, and I suddenly realized that I was a sole surviving son. My father died during World War II. He was in the military, he was a Marine when he died, and I was never adopted, formally, so I’m the only one in my family with my last name. Because of that, I went and applied for sole surviving son status, being the only one left to carry on the family name, and I was granted it, and that’s how I got out of the draft. 0:08:00 Debra Schwartz: Holy yikers! 0:08:01 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:08:01 Debra Schwartz: That wasn’t easy to — I mean, people would pay big money for that status. 0:08:05 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah. Well there was a lottery that was going on. I had a really good lottery number too, but nevertheless I didn’t need it, really, because I’d already done that. 0:08:15 Debra Schwartz: So, you went on to San Diego State — 0:08:17 Paul Liberatore: I graduated from San Diego State. 0:08:18 Debra Schwartz: And you studied. 0:08:19 Paul Liberatore: I got married in my last year there. 0:08:21 Debra Schwartz: Over at San Diego State?

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0:08:22 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I married a girl from Whittier, from Southern California, and we had a child there born in 1968. The year I graduated she was born. 0:08:35 Debra Schwartz: And her name? 0:08:36 Paul Liberatore: Leslie Liberatore. 0:08:37 Debra Schwartz: And she was born while you were in San Diego? 0:08:38 Paul Liberatore: While I was in school, yeah. After I graduated, I went into the offices of the San Diego Union, ’cause I knew the thing that I could do best was write. I used to write my roommates’ papers. You know, they’d say, “I need a paper. It’s due tomorrow. What’s it about?” And I would write it, and they would give me a six-pack or something. 0:09:01 Debra Schwartz: Did you augment [chuckles] — 0:09:05 Paul Liberatore: So, I knew I could do that, and I’d actually gotten a couple of little clips from — some friends of mine had a neighborhood magazine, so I got a couple of little clips. I marched into the offices of the San Diego Union and said that I wanted a job and they said, “Well, did you take journalism in college?” “No.” 0:09:24 Debra Schwartz: What did you take? 0:09:25 Paul Liberatore: I took political science and public administration. I took a lot of English classes, so I was up to speed as far as that goes. But I never really took any journalism. I was on the high school paper in school, in high school. 0:09:39 Debra Schwartz: Did you have an innate sense always that you wanted to be a writer, or was it something — 0:09:44 Paul Liberatore: I knew I wanted to be a writer. That’s what I did the best. I knew that I could do that. And my stepfather made sure that I learned how to type. “Paul,” he said, “I see how you use tools and things like that and you’re not very good.” [laughs] He said, “You’d better take typing.” So I had to go to summer school to take typing. 0:10:03 Debra Schwartz: Back then they didn’t really push typing on men. 0:10:06 Paul Liberatore: No. I was the only guy in the class, which was great. I said, “Wow, this is pretty cool.” I think I took it twice. [chuckles] So I learned how to type, which was a godsend, because that’s what they asked me. They said, “Well, do you like newspapers?” And I said, “Yeah, I grew up on the L.A. Times.” It landed in the driveway every day. I’d run out, pick it up, and bring it in, show it to my father, and grab the sport section, or whatever it was.” “Oh good. And you can type?” “Yeah.” “Can you start in

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two weeks, in L.A.?” I said, “Yeah, I can start in two weeks.” So I packed up my wife and kid and moved to L.A. and started working for — I was in an internship program first, so I worked on the San Pedro News Pilot. No, I worked on the Culver City Star News first, then the Alhambra Post Advocate for a couple — 0:10:53 Debra Schwartz: The what? 0:10:54 Paul Liberatore: The Alhambra Post Advocate. 0:10:56 Debra Schwartz: Oh, the Alhambra Post Advocate. 0:10:57 Paul Liberatore: Then I was hired full time at the San Pedro News Pilot. 0:11:00 Debra Schwartz: And where was that located? 0:11:02 Paul Liberatore: All in Southern California. 0:11:04 Debra Schwartz: What was your beat? 0:11:05 Paul Liberatore: Everybody starts as a cop reporter, police reporter. 0:11:09 Debra Schwartz: Really? 0:11:09 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:11:10 Debra Schwartz: I didn’t know that. Everybody that goes to work for a newspaper starts as a police reporter? 0:11:13 Paul Liberatore: Most cub reporters start as a police reporter. 0:11:15 Debra Schwartz: So what was that like? 0:11:16 Paul Liberatore: Well, for me it was like going into the Harbor District of the L.A.P.D., which is heavy-duty. I’ll never forget, it was Kent State. The day I went in there, during Kent State, right after Kent State, and all the cops were going, “Yeah, they should have shot more of them.” [chuckles] And I’m going “Oh my God.” 0:11:32 Debra Schwartz: Did you have long hair? 0:11:33 Paul Liberatore: I had long hair, I drove a Volkswagen bus, and I had a grape strike bumper sticker on the back. The first day I drove into San Pedro, I got pulled over immediately by the police. “What are you doing here, what are you — ” blah, blah. “I’m starting today. I’m going to work for the paper, the News Pilot.” “Okay. Make sure — ”

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0:12:00 Debra Schwartz: I don’t know if young people are quite aware of the profiling that went on if you were a hippy or, God forbid, gay, or the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time. 0:12:14 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, it was scary. And my first job as a newspaper ended because of politics. The newspaper was owned by Copley Newspapers. 0:12:27 Debra Schwartz: What was the name? 0:12:27 Paul Liberatore: Copley, C-O-P-L-E-Y. I don’t know if they’re still active or not, probably. But they’re very right-wing. In those days, the differences were kind of like now, but maybe even more in some ways. And so the paper was really conservative, right-wing all the way down the line, and I would be assigned — there was a military base in town, Fort MacArthur it’s called. And so every once-in-a-while there’d be an anti-war protest there, or some sort of thing around the California Farm Workers Strike. 0:13:02 Debra Schwartz: Because Cesar Chavez was very — 0:13:02 Paul Liberatore: All that stuff. And San Pedro’s a big labor town. It’s a ship port, so there was a lot of longshoremen. A really interesting place culturally. So I would go out and cover these events, the war protests, or this, that, and the other, and I’d take all my own photographs and we’d develop them and everything. I’d write up my story, and it wouldn’t run. I noticed it wasn’t running in the paper. And these guys would come in — obviously they looked like undercover police people, and pick up my copy and leave. And the managing editor would holler out, “Let them.” So I finally I said — 0:13:44 Debra Schwartz: Why are they paying you if — 0:13:45 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. Well, I guess they paid me to be some sort of an agent for the police. 0:13:48 Debra Schwartz: Oh. 0:13:48 Paul Liberatore: But I wasn’t gonna do that. I’ll never forget it. The managing editor who I won’t name, took me into the wire room one day, which is where they had the machines — you know, the wire machines in those days — and it was noisy in there, and they were clattering away. He said, “Hey, I want you to write this piece on the John Birch Society. A nice good piece about the good work they’re doing.” 0:14:09 Debra Schwartz: You mean supportive of the Birch Society? 0:14:12 Paul Liberatore: Yes, supportive of them. 0:14:13 Debra Schwartz: And even back then everybody knew about the John Birch Society.

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0:14:17 Paul Liberatore: Well, yeah. So I said, “I’m not doing it.” In fact, he handed it to me, and I just threw it on the floor, and I said, “Listen, if you were running my stuff when I go out to these war protests or the farm workers stuff — you’re not running it. I see what you’re doing.” I said, “I would write this, gladly, if there was some balance around here, but there isn’t, so I’m not doing it.” And I went back and sat down and put my head down and expected to get thrown out the door. Didn’t happen. So, I went home that night, and I called the newspaper guild. We were guild, luckily, and they told me, “Don’t go in tomorrow. We’ll figure this out.” And he said, “We’ll back you however.” So I went in the day after that and I was called into the publisher’s office. I stated my case; that’s all I could do. And the publisher was not aware of this, that it was going on. So I really came off pretty well, and the managing editor was kind of squirming around, you know. I don’t think the publisher knew what was going on. So they didn’t fire me. They actually didn’t fire me, which was amazing. But I knew my days were numbered there, so I worked for a short while longer and then I got a job as a social worker for Los Angeles County. Briefly. 0:15:32 Debra Schwartz: As a social worker? 0:15:32 Paul Liberatore: Social worker, eligibility. 0:15:34 Debra Schwartz: Yeah, but you had no training. 0:15:36 Paul Liberatore: Well, you don’t need any training. I had a degree, and they’ll train you. All it is is filling out a bunch of forms. I worked in South Central L.A. I had 130 black women clients. And in those days, you know, I had to go do home visits and all this stuff. 0:15:55 Debra Schwartz: Well you certainly can’t do that now, today, without training. 0:16:00 Paul Liberatore: No, it was pre-crack, too. I would d probably have been killed — some white kid driving around there. But anyway, I did it for about 18 months, and then we moved to Marin in 1972. December of 1972. 0:16:14 Debra Schwartz: What prompted the move? 0:16:15 Paul Liberatore: My wife’s mother and sister lived in Marin already, in Fairfax. 0:16:20 Debra Schwartz: And your wife’s name again? 0:16:21 Paul Liberatore: My first wife. 0:16:23 Debra Schwartz: Okay, let’s hear the first wife.

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0:16:24 Paul Liberatore: Her name now is Linda Bell, and she still lives in Fairfax. She’s been remarried for many years. 30 some years. 0:16:32 Debra Schwartz: So go on, you were saying? 0:16:34 Paul Liberatore: By then I had two children, two daughters, to focus on, and we moved to Fairfax. I didn’t have a job, actually. I worked in the Sleeping Lady Cafe for a week. [chuckles] It was a co-op in those days. Peter Tork was working there from the Monkees. 0:16:54 Debra Schwartz: Oh yes. 0:16:55 Paul Liberatore: It was a trip. I was in back there washing these pots for a week. At the end of the week, I got my pay and it was like $16, something like that, which I immediately used to buy a lid of pot. [chuckles] 0:17:11 Debra Schwartz: And you’re how old now? 0:17:13 Paul Liberatore: I was 27. 0:17:14 Debra Schwartz: So you were 27 with two girls? 0:17:16 Paul Liberatore: Two girls, and I came home and I said, “Well I worked a week at the Sleeping Lady and this is what I’ve got.” My wife just looked at me and said, “Paul, you just gotta get a real job somewhere.” [chuckles] 0:17:28 Debra Schwartz: And then you told me — I forget why you came, because of her work? 0:17:31 Paul Liberatore: No, because her mother and sister lived here. 0:17:34 Debra Schwartz: Oh, so she came — 0:17:35 Paul Liberatore: They lived in Marin already. 0:17:37 Debra Schwartz: So wait. She’s not even working and you’re — 0:17:40 Paul Liberatore: Neither one of us was working. 0:17:41 Debra Schwartz: Washing dishes and smoking up your $16 pay? 0:17:44 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, well I didn’t get a chance to smoke it. [chuckles] But I had applied at the IJ earlier during the strike. The IJ had a very, very serious strike. 0:17:56 Debra Schwartz: Let’s talk about that.

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0:17:57 Paul Liberatore: Well, I wasn’t here then, but I was actually called. When I was in L.A. working as a reporter, I got called by the publisher of The Marin Independent Journal to come up and work, but I would’ve had to have been scab to do it. I said, “No. I can’t do that.” 0:18:12 Debra Schwartz: Tell me a little bit about that strike. 0:18:14 Paul Liberatore: Well the strike lasted — I think it ended in 1971. 0:18:17 Debra Schwartz: And what was it predicated on? 0:18:19 Paul Liberatore: Well, it was a — I’m not sure. It was about pressmen or something. I remember seeing pictures come across the wire when I was working in Southern California, of the strike, and it looked like Flint, Michigan in the ’30s — cops with truncheons beating on people. There was a murder. Somebody was murdered, you know? 0:18:39 Debra Schwartz: And there was a line, and you could cross it or not cross it? 0:18:41 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and I wasn’t gonna cross it. So, I told them, “No, I can’t do that.” And then I moved up here and when I reapplied and I got called. Luckily, after The Sleeping Lady debacle, I got called as a stringer. They wanted to test me out, so I think the College of Marin Board was the first thing I covered. I can’t think of anything more deadly than that. [chuckles] 0:19:07 Debra Schwartz: Yes, that is dangerous. 0:19:10 Paul Liberatore: I’d already done all this stuff, so I kinda had a leg up on it. They brought me into the office and I got hired full-time. 0:19:19 Debra Schwartz: You’ve been here since ’72? 0:19:21 Paul Liberatore: No. I was here till ’79. And then I went to The Chronicle in ’79 — from ’79 to ’89, so 10 years, a whole decade. The ’80s I spent in the city. 0:19:33 Debra Schwartz: Tell me something. You got a call. Had you put out ticklers all around? Did you send your information, did they just find you? 0:19:41 Paul Liberatore: Who? The IJ? 0:19:42 Debra Schwartz: When people were contacting you, the IJ, yes. 0:19:44 Paul Liberatore: I had reapplied. I had applied once before the strike, and then they wanted to hire me during the strike —

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0:19:51 Debra Schwartz: I mean, ’cause they contacted you when you were in Southern California, so you had applied. 0:19:54 Paul Liberatore: I had been up visiting my mother-in-law and my sister in-law. 0:19:57 Debra Schwartz: Oh, so you had anticipated the possibility of moving. 0:20:01 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, we were just thinking about moving up here. But I thought it would be great if I got a job first, you know, instead of the way I did it. 0:20:07 Debra Schwartz: Right, okay. ’Cause I didn’t know if you were notorious for writing these particular kind of articles that weren’t being printed. But your work had been — 0:20:14 Paul Liberatore: No. 0:20:14 Debra Schwartz: It was simply, practically speaking — 0:20:17 Paul Liberatore: We needed to get out of L.A., and we had family here in Marin County, that’s how come I did. It’s the smartest thing I ever did. 0:20:26 Debra Schwartz: So, in 1972 you were in Fairfax, which is different, don’t you think, now than it was then? 0:20:34 Paul Liberatore: Oh, absolutely. I remember it snowed in 1970. It snowed. I thought it was gonna snow every year. I thought, “Wow this is cool! It’s snowing.” [chuckles] I don’t think it ever snowed again. But it did then. Yeah. So the IJ called me and I worked my way back into the business. And I worked here, I worked for the IJ, the first time, from ’72 to ‘79. 0:20:57 Debra Schwartz: And you worked as — 0:21:00 Paul Liberatore: I was a general assignment reporter and a feature writer. 0:21:03 Debra Schwartz: A general what? 0:21:04 Paul Liberatore: General assignment reporter. 0:21:06 Debra Schwartz: Assignment, yes. 0:21:08 Paul Liberatore: So one of the things I did was I worked in the Mill Valley Bureau. That was one of the first beats. My first real beat after I passed my, whatever they call it, trial period. I was assigned in the Mill Valley Bureau. So I had to show up there every morning at 8:00 a.m. and they knew if I was late. I’d drive from Fairfax — I

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lived in Fairfax — to Mill Valley. There were two reporters, and there were some ad people. 0:21:34 Debra Schwartz: And where was the bureau office? 0:21:36 Paul Liberatore: 319 Miller Ave. It’s still there. It’s not a newspaper office anymore, unfortunately. So I started covering Mill Valley essentially. It was one of the first beats. Not just Mill Valley, but also Tiburon and Belvedere, and West Marin. I did a lot of stuff out of Bolinas. 0:21:57 Debra Schwartz: Any particular stories come to mind? 0:22:01 Paul Liberatore: Well, that’s how I met Mimi Fariña. 0:22:05 Debra Schwartz: And for those who may be too young to know who Mimi is? 0:22:09 Paul Liberatore: Mimi Fariña is the younger sister of Joan Baez. And she was married to Richard Fariña, who was a musician and novelist. They did a couple of albums for, I think, Vanguard in the ’60s that were pretty well known and successful. Let’s see, Celebrations for a Grey Day, and one other. I can’t remember the titles right now, but I remember having them when I was a kid. 0:22:38 Debra Schwartz: That Mimi and her husband had made together? ’Cause she performed as well? 0:22:41 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, they performed as a duo, Richard and Mimi Fariña. And Richard was subsequently killed on Mimi’s 21st birthday in a motorcycle accident in Carmel Valley. The day his book had been published, his first book. 0:22:56 Debra Schwartz: He was a writer as well? 0:22:57 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. Thomas Pynchon was the best man at their wedding. He wrote a book called Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. 0:23:05 Debra Schwartz: Of course. 0:23:09 Paul Liberatore: So then after that, Mimi went on to her own career as a folk singer. She worked for The Committee. She worked with The Committee in San Francisco, which was an early sketch comedy group with people like Howard Hesseman. Then in 1974 she was working with another singer named Tom Jans, and they had done an album together. So, when I met her, she came into the IJ bureau office in Mill Valley one day in 1974, saying that she just started this organization to take live music into places, into institutions, places where people couldn’t get out and see live entertainment — senior centers, prisons were the big ones.

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She got the idea from watching B.B. King perform at Sing Sing prison in New York. She was so impressed by that, and that gave her the idea. And so she started that in ’74 and came into the office, with Tom too, as I recall. Of course, like everybody else, every other man of my generation, I was immediately smitten. She was so beautiful. She was charismatic. She said, “Would you like to do a story on the organization?” And I was like, “Yeah. I’ll do a story, of course. It’s great.” It was a great story too, on top of it. I think I did one of the first stories ever on Bread and Roses. 0:24:45 Debra Schwartz: And that was the name of her foundation, Bread and Roses. 0:24:48 Paul Liberatore: Bread and Roses, yeah. It’s still going, actually. 0:24:49 Debra Schwartz: Yes. Still going. 0:24:50 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:24:51 Debra Schwartz: Talk, just for those listening, a little bit about the extent of what Bread and Roses meant to Marin County and to others. I mean this was quite an organization. 0:25:04 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I mean, it’s been going for how many years? [chuckles] She led the organization for 25 years, until she retired. 0:25:13 Debra Schwartz: And she engaged so many local musicians. 0:25:15 Paul Liberatore: Oh, yes. Not only local musicians, but also nationally known. She did these big festivals at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. That’s how we became — got to become — friends first. I wrote a lot of the programs for those. I mean, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Stephen Stills, Hoyt Axton. It’s a huge long list of people who did that. Those festivals were amazing at the Greek. 0:25:48 Debra Schwartz: I think there’s some people that may have thought that those festivals were called Bread and Roses without even realizing that it was the foundation it was supporting because the music was so amazing. 0:25:57 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:25:57 Debra Schwartz: I remember some of those concerts. It was just one great performer after another. 0:26:01 Paul Liberatore: One after another. 0:26:02 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 0:26:02 Paul Liberatore: And they were beautiful. The setting was amazing.

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0:26:04 Debra Schwartz: The sun might be setting, and you’d see one amazing performer singing all by themselves, not surrounded by the band. I’ll never forget that haunting quality of hearing such beautiful music. 0:26:18 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and she always wanted it to be acoustic, mostly. I mean, it could be amped a little bit just so they could hear. It wasn’t like electric rock bands. It was mostly acoustic style. So it had that folk, very personal quality to it. That was important to her. But the first one I covered with her, in ’74, was they were gonna go into San Quentin on New Year’s Day 1975 to do a concert with Boz Skaggs and his partner Les Dudek, and some bunch of other people, and there was a lockdown in San Quentin like the day before so we couldn’t go in. So what happened was, she had everybody come to her house in Mill Valley — up in the hills on Panoramic Highway, she bought this house up there. And so Joan was there, Boz Skaggs was there, Les Dudek I said, Congress of Wonders, John Hendrix, Joan, Paul Krassner, a long list of people, of notable people, and they recorded it. They all performed in her living room, and they recorded it to be broadcast on the San Quentin radio station. And my job was, I went into one of the bedrooms or one of the office rooms and interviewed everybody. Mimi and I became friends that way, and then we became better friends during the festival years when I would write the programs for her. We would hang out a little bit, and it was sort of a flirtation in those days. It wasn’t quite the right time. It didn’t work out, but that would happen later. 0:28:07 Debra Schwartz: Oh, did it? 0:28:08 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, oh yeah. You didn’t know this story? 0:28:11 Debra Schwartz: Well, I may have heard a thing or two, but those listening may not have. [chuckles] 0:28:18 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, right. Well, in 1997, I think, I separated from my second wife and — 0:28:25 Debra Schwartz: And your second wife’s name was, is? 0:28:27 Paul Liberatore: Karen. Karen Peterson. She was a journalist. She worked with the IJ and the Chronicle, and still is — I mean, she doesn’t write for them anymore, doesn’t live here anymore. That was my second wife. We were married 17 years, something like that. 0:28:42 Debra Schwartz: Really? So the first wife lasted — 0:28:44 Paul Liberatore: Eight years. 0:28:46 Debra Schwartz: Eighteen? 0:28:46 Paul Liberatore: Eight.

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0:28:47 Debra Schwartz: Eight, okay. 0:28:48 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:28:49 Debra Schwartz: And then — 0:28:50 Paul Liberatore: Karen and I were married 17 years. 0:28:53 Debra Schwartz: And then that came to — 0:28:54 Paul Liberatore: That came to an end and then Mimi and I were together from ’97 ’til her death in 2001. 0:29:01 Debra Schwartz: A sad time. 0:29:02 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. So we had two healthy years and two not healthy years. Let’s put it that way. 0:29:09 Debra Schwartz: Was it breast cancer? 0:29:10 Paul Liberatore: It was lung cancer that metastasized to lots of places, you know. It was a neuroendocrine kind of cancer, which is not particularly rare, but it’s not that common either. I was separated from my wife. I was living out in Stinson Beach and I ran into Mimi at the Whole Foods in Mill Valley on the way to work. One thing led to another, and so we finally became a couple then. From ’97 as I said until she died. And during that time she left Bread and Roses — she retired from Bread and Roses — and they had this big 25th anniversary concert at the San Francisco Opera House. 0:29:58 Debra Schwartz: She was retiring because of her health? 0:30:00 Paul Liberatore: No, actually not. She wasn’t ill then. When she left Bread and Roses she had not been diagnosed. She may have — I don’t know, cancer, you never know when it manifests, or how long it’s been dormant, but she didn’t leave because she was ill necessarily, but it was just time to go, I guess. 0:30:23 Debra Schwartz: How many years had she been running Bread and Roses? 0:30:25 Paul Liberatore: 25 years. Yeah. So they had this big 25th anniversary show. Kris Kristofferson, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Pete Seeger, Joan. Who else? Lots of people. Yeah, it was quite a big deal and she was there. She had been undergoing chemotherapy, so she lost all her hair. She had this amazing silver turban. She looked beautiful, and I’ll never forget. She got up there to give her talk at the beginning of the concert. No notes or anything, and just let it rip. It was so moving. I was so amazed at how she could do that ’cause it was so emotional. Everybody knew what was going on, of course.

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0:31:16 Debra Schwartz: I wish that the people hearing this could see you when you talk about her. You really do kind of glow. I’m sorry for your loss. 0:31:23 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah, thank you. She was special. She really was. She wasn’t easy. [chuckles] She was a very complicated person — and complex — but she was really committed to Bread and Roses. It was like her children. She never had children, so I think Bread and Roses was her purpose, her mission, so yeah. She was pretty amazing woman. 0:31:51 Debra Schwartz: So all this while you were writing. As this is going on you were first working at the IJ and then you were working with the Chronicle you said for 10 years. 0:32:01 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:32:02 Debra Schwartz: And what kind of work were you doing with the Chronicle? 0:32:05 Paul Liberatore: Well, I was a young gun, kind of. I remember one of the first big assignments I ever had — well, the first big assignment was a big kidnapping up in Ukiah. It was the Stayner kidnapping. You remember that? It was this guy kidnapped these little kids and kept them for a long time, and he’d kidnapped a second child and — 0:32:29 Debra Schwartz: Oh, this was a terrible story. 0:32:31 Paul Liberatore: It was a terrible story. 0:32:32 Debra Schwartz: Oh, he was — I hate to say it, but anyway. 0:32:36 Paul Liberatore: Kenneth Parnell. 0:32:37 Debra Schwartz: Eventually one young man he kidnapped — the man kidnapped a young boy — 0:32:43 Paul Liberatore: A young boy. 0:32:43 Debra Schwartz: And then the older boy finally snapped and — 0:32:46 Paul Liberatore: Turned him in. 0:32:46 Debra Schwartz: And they escaped. 0:32:47 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, they escaped. 0:32:47 Debra Schwartz: With the younger boy.

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0:32:48 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, that’s exactly right. That was my first story. 0:32:53 Debra Schwartz: Oh my gosh! This was huge. 0:32:56 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, it was a big story then. It was a really big story. 0:32:57 Debra Schwartz: And sadly, the older boy did not live much longer. He died in a motorcycle accident. 0:33:02 Paul Liberatore: That’s exactly right. That’s good. That’s very good. 0:33:05 Debra Schwartz: Yes, I remember. 0:33:06 Paul Liberatore: That’s right. And I think the younger one died too. 0:33:09 Debra Schwartz: Oh, is that so? 0:33:10 Paul Liberatore: I’m not sure, but I think Timothy White, I think? 0:33:13 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 0:33:15 Paul Liberatore: I’m not sure, but I seem to remember something about it. 0:33:17 Debra Schwartz: This was a sensational story. 0:33:19 Paul Liberatore: It was a sensational story, absolutely. 0:33:21 Debra Schwartz: And had a lot of coverage in the Valley and all over California because it’s not common for the victims to somehow manage to escape in the way that they did. And then why didn’t they before, or the older boy before? All the questions and none answered. 0:33:43 Paul Liberatore: All the psychological things. Yes, right. 0:33:46 Debra Schwartz: And then of course the heinous nature of the whole experience. I remember when the kidnapper — what was his name? 0:33:53 Paul Liberatore: Kenneth Parnell. 0:33:54 Debra Schwartz: Parnell was in the Fresno lockup, I believe. I thought, “Is there going to be — ” 0:34:00 Paul Liberatore: That’s where they kidnapped him. You remember more than I do.

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0:34:02 Debra Schwartz: Yeah. “Are they gonna have a lynching there?” I wondered at the time. 0:34:09 Paul Liberatore: Kenneth Parnell. He was a night manager — creepy thing — night manager of the hotel where I stayed when I was there. But I was just given the assignment. I was a young guy. “Why don’t you go up and cover the story?” And I had the clothes on my back and I went up there. “We need you to stay there.” [chuckles] “I don’t have anything.” “Go buy yourself some clothes and a toothbrush.” 0:34:34 Debra Schwartz: And “there” being — 0:34:36 Paul Liberatore: A city desk at the San Francisco Chronicle. So that was my baptism of fire, and I got into it. It was a national story, so it was exciting as all hell. 0:34:46 Debra Schwartz: And also important. 0:34:47 Paul Liberatore: It was important. It was exciting, and I was competing against everybody, all the big-time reporters. We’d all meet in the bar at the hotel at the end of the day, and the — 0:34:57 Debra Schwartz: The hotel was? 0:34:58 Paul Liberatore: I think the Ukiah Hotel. It was all remodeled. It had all been redone with antiques, and it was very kind of bed-and-breakfasty even then. It was kind of a cool place to hang out. 0:35:09 Debra Schwartz: I think pot money had started to — 0:35:11 Paul Liberatore: Maybe that’s what it was. 0:35:12 Debra Schwartz: Help revitalize the buildings in the town by then. 0:35:15 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, yeah. 0:35:16 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 0:35:17 Paul Liberatore: So it was like I was gung-ho on that story and I think I was up there for weeks at a time. 0:35:22 Debra Schwartz: Did you interview anyone directly in the story? 0:35:24 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah, lots of people. It was a 24/7 story, and I worked it hard for every single day until it resolved. But that was my baptism of fire and it was the best, so much fun. It was hard work, but it was great fun. 0:35:45 Debra Schwartz: And a hard story to write about.

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0:35:47 Paul Liberatore: A hard story to write about, but I was in a position to do it. I was right at the age, I had enough experience. I knew what I was doing and I’m proud of myself. 0:35:53 Debra Schwartz: So you felt you could do justice to it. 0:35:55 Paul Liberatore: I’m a bulldog when it comes to stuff like that. I don’t like getting beat. It’s the worst feeling in the world to have someone go, “Hey, the Examiner’s got this, how come you don’t?” I don’t ever wanna hear that. I never wanna hear that. So I worked hard and got some scoops. At one point I forget to read, I can’t remember what I’m reading but the public defender, the D.A. or somebody called me in, they subpoenaed me to say how I got something or other, some piece of information. 0:36:26 Debra Schwartz: Oh, really? 0:36:26 Paul Liberatore: So I found myself becoming the story, which none of us wants to do. [chuckles] I can’t remember, it didn’t last long. But that’s how close I was to it. And so I was the kind of guy that, for a few years, they used for things like that. You know they say, “Thanksgiving, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I said, “Well, my family — ” “We need you to go up to Redding, up to Mt. Shasta and do a story on the closing of this lumber mill. It’s a town store. The whole town is around this lumber mill and they’re closing it on Thanksgiving and we want you to go up and do this poignant heartrending story.” And they said, “You’ll fly up with one of our photographers,” who was a pilot. So we got in this little plane and flew up, landed on some little airstrip. Nobody there. “Hey Paul, jump out and put those things under the wheel!” 0:37:24 Debra Schwartz: It really does seem kind of exciting, the telling. 0:37:27 Paul Liberatore: Oh, it was great. Those were the best years of my life, I think, as a writer, as a reporter. I mean, I did all kinds of stuff like that. If they needed somebody, there I was. And I got good at it too. And then I become a rewrite guy, which, in those days, was a kind of a honored position. If you could be the rewrite guy... 0:37:52 Debra Schwartz: So a rewrite; describe that process. 0:37:55 Paul Liberatore: A rewrite guy in those days was, if there was a big story breaking — a fire, a flood, murder, whatever — and you have reporters in the field, they were all funneling information into the news desk, the city desk, and then that would be funneled to me. So I took all the stuff from everybody else and made it into a story on deadline. 0:38:19 Debra Schwartz: And who got credit for the story? 0:38:21 Paul Liberatore: I did.

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0:38:22 Debra Schwartz: Not all those who funneled it? 0:38:23 Paul Liberatore: No, no. 0:38:24 Debra Schwartz: Wow. 0:38:25 Paul Liberatore: That’s the way it worked. You wrote it, you got the byline. 0:38:28 Debra Schwartz: Wow. 0:38:29 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. Nowadays they put so-and-so contributed. 0:38:31 Debra Schwartz: Multiple names, yes. 0:38:34 Paul Liberatore: Sometimes there were multiple names but most of the time, the rewrite guy got — 0:38:37 Debra Schwartz: They just handed it to you. 0:38:39 Paul Liberatore: Well, they didn’t hand it to me. [chuckles] That’s a very specialized skill, to be able to write fast. The Chronicle is funny, they had the 30-30 goal, which was, you could write 30 inches in 30 minutes with the heat on. [laughs] Half in the bag, and those guys could do it because they were always in Hanno’s or the M&M, which were local newspaper bars. 0:39:09 Debra Schwartz: So, you’re living with a group of individuals — a particular kind of person. You don’t really think about those kinds of journalists these days. 0:39:18 Paul Liberatore: No, they’re done — 0:39:19 Debra Schwartz: But I mean they used to make movies, Cary Grant and — no, not Cary Grant, that other guy, I remember. 0:39:26 Paul Liberatore: All these things like The Front Page. 0:39:28 Debra Schwartz: Yes, The Front Page, great. 0:39:29 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 0:39:30 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 0:39:31 Paul Liberatore: I mean, I got to the tail end of the Golden Age. So Caen was there, Herb Caen, Art Hoppe, Stanton Delaplane, Charles McCabe. I wrote Charles McCabe’s obit. He died on a Sunday. I was the City Editor on a Sunday.

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0:39:47 Debra Schwartz: Were you there when Hunter Thompson was writing his column? Oh, he was the Examiner. 0:39:54 Paul Liberatore: No, he worked for the Examiner. 0:39:56 Debra Schwartz: Right, right. 0:39:57 Paul Liberatore: I was there when — what’s his name? I’ll think of it in a minute. He just died. Warren Hinckle. Warren Hinckle was a real character, I was there when he was around. And I knew Caen, when I went to the Chronicle, Herb Caen called me one day on the phone at my desk and welcomed me to the paper. I had written a column for the IJ called “Overlook” in the ’70s and it was kind of a gossip, a “three-dot” kind of a column. I learned a lot from Herb Caen, but not about the subject matter so much just the rhythm of his writing. If I ever wanted to kinda break loose a little bit, if I got stuck, I would read him just for the sound of it, just for the beat of it ’cause he was a real master at that. That’s the trick, the beat, how he sets up his little items. So I wrote this column called “Overlook” and he quoted me a few times, and he always credited me. And so when I showed up there he said — according to Jesse Hamlin, who became a music writer at the Chronicle, but then he was Herb Caen’s assistant. And believe it or not he thought, Herb Caen thought — this is how insecure these guys are, how insecure we all are — he thought that they hired me to take his place. And he told me that. He said, “You can take my place, you can come in. I’ll move right out, but I’m not ready to go yet.” [laughs] And I think he wrote into his 80s, right? He died writing a column. I was long gone by then. 0:41:33 Debra Schwartz: It’s interesting to think that the people that you feel are slick as slick can be, who really must feel the confidence of their position, so well read, so revered, and yet they’re just as insecure as everybody else. 0:41:46 Paul Liberatore: They are. Yeah. And him especially. That’s probably why he was out every single night. That was his thing. If he stopped doing that he was nobody and he knew it. He always dressed to the nines. He invited me over. “I’ll show you my item-smasher. Come on over to the office. The Loyal, the Loyal Royal,” and all that. 0:42:08 Debra Schwartz: The item-smasher? 0:42:09 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. He had a little box and when people would give him items — you know he wrote these items — and so he put them, the ones that he hadn’t used yet, he’d put them in this little box, and they were on a roll. And this little box was the item-smasher. And the Loyal Royal was this typewriter. 0:42:28 Debra Schwartz: Oh really. 0:42:29 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. He was something else. He invited me to come into his office, but it took me a while to even work up the nerve to do it so.

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0:42:37 Debra Schwartz: What were you nervous about? 0:42:39 Paul Liberatore: Well, it’s Herb Caen, and I’m just a cub reporter from Marin County. I’m in my checkered cowboy shirt, my jeans, you know what I mean, and he’s in this three-piece Wilkes Bashford suit, and he kind of looked at me up and down, this hippie kid from — “You’re Paul Liberatore?” “Yeah, yeah.” We talked for a while, and but I mean I never forgot that. He appreciated what I was doing. He knew that I had a certain style that he could recognize. In writing that’s a big deal. Lots of people write. Like in music, if you hear Jerry Garcia play the guitar, you know immediately who it is, and you hear Carlos playing, you know who it is. And if somebody can recognize something in the way you write, the tone you strive or the rhythm of it all, that’s what you’re striving for. 0:43:40 Debra Schwartz: When you describe writing it sounds like music. 0:43:42 Paul Liberatore: It is music to me. I’m an ear writer. I couldn’t diagram a sentence. I used to be able to. I could learn how to do that, but I don’t use it, so I forgot it. But I write by ear. Always have. How does it sound? 0:43:57 Debra Schwartz: Do you read your sentences out loud? 0:44:00 Paul Liberatore: No. 0:44:00 Debra Schwartz: You just feel it. 0:44:00 Paul Liberatore: I just hear it in my head. 0:44:02 Debra Schwartz: You just hear it in your head? 0:44:02 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, it’s music in my head. I can hear it. 0:44:05 Debra Schwartz: Like give me an example. 0:44:07 Paul Liberatore: Well, I’ve learned to write fast. In this is business you can’t belabor things too much. You’re on deadlines. I got two deadlines a week, maybe more, and so I move copy so. And when I’m working on daily stuff, the deadline is every single day. But yeah, I’ll work a sentence, sometimes a paragraph. I think of it in terms of building blocks. I think in my family history I have bricklayers or stonemasons or something because to me lot of writing is sculpting. Sculpture, you build stuff. It’s visual, too. In poetry they call it concrete, right. You can see it. So you see it, you hear it. That’s why I don’t like to dictate stuff ’cause I don’t get the tactile experience of writing it and seeing it on the page as it appears. It makes a difference. 0:45:01 Debra Schwartz: I wish I could be inside your head looking through your eyes. Is there any way to describe this process, how you see it and hear it, and how you

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build it and construct it? You describe it as sort of a visceral thinking thing, but it seems intuitive to me. 0:45:21 Paul Liberatore: It’s intuitive. It’s talent. I don’t have a lot of talents, but that’s one I do have. I’ve always been able to write pretty much as well as anybody I was around. Even when I went to the Chronicle, I knew the guys sitting next to me — he went to Harvard, and this guy went to Stanford. 0:45:37 Debra Schwartz: San Diego State University. 0:45:38 Paul Liberatore: San Diego State. Harvard of the West, here we are! But I could compete with any of them, and not because I have a classical education, just because I have this gift, a gimmick, whatever it is. 0:45:51 Debra Schwartz: Gotta have a gimmick. 0:45:53 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. It’s just a knack. Some people have it, some people don’t. 0:45:56 Debra Schwartz: And your gimmick is? 0:45:58 Paul Liberatore: My gimmick is I have the ability to relate to people with words on paper or on screen or however you wanna deliver it. And I always have, since I was a little kid. I remember in first grade the teacher would go around and you would try to sound out words and there was this one word that none of the kids could sound out. And then he said, “Paul, can you read that?” “Yes. It’s responsibility. [chuckles] I can read it, it’s not a problem.” And so it’s always been like that, and it’s hard to describe it because you can’t think it too much. It just happens, most of the time. Believe me, there are times when — I don’t know if you like to write or not, but I don’t like to write. [chuckles] 0:46:46 Debra Schwartz: I’m with John Muir. I consider it the eternal grind. 0:46:48 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. I like to research, and I’ll research forever but eventually you have to write the thing. 0:46:54 Debra Schwartz: You have to ingest, metabolize, and spit out something. 0:47:00 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and it’s hard ’cause I don’t just do it. It has to be a certain standard or else I’m not gonna be able to do it. I’m not happy with it. So yeah, it’s hard to say how you do it, how you write a lead. I don’t know, it’s just something that sometimes is easy and sometimes it isn’t. But it’s gotta sound good, it’s gotta flow. It’s gotta flow. People have said that my writing is smooth. That’s what I try to do. 0:47:33 Debra Schwartz: Have you ever read another person’s work and just had that feeling that that is a beautifully moving sentence. Give me —

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0:47:42 Paul Liberatore: John Updike. 0:47:42 Debra Schwartz: John Updike. 0:47:43 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. I was a huge fan of John Updike. But you can’t copy him because he’s in a class all by himself. I learned a lot about lyrical writing from him. Talk about — it just blew my mind. The way he would describe things, oh my god. And he does it a lot. It’s hard to do that and maintain interest. 0:48:07 Debra Schwartz: Are you a fan of Hemingway? 0:48:09 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I like Hemingway. I like Steinbeck more. 0:48:13 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 0:48:15 Paul Liberatore: Those kind of writers. 0:48:16 Debra Schwartz: Handsome writers, I call them, not because they’re handsome, but because their words are so handsome. 0:48:21 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, that’s it, that’s right. I liked Hemingway. 0:48:24 Debra Schwartz: There’s an efficiency, but it’s not efficient. It’s perfect. 0:48:32 Paul Liberatore: Guys like Ian McEwen now. He’s great. I’m reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. She’s pretty good too. It’s an older style, but she’s got the sound too. 0:48:41 Debra Schwartz: Have you ever written a book? 0:48:44 Paul Liberatore: Yes. I wrote a book that was published by Grove Atlantic in New York. It’s called The Road to Hell and it was about the Stephen Bingham/George Jackson case here in Marin County, you know the Marin County shootout, San Quentin Massacre in 1970 and ’71. It was optioned for a film twice. The second option just ran out. 0:49:10 Debra Schwartz: You’ve been writing about music in the IJ for a long time now. 0:49:15 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I’ve been writing about music for a long time. Not just music. I’ve never written just music, but yes. 0:49:22 Debra Schwartz: You are the premier rock writer though. 0:49:23 Paul Liberatore: In Marin County?

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0:49:24 Debra Schwartz: It seems like if ever there’s gonna be a good concert somebody says, “Call Paul Liberatore.” 0:49:26 Paul Liberatore: I’m the only one. When I started in 1972 there was a bunch of young reporters: me, Nels Johnson, another guy named George Nevin. We were all kids, and there was no music coverage, no popular music coverage at all, in the Independent Journal, none. So, we said, “Well, let’s at least start listing things, so people know there’re shows around there.” Lion’s Share was going those days, George’s was going. There was a lot of venues. So, we started something call Rock Billboard where we just — “Playing tonight.” And these were the days where Van Morrison was living in Fairfax and David Bromberg, Mike Bloomfield. These were some serious times. The early ’70s. Late ’60s, early ’70s. 0:50:14 Debra Schwartz: And in Mill Valley. I’ve interviewed quite a few. We’ve got Austin de Lone, we’ve got Lorin Rowan. 0:50:22 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, Lorin Rowan, and Peter Rowan was around then, too. Stinson Beach and Mill Valley. 0:50:30 Debra Schwartz: Larry Cragg was with Prune Music. 0:50:33 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, Larry in Prune. Lee Michaels who had a hit with “Do You Know What I Mean?” 0:50:41 Debra Schwartz: And Jimmy Dillon. 0:50:43 Paul Liberatore: Jimmy was here since ’69. 0:50:45 Debra Schwartz: There was a lot of music over here. 0:50:46 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, Grace Slick was living in Marin then. 0:50:48 Debra Schwartz: David Crosby. 0:50:49 Paul Liberatore: David Crosby, exactly. 0:50:52 Debra Schwartz: Grateful Dead, of course. 0:50:52 Paul Liberatore: Sammy Hagar later, a little later, but not that much later. Yeah. And I was working in the Mill Valley Bureau during all that period. But also I started covering shows. I covered Patti Smith at College of Marin, 1974, and I can still remember the lead sort of. She walked out on stage and somebody threw a flower at her feet. Then she picked it up, put it in her mouth, chewed it up and spit it out and that started the concert. It was when Horses was a big hit. You know that album, classic album, Horses. She’s a trip, Patti Smith. I just saw her again not too long ago at

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Dominican. But anyway, the IJ ran it on our front page. Page 1, Patti Smith at College of Marin. And I covered Van Morrison and Jesse Colin Young at the Marin Civic. Page 1. So, that sort of started the coverage, popular rock music coverage at the IJ. 0:52:08 Debra Schwartz: Do you enjoy writing about music? 0:52:12 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I do. I have a specialty, and it’s what I’m known for. Those are my people. And I’m the only rock writer that I know of who has worked as a working musician as well. I don’t hold myself up as — I’m not Jimmy Dillon. Jimmy can play. If I started right now until I drop dead, I never could get half as good as he is on the guitar. He’s just a great guitar player, and he’s worked at it, and he’s the first one to say it: “I’ve been doing this my whole life. This is the only thing I do. You do this other thing, or you can do this too, and we can work together.” I’ve worked with musicians, but I don’t make a living in music. Although I did okay this year. [chuckles] I’ve made a living as a writer. Music is an avocation, let’s put it that way. But I know those guys, and I can sometimes relate to them on the same level as I’ve been playing music since I was a kid, 12, 13 years-old. 0:53:17 Debra Schwartz: What is your instrument? 0:53:18 Paul Liberatore: I play guitar and sing. I was in folk groups in high school and all that sort of thing, in college. Something I’ve always done, so I knew about it already, and I was interested in it so I started covering it, and nobody else was. 0:53:33 Debra Schwartz: How was it for you to have musical ability yourself and an interest in music, and then all of a sudden you’re meeting and writing about these people that possibly you are a fan of? 0:53:52 Paul Liberatore: I played for three or four years with John Cipollina of Quicksilver. I played a lot of shows with him. I’ll never forget it. The first show I ever did, I think it was with him, was at The Starry Plough in Berkeley. It was also with Martin Fierro the great saxophone player. I think it was Martin’s band and I was brought in to play guitar, and sing. And I’ll never forget, I’m setting up my stuff and all of a sudden I look and there’s these legs coming, this incredible bat guitar that he played. And I just feel the electricity coming off of him. 0:54:24 Debra Schwartz: Everybody says that about him. 0:54:26 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, you’re just like, “Geez, it’s a rock star.” He’s a rock star. And he was, he is, he was, and it was like, “Okay, I’m playing with him.” 0:54:38 Debra Schwartz: So does that — 0:54:38 Paul Liberatore: And I played with Gary Duncan who was also in Quicksilver, the other guitar player in Quicksilver — a great player too. And Gary wanted me to play with him in a band. I played a little jam session with him and Greg

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Errico, this drummer from Sly and Family Stone in his studio here in San Rafael. So I got to hang with the heavies. I played with Martin Fierro, Merl Saunders, people like that, which is an experience that most of us don’t get. 0:55:07 Debra Schwartz: Do you ever play with them and then write about them. 0:55:10 Paul Liberatore: No. 0:55:11 Debra Schwartz: You separate it. 0:55:11 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. I’ve done a few first-person stories, probably not very good ones, ’cause it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to separate them, and sometimes it gets confusing ’cause you don’t know, “Are these guys letting me play with them because of who I am or what?” 0:55:25 Debra Schwartz: I didn’t wanna say anything. You have to wonder. 0:55:27 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. I’m very aware of it. But you know what the truth is? They’re not gonna be up there and be embarrassed. They’re not gonna let anybody embarrass them. 0:55:37 Debra Schwartz: No. 0:55:38 Paul Liberatore: And I wouldn’t have embarrassed them. I hold that. I don’t think I’d last very long if I couldn’t hold my own. And I would know too. Or people would tell me. But I managed to do it. And Martin Fierro used to always tell me “You’re up there representing your parents and your grandparents and your ancestors. It’s in your blood. It’s in your blood, just let that happen.” “Okay, I will.” That’s what he would say. 0:56:06 Debra Schwartz: Good advice. 0:56:06 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah. I said “Alright man, I’ll let it rip.” 0:56:11 Debra Schwartz: Now Marin County and Mill Valley, there’s a lot of musicians, some of them were born and raised here. One of Mill Valley’s most famous musicians, especially back in the ’70s, is Bill Champlin. 0:56:24 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah. 0:56:25 Debra Schwartz: And the Sons of Champlin just played at Rancho Nicasio. 0:56:27 Paul Liberatore: I just talked with him. I interviewed him before he played the fair, the Marin County Fair. 0:56:31 Debra Schwartz: Yes, he did. He’s also been very generous too, involved with Mill Valley fundraising for the Art Festival last year and the gala, which included

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Jimmy Dillon and Austin de Lone and several other musicians as well. It was quite a collection. I called them Mill Valley’s musical sons, and of course Tamara Champlin was there as well singing. She was the woman. But did you ever play with him? 0:57:01 Paul Liberatore: Bill? No, I never did. I never played with him. I played with Terry Haggerty, once or twice. 0:57:06 Debra Schwartz: Who had been in the Sons of Champlin. 0:57:08 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. Terry was one of the founders. He was a guitar player. He played for years and years. And of course I covered them, when Bill Champlin left the Sons to go to L.A. and try to seek his fortune. I wrote the story about him, about that. I’ve known him and written about him forever. He’s suffering from cancer now. 0:57:28 Debra Schwartz: Hopefully not anymore. 0:57:30 Paul Liberatore: Hope not. When I talked to him this summer he was in chemo. 0:57:34 Debra Schwartz: He finished his chemo. 0:57:36 Paul Liberatore: Good. 0:57:36 Debra Schwartz: I think three weeks ago he finished. So he was up there performing and playing away. 0:57:40 Paul Liberatore: Oh fantastic. Very good. I was surprised, he was gonna play this gig here, chemo or not. He’s lost his hair, he was gonna wear a wig and I was impressed. 0:57:51 Debra Schwartz: Hey, he’s truly a traveling minstrel, he and his wife. 0:57:56 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, he is. He’s talented. I remember him from the days, the Fairfax days, his Fairfax street choir and all that stuff. 0:58:06 Debra Schwartz: Do you ever, do you have a memory of a moment, musically, that stands apart? You’ve been here a good long while, and you have, I’m sure — 0:58:18 Paul Liberatore: 40 something years. 0:58:19 Debra Schwartz: Yeah, 40 something years. Lots of things have happened. People have come and gone. Are there moments that resonate in particular in your memory? Moments that moved you in some way? 0:58:34 Paul Liberatore: Personally, you mean?

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0:58:35 Debra Schwartz: Mm-hmm. Sometimes it can be a moment or an event, or something that just stays with you. Do you have anything in mind? 0:58:45 Paul Liberatore: Oh wow. There’s been so many things. I think for me getting to play with some of my idols as I mentioned to you. Those were experiences. I got turned on to classical. I got turned on to opera at one point. And I actually wrote kind of a rock ’n’ roller’s take on opera for years, from about 1991 through — ’cause there’s a lot of similarities between rock and roll ’n’ opera, especially Wagner and people like that. Bombastic, big stuff. 0:59:25 Debra Schwartz: Drama. 0:59:26 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, drama. A lot of beautiful melodies, it can be. But I don’t know. I’m trying to remember what stands out. Are you talking like an individual concert that blew me away or something like that? 0:59:45 Debra Schwartz: Whatever comes to mind. It’s very nice with these interviews to help people to see the world that you’ve seen, or appreciated, and so poignant moments mark time and — 1:00:00 Paul Liberatore: One of the things that I could say is that musicians have a certain code and of course in a place like this everybody knows everyone else and so there’s this camaraderie. You see it locally but you also see it on the pages of Rolling Stone. People know who you are, who everyone else is, once they get past the part where you’re competitive and everybody who stays in the business most of the time gets passed that and they realize that it’s a brotherhood or a sisterhood or whatever it is. And so for me to have been a part of that, not just as a journalist, but also as a player, that’s heartwarming to me, that I’ve been able to do that and play both those sides of the fence. I try to separate the two and I often do. When I’m working as a reporter I don’t try to crossover and be a musician. But I’ve been on the stage, I’ve been there. I’ve been in the jams that take you some place that you’ve never been before. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I’ve felt the magic of that and I know a lot of people fantasize, “Oh God, what’s it like to be a rocker?” in the big leagues of rock and feel that. I felt that and so I can go to my maker knowing that that’s not something I’m gonna wonder about. I haven’t felt it in the sense that I’ve had 30,000, 50,000 people but I’ve had thousands, you know? 1:01:44 Debra Schwartz: And you’ve had the synergy of being with other musicians and merging at that time and synchronicity. 1:01:51 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. And I’ve seen it with Mimi and Joan — with Joan a lot, you know, so I felt what it’s like to feel that fame. Just being with her. She can’t walk down the street without being recognized. I mean it’s less and less as we get older and people get younger. But I’ve seen all that, been around that, so there’s no mystery about it anymore. There’s no, “Wow, I wish I would’ve done that!” Or “What was that like?”

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I’ve seen that and I think it helps as a writer ’cause I’m not overly impressed by them anymore. I can see what they’re good at or what they’re not good at. 1:02:40 Debra Schwartz: So it helps you to be more objective over all. 1:02:43 Paul Liberatore: Well, I know more about it. I know more probably than most guys who write about music. Maybe not technically, but I can hear. I’ve heard it from both ends and I know the issues. I know when somebody can’t hit the notes anymore and I also know when it doesn’t matter if they hit ’em or not, because that’s not what people are there for. They’re there ’cause they wanna hear the old songs or they remember who these people were when they were — 1:03:16 Debra Schwartz: Remember who they were. 1:03:17 Paul Liberatore: Remember who they were at the time. It puts them in a certain place. But my music is on the page, that’s really where it is. I got a little bit of talent, musically, but not enough. [chuckles] 1:03:44 Debra Schwartz: Is it gratifying to have a gift, an ability, and then be able to express it and be recognized and paid for it? Not all artists have that. 1:03:57 Paul Liberatore: Well, that’s why I got into newspapers. [chuckles] Writing, you actually get paid for it. A living wage, you can kind of get a salary or something. And newspaper reporter is the first thing I thought of. So I haven’t made a lot of money in my career, none of us really does unless we break out and write a best seller or something like that. But I’ve raised two kids and owned three houses in Marin County, and I’ve done okay. 1:04:31 Debra Schwartz: Yeah, I’d say so. 1:04:31 Paul Liberatore: It has been a good career. It has been sad to see what has happened to it. 1:04:39 Debra Schwartz: Let’s talk just briefly about that, the newspaper business and the changing world. 1:04:46 Paul Liberatore: It makes me sick. It gets me angry sometimes. Because the newspaper business is an old kind of model. It’s an old industrial sorta model. The ownership, the management and the working class — all the rest of us, from the reporters to the printers and all those jobs are now gone, of course. Like the IJ strike, that was a class conflict, that’s what that was, in the most graphic sense. People are getting beat up and killed and everything else. So it’s people’s livelihood and living. And what I resented about the newspaper business, and I think what helped bring about its downfall, is that it never valued its employees enough. And then digital started and the whole computer thing began, guys who were good at technology left to do something else to make their fortune. And good for them, but I think I saw that happen too many times where the

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newspaper didn’t value talent, like “We need to hold onto this guy. This is the future. We need to hold onto this guy, make it worth his while to stay here.” Then maybe there wouldn’t have been a Craigslist. Maybe we would have come up with that idea and saved ourselves, I don’t know. But it bothers me that we’ve had that adversarial relationship with ownership and with management and with these big chains that now own everything. I think that did not serve them in the long run, you know? They may have made a lot. They were making 20-30% profit a year for a long, long time and nickel and diming us, you know? The Chronicle had to go on strike, not while I was there but before, and we threated to strike a few times when I was there. Just to get a raise, to get basic things that we shouldn’t have had to fight for really. And so that part of it — and then digital hit. They were all caught dead. They weren’t ready for it. 1:06:56 Debra Schwartz: But the IJ’s still printing. 1:07:00 Paul Liberatore: The IJ’s still printing. We make most of our money on print, believe it or not. Although that’s starting to change. They’re going for what they call a crossover point where they start making more from digital than they do from the print. When that happens, it’s starting to happen — it is in some areas already. So the IJ has stabilized and is now in a growth curve, I think, which has taken a long time. For people like me, I’ve seen all my colleagues go, get laid off, get bought out, retire. I’m the oldest person here by a long shot and a couple of guys who were my peers have left. So not many of my generation still doing this to begin with. 1:07:47 Debra Schwartz: While you’re doing this, you’ve been around since the ’60s. You’ve seen a lot going on. Now we have the anniversary of the Summer of Love. 1:07:57 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 1:07:58 Debra Schwartz: You’ve been writing about that, yes? 1:08:00 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and I did a whole show about it with Jimmy. 1:08:03 Debra Schwartz: You have, yes you have. Tell us a little bit about that. 1:08:07 Paul Liberatore: Well Jimmy and I — 1:08:09 Debra Schwartz: Jimmy Dillon. 1:08:10 Paul Liberatore: Jimmy Dillon and I. It all started when the Mill Valley Library — was it the Library or the Historical Society? The Historical Society, maybe, asked me to come down to the library and talk about Mill Valley and rock history. 1:08:27 Debra Schwartz: Historical Society. 1:08:28 Paul Liberatore: Historical Society.

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1:08:29 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:08:30 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and it was a big hit. A lot of people came and they had to move it from a smaller — 1:08:33 Debra Schwartz: The first Wednesday speaker series. 1:08:36 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, the speaker series, right. 1:08:36 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:08:37 Paul Liberatore: And they moved it up into the big main library room, and I brought my slides and did a little PowerPoint thing, and I talked about rock in Mill Valley and Marin County and all of that. People loved it. 1:08:51 Debra Schwartz: Full house. 1:08:52 Paul Liberatore: It was packed, yeah, a packed house. Were you there? 1:08:54 Debra Schwartz: Mm-hmm. I happen to be in charge of the first Wednesday speaker series now. 1:08:58 Paul Liberatore: Did you call me? 1:09:00 Debra Schwartz: No, I think that was Bill. 1:09:01 Paul Liberatore: Bill called me. 1:09:03 Debra Schwartz: Before he left, yes. 1:09:04 Paul Liberatore: And I invited Jimmy down. I said, “Jimmy, come down. You’ve been around for a long time. You can be the musician’s perspective and we’ll do this together.” So we did. We did a little song — 1:09:14 Debra Schwartz: And you performed. 1:09:14 Paul Liberatore: At the end. Yeah, I did a Grateful Dead song, “The Days Between,” a Jerry Garcia song, actually. Somebody said, “Why don’t you do that with live music?” So we kind of talked about it for a while and said, “Yeah, let’s try that.” So we combined my narration and visuals with — we hired a bunch of really good local singers to celebrate Marin County rock. All the songs were written by Marin County — in fact, Mike Duke from Rancho Nicasio came and did a couple the songs that he wrote for Huey Lewis. You know, we had people like that and people loved it. They thought it was — did you see that one too?

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1:10:00 Debra Schwartz: No. 1:10:00 Paul Liberatore: Oh, okay. That was at Sweetwater. We did it at Sweetwater. I had to go get a screen. I rented a screen and did this whole thing and people went: “When are you gonna do that again? That was really great.” So when the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love came, it was a no-brainer. I looked at him, he looked at me. “We can do the 50th anniversary?” “Where?” Well, you remember that story I told you about Patti Smith, at College of Marin? That was produced by Sydney Goldstein, who went on to found City Arts and Lectures. Sydney had taken over the Nourse Theater in San Francisco, right around the street from Davies Hall, raised a bunch of money and refurbished it, made this beautiful venue that they moved out of Herbst, where they did all their lecture series and moved into the Nourse. So I had written about Patti Smith at Dominican not that long ago, last year I guess. Sydney read it and said, “Yes!” ’Cause I meant it. I had covered her in ’74 at College of Marin. Sydney wrote me an email: “Yeah, that was my show and everything, let’s have lunch.” So I had lunch with her and she showed me the theater and she said, “Do you wanna use it? You have a band, you wanna do something with it? In the summer we don’t use it that much.” So I ran back to Jimmy and said, “I’ve got this theater. Let’s put something together. Let’s propose something and see if she’ll go for it.” So we came up with a concept of using young performers to do the old songs to celebrate the 50th anniversary. That was the basic concept and I would do the history, too. History and live music with a house band. I proposed it to Sydney and she said, “Yeah, go for it.” So we had the theater and at first she was gonna co-produce it with us and then she decided against it ’cause she was retiring. She didn’t tell us at the time but she was retiring, so she backed out of the producing part. But she still was very supportive and gave us a lot of things that we wouldn’t ordinarily have to get started. So Jim and I worked our butts off on this show. There’s a lot of stress involved in producing. There’s a lot of moving parts, but we knew it worked. We knew the concept worked ’cause we’d done it before. But not on this scale. So we worked and worked and worked and we hired Nicky Bluhm, we hired the T Sisters, we had to hire one from Oakland, Omega Ray and a guy Martin Luther McCoy, a very diverse cast, it was young. 1:12:38 Debra Schwartz: Joan Baez. 1:12:39 Paul Liberatore: Joan Baez was our ringer, she was our ace in the hole. And we had 1,400 people there. It was a big hit. And it went great, I mean it went beautifully. Even better than we kind of had hoped really. So yeah, it was kind of a triumph really. But what’s so cool about it is it had an educational element, it had a real history part. I mean, I worked with the California Historical Society and with Jim Marshall’s estate, and with Herb Greene on the East Coast, get the actual photographs from that period. 1:13:20 Debra Schwartz: You use your ability as a journalist?

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1:13:22 Paul Liberatore: As a journalist, yeah. That was my journalism and music crossing over. We did the fair, too. I’d forgotten about that. We did a smaller version at the Marin County Fair. I played in that one. I was in the band. 1:13:34 Debra Schwartz: For the county fair this last summer? 1:13:36 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 1:13:36 Debra Schwartz: Then in this summer? 1:13:37 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, July 2nd, we played on Sunday afternoon at the fair, had a big crowd for that. And then on the 22nd of July is when we did the big show at the Nourse. 1:13:46 Debra Schwartz: Oh, it was you — 1:13:46 Paul Liberatore: I didn’t play on that one. I’m just saying — 1:13:47 Debra Schwartz: And Bill Champlin was playing at the fair too, you were all there, was it Sunday? 1:13:51 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, he was playing on the 4th of July. We were playing on the 2nd of July. 1:13:54 Debra Schwartz: Oh, there you go. 1:13:55 Paul Liberatore: And so at the fair I played with the band and sang with it, but at the Nourse, no I couldn’t. I had this whole other thing I had to do. But yes, it was a perfect example of combining journalism and history with music, with historical dates. And by involving young people we thought, “We’re passing this on.” What surprised me is that some of these kids, these young singers, didn’t know the songs. I mean Nicki Bluhm knew, she’s already doing, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” She’s already doing that little set. But the T’s didn’t know about “Get together.” The T Sisters, and Omega Ray didn’t know Janis Joplin’s music. And we hired her to do Janis Joplin. 1:14:39 Debra Schwartz: Oh, that’s just a crime. [chuckles] 1:14:41 Paul Liberatore: Well, she learned it. I mean she knew kind of but not really. And she killed it too. I mean she really did. And she went and saw the Janis Joplin show, I mean she studied. But she’s only 20 something. And then Caroline Sky, she never heard of the song by It’s a Beautiful Day, “White Bird.” She sang that so beautifully. She’s 16, 17 now. I met her when she was 13. She just sang this so beautifully. 1:15:13 Debra Schwartz: You’re smiling while you talk about these young singers.

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1:15:15 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah. I mean, that was the idea. ’Cause people said, “Oh, you’re getting — so-and-so is still alive, you’re gonna get him?” “No. We’re not. We’re not gonna use those old guys anymore. We’re gonna use young people to do it.” ’Cause it was written by young people and performed by young people. And it’s a way of passing it on. They know that music now. Even this handful of kids, maybe they’ll pass it on to somebody else. 1:15:38 Debra Schwartz: This interview is taking place right here and now, because the Historical Society desires to capture the history of lots of things, and the personal stories. And you’re describing the importance, or at least it appears to me that you’re describing how important it is for you, to know that these young people know these great songs. 1:16:00 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I mean that was part of the idea. What surprised me a little bit is that we always think everybody knows that song, everybody has heard that one, but it’s not the case, it’s not true. Everybody knows so-and-so; they don’t. And why would they necessarily. So yeah, history is real. I mean I’ve worked really hard and then been very disappointed by not being able to get a Marin rock museum or center or something. People don’t like to use that word. I like the word frankly. I don’t run from it. But a lot of rockers say, “The museum it sounds stuffy and old.” No it doesn’t. 1:16:35 Debra Schwartz: Well, how about the bike museum? 1:16:37 Paul Liberatore: I mean what do people do when they go to a city, a world-class city? They go to the museums. To see culture and history and all that stuff. What’s wrong with that? I mean rock has history, there’s the hall of fame and — I first said, “Well, why don’t we have a Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame?” Everybody jumped down my throat with it. “Oh, hall of fame. It’ll be so elitist,” and this and that. And so I said, “Call it whatever you want. You don’t have to call it that, you can call it something else.” But let’s preserve our history here. I mean we have an amazing history. 1:17:06 Debra Schwartz: That’s a very good idea. I couldn’t agree with you more. 1:17:09 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, but the history museum blew it. And that may have sunk the ship forever, I don’t know. And then I got involved in this effort, which is still alive by the way, to save the Record Plant in Sausalito. 1:17:26 Debra Schwartz: Maybe that could become the museum. 1:17:28 Paul Liberatore: It might. I mean, there’s a group that’s trying to buy it, and one of the principals is the guy who produced the Fleetwood Mac “Rumours” album. 1:17:39 Debra Schwartz: And certainly the art of that era — Stanley Mouse is still around. I remember meeting both of those, Mouse and Stanley, when I worked over by the plant in 19801. I mean it [the Record Plant] is a culture. 1 Psychadelic artist Stanley George Miller went by both Mouse and Stanley.—Editor.

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1:18:00 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, it would be a shame to see it go, wouldn’t it? 1:18:01 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:18:02 Paul Liberatore: I mean, if they tore it down, you go one day and it’s not there anymore. 1:18:05 Debra Schwartz: Perhaps it’s something you should be talking about in a first Wednesday presentation in the future. 1:18:10 Paul Liberatore: Well I’d be happy to. I need to get in touch with the guys who are working in it, who brought me and got me involved to find out — in fact, I should probably do that anyway, to find out where it is, ’cause it’s been awhile. 1:18:21 Debra Schwartz: What would you say to young people? The very young people that don’t even know about these fabulous songs which you’re helping to keep alive? What would you say to young people about the art of writing and being a journalist in that old tradition? The importance of that — or not the importance: move on, don’t move on. Do you have any comments about — 1:18:47 Paul Liberatore: Well, I’ve been asked to speak to school groups quite a bit. In fact, I have one coming up for the second time to go talk to the journalism class at Dominican College. I’ve spoken to their class once before and I’ve talked to high schools and libraries and all kinds of places. So I try to, whenever anybody asks me, to go do it. And I just tell ’em, just start somewhere. Just start finding something you’re interested in that you know about or you wanna tell people about, whether it’s music, whatever it is, plays, I don’t care, and start doing it. One thing that bothers me is I don’t have a protégé really. I thought I had one kid but he went off to college and I don’t know, maybe he’ll come back and pick it up. But I don’t have a protégé. There’s nobody nipping at my heels trying to do what I do. At least that I know. I don’t know. Maybe they’re writing for some blog or something like that. But I’m not aware of it if they are. That’s a little disappointing to me, so I try to encourage people, young people, to just start doing your thing. Like I said at the beginning, when we started the IJ, there was no pop music coverage here. Nobody assigned us to do it. We just started doing it and kept doing it. And it sells. People wanna read it. If they didn’t, it would have died a long time ago. So that’s what I say. Writers write. Two words. [chuckles] And musicians play. I think it’s like they’re in their 20s and think, “Maybe I’ll try to create music.” Well if you haven’t tried it already it doesn’t work that way. You gotta be doing it all the time. You don’t all of a sudden become something. I don’t know what your experience is. But that’s been mine. It’s a little bit disconcerting that there’s no one to really pass it on that I am aware of at the moment. Maybe somebody is reading and doing it. I don’t know. 1:21:00 Debra Schwartz: Maybe somebody listening. Is this an invitation to contact you?

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1:21:02 Paul Liberatore: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve always kept that door open. 1:21:05 Debra Schwartz: How accessible are you if somebody should — 1:21:07 Paul Liberatore: Well, I’m fairly accessible. I don’t have all the time in the world but — I was working with a kid that I met though the Lobby Lounge. We haven’t talked about that. 1:21:15 Debra Schwartz: Talk about the Lobby Lounge. 1:21:17 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. The Lobby Lounge was an effort by me and Robert Sterling, the editor here, to involve young people in the newspaper. I went to a community meeting at Mill Valley, in the Mill Valley Library, downstairs somewhere in the Library. 1:21:37 Debra Schwartz: In the Creekside Room. 1:21:38 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, and there was like between 50 and 80 people, which is fine! That’s our readership, But that’s all there was, right? I just went, “God!” I went to Robert and said, “Man, what can we do?” I said, “Where do we intersect? Music and technology, right? With young people?” So we created this Lobby Lounge video concert series. And we did it in a lobby when we had a bigger lobby than we have now. 1:22:06 Debra Schwartz: Here at the IJ offices? 1:22:07 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, right there. We used to be in this bigger space. We moved a year and a half ago. And the lobby was big enough. So we started having kids — Caroline Sky was one of them, one of the first ones — come in and a couple of photographers, one guy did sound, one guy did lights, one guy did cameras. I booked it and emceed it, and we started doing this video series. And it’s now in its third year. This is the third year. I’m just starting again this fall. And at the end of the series we did a live show at Showcase Theater in conjunction with the county. 1:22:43 Debra Schwartz: Showcase Theater over at the Civic Center? 1:22:45 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, 300, almost 400, seats. The Civic Center, yeah. So we’ve done two years of that, having young people perform. We had the Drums of Fire, the Davidson Middle School steel drum band this past time, they were amazing. And we had the Drake Jazz Band, and we had the junior high school or middle school jazz group from Novato that just killed it. And people like Caroline Sky, singer-songwriter types. All that. So I started that to get young people involved with IJ, and they are. They go, they look at the videos and they appreciate it, they appreciate the opportunity, which is another thing. I didn’t know if they’d be indifferent or not. “Ah, the newspaper? I don’t wanna do it.” But they do. They show up. And they’re really thrilled. They walk into that theater,

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some of those kids, and see that it’s a real theater for the first time. You can see the impression. 1:23:52 Debra Schwartz: That’s a moment. 1:23:53 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, that’s a moment. 1:23:55 Debra Schwartz: And perhaps even a confidence builder in preparation for further moments, if that is their interest. 1:24:03 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. Now we shoot stuff in the media center in San Rafael. They have a studio there. It’s not big enough, but that’s where we go. 1:24:12 Debra Schwartz: So, calling all young artists, calling all young musicians, calling young writers. 1:24:18 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, if we can help you out in some way. 1:24:23 Debra Schwartz: I have a question I often ask at the end of an interview and I’ll ask you now. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about? 1:24:42 Paul Liberatore: You’re quite good at this, actually. I do this a lot myself. [laughs] 1:24:48 Debra Schwartz: It’s a little different — 1:24:50 Paul Liberatore: It’s different being on this end. 1:24:50 Debra Schwartz: Being on the other side, yes. 1:24:53 Paul Liberatore: And like often happens when I’m on your side, I’ll go away from this thinking, “Oh, I should have asked this or that and I should have brought up something.” But I think you’ve done a really, really good job with it. What is it about Marin County that makes it special, that makes this a musical place? That’s something that’s sort of a mysterious thing. People say they’re inspired by place, the “Geography of Hope,” the thing that they do out in West Marin that Steve Costa and them started out there. 1:25:24 Debra Schwartz: Yes, I have attended. 1:25:25 Paul Liberatore: You have? 1:25:27 Debra Schwartz: Yes, with my friend Betty Kirk, who taught there. It’s quite an event.

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1:25:31 Paul Liberatore: So I think the place itself, Marin County itself as a place, has influenced music in a way. I interviewed Steve Miller a few years ago and asked, “Where’d you write ‘Fly Like an Eagle’?” “Novato. I moved to Novato. I wrote it in Novato.” “Really, Novato? All right, okay.” And that’s a cool song, “Fly Like an Eagle.” You see the red-tailed hawks spinning around. So I think a lot of what makes this place so interesting and so rich is the sense of place that somehow comes out in it. All the people who’ve passed through here, from blues guys — why did all of the blues guys from Butterfield Band end up in Marin County? Elvin Bishop, Mike Bloomfield, Mark Naftalin. Elvin’s still here. Nick Gravenites. How does that happen? Why did they all come here? 1:26:31 Debra Schwartz: Are you called or do you look for something? That’s always the question. 1:26:35 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, right. So it’s a really special place in a lot of ways. And I hadn’t planned on talking about that, because it’s not me, it’s not personal, but it’s something I have observed through time, which is another reason it’s important to preserve a little of this history. And I’m trying my best to write it. What do they call it, daily history or whatever? Keep it, write it. But I’d like to see it somehow preserved in one place, like you’re doing with oral history. Which could be a part of some sort of a Marin Music Center or something like that. In addition to oral history, you go into a booth and listen to all the songs that have been written in Marin County. You could sit in there for days, probably. 1:27:24 Debra Schwartz: Oh, let’s just name some of them. 1:27:26 Paul Liberatore: “Fly Like an Eagle.” “Do You Know What I Mean?” “White Rabbit.” “Somebody to Love.” Not “Get Together,” that wasn’t written here, but the guy who wrote it — 1:27:38 Debra Schwartz: Jesse Colin Young. 1:27:39 Paul Liberatore: No, Dino Valenti wrote it. 1:27:40 Debra Schwartz: Dino Valenti wrote that. 1:27:42 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, Chet Powers. If you look at the music, it says, “Chester Powers.” That’s Dino Valenti, that’s his real name. How he got that name, I don’t know. 1:27:50 Debra Schwartz: Classic song. 1:27:50 Paul Liberatore: He looks like a Dino. It’s a great song. And he moved here. We opened our show with that song, “Get Together.” 1:28:00 Debra Schwartz: “Comin‘ Back to Me.”

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1:28:00 Paul Liberatore: “Comin‘ Back to Me.” 1:28:02 Debra Schwartz: Although, not written here. I interviewed Marty recently and that actually wasn’t written here, but it was quite a story. But it does make me think of this area somehow. 1:28:12 Paul Liberatore: And “Today.” 1:28:13 Debra Schwartz: “Today.” 1:28:14 Paul Liberatore: The song “Today.” 1:28:15 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:28:15 Paul Liberatore: Jerry Garcia had a lot to do with those songs. He plays guitar on them and you listen to Surrealistic Pillow, one of the main guitar players is Jerry Garcia. 1:28:22 Debra Schwartz: Yes. Other songs, “Sittin‘ On The Dock of the Bay.” 1:28:25 Paul Liberatore: “Dock of the Bay.” 1:28:26 Debra Schwartz: In Sausalito. 1:28:27 Paul Liberatore: That was in the show. That was in our show, too. 1:28:28 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:28:29 Paul Liberatore: We had Martin Luther McCoy sang that one. It’s a long, long list. 1:28:35 Debra Schwartz: There’s a lot of songs that have to do with love. 1:28:39 Paul Liberatore: All the Grateful Dead songs, all of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Lots of them were written here. That’s a huge catalog. All the stuff that Bobby Weir wrote. David Bromberg was here; he wrote a lot of stuff when he was here. Van Morrison. 1:28:56 Debra Schwartz: David Crosby. 1:28:57 Paul Liberatore: David Crosby, “Wooden Ships.” 1:29:00 Debra Schwartz: Tamalpais High. [laughs] 1:29:01 Paul Liberatore: Tam High, or what is it?

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1:29:03 Debra Schwartz: At 3:00 a.m. or whatever. 1:29:04 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, at 3:00 a.m.? 3:00 p.m. 1:29:06 Debra Schwartz: 3:00 p.m., is that it? [laughs] 1:29:08 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, he’d go down there and ogle all the high school girls, that’s why. Yeah, “Wooden Ships.” 1:29:13 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:29:15 Paul Liberatore: It’s fascinating. 1:29:16 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:29:19 Paul Liberatore: So, it’s important to preserve all that, to take credit for, or nurture it. 1:29:24 Debra Schwartz: I appreciate what you’re saying, the importance of holding history, of preserving it and putting it in a place that’s accessible for others to truly experience it. Let’s keep that in mind for the future. 1:29:43 Paul Liberatore: Okay, yeah. 1:29:45 Debra Schwartz: Maybe it’s the birth of something right here with your interview. 1:29:47 Paul Liberatore: Yes. We’ll revive our efforts to do that before I croak. Maybe we’ll have something. 1:29:54 Debra Schwartz: You look pretty good. 1:29:56 Paul Liberatore: Well, thank you, I appreciate that. 1:29:58 Debra Schwartz: Anything else we should talk about? 1:30:00 Paul Liberatore: Not that I can think of at the moment actually. Is there anything you want about Mill Valley in particular because — 1:30:07 Debra Schwartz: Sure, do you have a special something to mention about Mill Valley? 1:30:09 Paul Liberatore: Well, no, not really. I told you the Mimi story pretty much. For me that’s a big part of it.

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1:30:20 Debra Schwartz: I like Jimmy’s story, Jimmy Dillon’s story. He’s a neighbor of mine. And he says whenever he wants to work he just goes and sits at Equator, sits down and talks to people, and usually something comes up. That’s community. 1:30:34 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, right. Exactly. 1:30:36 Debra Schwartz: And we have the Throckmorton Theatre and the Sweetwater. 1:30:38 Paul Liberatore: And the second theater, and then Sweetwater. We haven’t talked about Jeanie Patterson, the original Sweetwater. I’ve spent many, many hours in that place. In fact, one of my first dates with Mimi was sitting at the bar in the original Sweetwater. 1:30:58 Debra Schwartz: On Throckmorton? 1:31:00 Paul Liberatore: On Throckmorton, yeah. 1:31:00 Debra Schwartz: Yes. 1:31:01 Paul Liberatore: That one, yeah. And Jeanie was — if there was ever a woman who was like the heart and soul of Marin County music during a certain period, it was her. She’s the one who made Sweetwater famous, nationally known. People came because of her, because of her taste, her good taste, and just the spirit that she had. 1:31:23 Debra Schwartz: And she didn’t know what she was doing. 1:31:24 Paul Liberatore: She had no idea. 1:31:25 Debra Schwartz: I spoke with her on the phone. Her husband bought the Sweetwater for a couple thousand dollars, and she just jumped. 1:31:30 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, she didn’t know how to do it, how to book musicians. 1:31:31 Debra Schwartz: She just did it. 1:31:32 Paul Liberatore: She didn’t know anybody. She started building her little Rolodex. 1:31:36 Debra Schwartz: Living in her little apartment above El Paseo. 1:31:39 Paul Liberatore: Yeah. 1:31:39 Debra Schwartz: Yeah. 1:31:42 Paul Liberatore: Yeah.

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1:31:42 Debra Schwartz: Perhaps that’s the takeaway from this interview for those that might be listening. If you’re compelled to do something, just do it. 1:31:52 Paul Liberatore: Nobody’s gonna to do it for you. 1:31:54 Debra Schwartz: And you may not even think you’re prepared. Nonetheless. 1:31:57 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, who is? We’re never prepared. Before Jim and I did this show, I didn’t know how to do this, and he didn’t either. He knew some things. He knew more than I did, but we learned a lot just by jumping in. And at one point, he and I were talking — we’re both clean and sober, right, we have been for a long time — and we were talking one day when it was getting kind of close to it, and it was like, are we going to pull this off or not? You go through so many challenges and so much stress. And you’re like, “What have I gotten myself into? That date is looming so large. I can’t relax until I’m through with this. It’s on my mind all the time.” And he and I were talking, and he said, “You know, Paul, it’s just about overcoming fear.” That’s all it is. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Maybe it flops, so what? People will forget about it in 10 minutes. Maybe we won’t, but that’s probably the worst thing. Nobody’s gonna die or anything. And just overcoming fear, so what do you choose? Do you choose peace or conflict or love over fear? I don’t know. I’ll take the love every day of the week. And so that’s a lot of it. People are afraid or they don’t think they can do it. How are you gonna know? 1:33:16 Debra Schwartz: Unless you go. 1:33:17 Paul Liberatore: Gotta go. 1:33:18 Debra Schwartz: Well, I think that’s a really good way to end this interview. 1:33:21 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, I do too. That’s very good. Thank you. 1:33:23 Debra Schwartz: Paul, thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom and your experience and taking us on a journey through your life, seeing the world through your eyes. Very much appreciate it. 1:33:33 Paul Liberatore: Thank you very much. I appreciate it, and you’re very welcome. 1:33:37 Debra Schwartz: So on behalf of the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Library, this concludes your interview. 1:33:43 Paul Liberatore: Yay! 1:33:44 Debra Schwartz: Yay!