Where should I start?

It's a new world and a new day, but it is all built on yesterday!

Post #1 of my new Substack memoir:

In the beginning, I was just a teeny bopper - a North American girl, living in LA California, from a middle class family with one mother and one father and no sisters or brothers, scratching the chunky needle across my children’s record player my dad gave me before he gave me a camera years later and taught me photography.

I remember the record I played endlessly — The Little Engine that Could.

And boy did I take that motto to heart. “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. I did. I did. I did.”

Believe it or not that record, plus my father’s reel to reel 1950s style tape recorder through which he taped my voice saying whatever it was that I said, was the entry point from which I evolved as a musician and a photographer. The magic of sound grabbed me and took me on the journey I have been on since then. That journey is what I want to take you on over the course of this year, at least — in stories, interviews, podcasts, videos, and photographs — many never-before-seen! Come with me. Let’s put aside all the woes while we reminisce on the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, 20s up to now and beyond.

From nickels jingling in my pocket as I cranked the gum ball machine full of pop beads, to sneaking backstage at fourteen at the T.A.M.I. Show where I met the Rolling Stones, OMG, and hugged Mick!,

to picking up Neil Young hitch-hiking and 10 years later having him call me for a date (that’s a story), to being picked up and carried by Frank Zappa across the stage to the center mic in Hollywood where he said jokingly, “A heavy hippie”, to my chewing gum disintegrating in my mouth after Ray or was it Dave (who knew?) Davies gave me a swift wet kiss backstage as he got off stage at the Hollywood Bowl, to dating Levon Helm (another interesting story!), to making out with David Anderle on the floor of Elektra Records at midnight while the Doors were recording, to laying under Leon’s piano on acid, to all the extraordinary days and nights living at Fanny Hill

learning to be a documentary photographer for the most talented girls I’d ever met, to climbing into Ian Whitcomb’s window next door to my girlfriend, Darcy, to having Janice Joplin give me a feather boa, to hanging with the Band at Dr. John’s apt while he swiveled in his chair between three keyboards, to sleeping on the end of Jackson’s bed as he wrote his up and coming first album, to living with my first boyfriend, Jay, who lived in the renovated garage at the Gentle Soul House, across from the Chateau Marmont, where Pamela Polland was reigning queen, to attending Transcendental Meditation sessions with the Gentle Soul, Ned Doheny, Jackson and a troupe of other folks, to making love with (well, …that’s for subscribers!) to photographing the Cocker Tour, photographing The Tedeschi Trucks Band Tribute Concert, to singing on stage in the Space Choir, to leading a workshop to Cuba with Taj Mahal and 40 others,

to having Cosmo Sheldrake as a family friend — if you have not heard him, google him — to playing in my daughter’s band, Wild Revival, during Covid — finally getting to be a musician as well as a photographer… and so many many stories stories that doing this “memoir” will have me remembering not to forget what I want to remember, this is going to be a fun ride — for me and I hope for you! Come along, as I plumb my past, and all my old photo archives, with as much love, peace, compassion and kindness and some sexy stories along the way!

Love, Linda