Jim and I were so different our backgrounds so different. Being rowdy to me was going to a bar playing pool and getting into fights. Jim could come along and watch that stuff but he could not really join in with it.
When we’d go to San Francisco and hang out with Michael McClure and go to his plays and things like that, we’d just get loud and joyous and all kinds of stuff in the theatre. Jim didn’t hold back when he wanted to. He could be all the way loud and happy. He had a good sense of humour; he had a great sense of humour. He loved to laugh. He laughed all the time. I remember if something humorous happened around the office he’d get a big guffaw out of it. I would say that he was an exuberant personality. He was not morose.
Babe Hill, Tony Funches and Jim
I remember one night in The Blue Lady we went racing down some street. He just took off and the street ended, it dead ended. Jim was dead drunk and we had Violet (one of our cocaine queens) with us. I was just holding on to her, man, I said ‘we’re going to die’. And he hit the brakes and we went over the curb and went up on the lawn and dead ended against a tree. It just so happened we were in the back of the Beverly Hills Police Department.
It didn’t wreck the car but it more or less wiped out the undercarriage. We hit the curb straight on but it was a pretty high curb.
So we sent Violet in and she called a cab and we left. The cops never even knew we were involved.
FL. In popular rock and roll mythology Jim was reputed to have been in numerous fight and bar smashing incidents.
BH. I never saw him do anything violent Other than maybe drive a car. I never saw him choose anybody off, or swing at anybody, or even yell at anybody. Violence was totally not part of his personality of any kind.