Tinsel Town: Another Rotten Day In Paradise [SIGNED EDITION]

By Jim Newport

SIGNED EDITION

Joey Morton was born in New York, but always felt he 'grew up' in Laurel Canyon. When Joey arrived in 1968, he had long hair and a joint in his pocket. The sounds of the Beatles, Doors, and Hendrix wafted through the canyon and sucked him in. Soon he was reclining in a cedar-framed water bed with the most beautiful girls he'd ever seen.

Joey went to art school. He thought he'd work in an ad agency. Within a year he was an art director on low-budget exploitation films featuring nubile starlets with big tits. Joey's new best friend in the film game – writer Adam Mayersohn, had been schooled at NYU by Marty Scorcese. Together they rode a wave from Coney Island to Malibu that dropped them on Roger Corman's doorstep.

Sound stages. Back lots. Blondes and blow jobs. Smoking the finest weed, tripping on Owsley's acid. Life was a non-stop party. Joey Morton was in heaven.

By 1978 he'd moved down the canyon from Lookout Mountain to Kirkwood Drive. Less than half a mile – but worlds apart. The party now started most nights at the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip. It was the lair of the Hollywood Vampires - Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. Dozens of girls grouped together in packs trying to 'score' a musician. There were way more groupies than musicians, so the odds of guys like Joey getting laid because he worked in the film biz (next best thing to being a musician,) had a house in the hills and a pocket full of dope – were pretty good. As long as that dope included one little ingredient that became de rigueur on the party circuit in the mid-70's. Cocaine. You had to have cocaine. Chicks were mad about coke.

Coke was great. Joey could stay up for days. He could screw for hours – especially when he mixed it with 'poppers' (amyl nitrate.) That was sex. Pure nasty, dirty sex. There was nothing like it.

In the beginning.

But soon Joey wasn't snorting to get high. He was snorting to get normal. Normal meant not sleeping. Normal meant having beautiful but wasted women hanging around him at all hours – just for a little 'taste.' Normal meant not having sex because normal now meant a limp dick – no matter how many naked girls were in his bed. Normal meant being paranoid.

Normal meant getting in touch with your dark side.

*Out of Print, Willat Publishing, 2009