BROTHERHOOD OF ETERNAL LOVE: IN CONVERSATION

Michael & Carol Griggs Randall with autographed poster of documentary based on their exploits. Fairfax, CA 2019. Photo: King

“These are Tales of the Great Drug Runners…”

Michael Randall is the co-founder of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the 60’s legally registered Southern California church that used LSD and hashish as their sacrament, and which would soon become the largest distributor of LSD in the world.

Randall speaks to MillValleyLit about what the sixties were like before LSD, his smuggling life, tripping around with Tim Leary, Albert Hoffman, Owsley, the Dead, Jimi, plus his continuing gospel of spiritual expansion.

Inspired to spread their gospel, the Brotherhood soon fueled the Counterculture Revolution with 130,000,000 hits of Orange Sunshine and fifty to perhaps a staggering 200 tons of first-ever-in-U.S. Afghani hash. Smuggling product in surf boards, film canisters, exotic musical instruments, VW buses, and boats, with dozens of secret identities, the Brotherhood operated as global Scarlet Pimpernels with such a cloak of invisibility, top law enforcement dismissed the very idea of organized hippie outlaws—No way! Hippies are a hairy joke, a nuisance, a passing fad.

That changed when the Brotherhood’s escapades made international headlines. Tim Leary, the World’s Greatest LSD Showman (to coin a phrase), started living in a teepee on the Brotherhood’s ranch and surprisingly announced he was running for Governor of California against Ronald Reagan.* Leary quickly brought unwanted attention and heat to the BEL. Leary was busted in Laguna Beach for two roaches and sentenced to 10-years for possession (with previous conviction, 20 total), but really as a political prisoner. Michael Randall was architect of Timothy Leary’s 1970 notorious prison escape. As if that was not brazen enough, on Christmas Day – the Brotherhood dropped 25,000 tabs of acid from a plane on a concert to induce a communal spiritual revolution.

Michael and his wife Carol have lived quiet lives as meek, mild-mannered jewelers in Marin County, without even friends and associates knowing their true identities. The couple finally revealed themselves in the brilliant William Kirkley documentary, ORANGE SUNSHINE (2016). Michael Randall told me it took the producer almost five years to convince him.

Michael told me that the group distributed about 130 million hits of Orange Sunshine before federal drug agents finally caught up to the Brotherhood in 1972. Randall was busted at the New Year’s Eve Dead show at Winterland. When the conspiracy trail went south, he went on the lam and spent the next twelve years on the run with Carol and their family. Randall was finally re-arrested in 1984 near Boulder, CO and sent to prison for five years.

Carol Griggs Randall, in a magazine interview, expressed their vision. “The ’60s was a movement of people who saw how things could be done better. It was a whole movement that changed things and the Brotherhood was a big part of it. We wanted to create a spiritual revolution and nothing less.”

Interview with Michael Randall of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love

by J.Macon King

At the brewery where the Orange Sunshine movie poster came to my attention, I met up for beers with the co-founder of the Brotherhood that fueled the 1960s Counterculture. Michael Randall, jewelry artist, poet and author, is a tall, lanky, imposing figure, usually sporting a vest and hat. He has a warm, welcoming demeanor, with a sense of humor, but also seems like a man who doesn’t suffer fools. He told me upfront that his agent advised him not to talk to me, because of upcoming projects and so forth. Michael said that he liked me and wanted to talk anyway. He would just have to keep a few things to himself. That was agreeable. At times during the interview I felt that I was truly sitting across from a bonafide guru.

 Produced by William A. Kirkley. Dennis Harvey in VARIETY calls it a: “sunny retro thriller, maintaining a brisk pace and lively aesthetic surface. The caper narrative tilt is heightened by having actors play the main characters in wordless re-enactment sequences that blend quite well into the whole, being shot to look like 8mm home movies and other archival materials.” With: Michael Randall, Carol Griggs, Rick Bevan, Ron Bevan, Travis Ashbrook, Wendy Bevan, Michael Kennedy, Neil Purcell.

IN THE BEGINNING

MillValleyLit: Michael, you, and the Brotherhood of Love, were really at ground zero of the hippie/psychedelic movement. You knew and\or were friends with some of the big names of the era: Tim Leary, Owsley and his protégés LSD chemists Tim Scully and the late Nick Sand, Kesey, Ram Dass, Albert Hoffman? 

MR: These are all people I know. Many of those people have been very, very close friends. Ken Kesey, I didn’t know well, but I met him many times. Sand and Scully were dear, dear friends, we love each other. I knew Ram Dass very well, I knew him all my life.

MillValleyLit: Jerry Garcia, the Dead, Bill Graham?

MR: Yes, we could go backstage whenever we wanted. Bill Graham used to have his security “arrest” me and take me in the back where Bill would steal my hash. He loved hash. Look, I’m not really into people with names or that are well-known.

MillValleyLit: Because you have led such a private life, understandably, for many, many years, underground for twelve years, I’m trying to establish for the readers just where you fit in with more familiar names.

MR: Then Ralph Metzner should be in there.

MillValleyLit: Right. He just passed away. (Ed. note: Metzner participated in psychedelic research at Harvard with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.)

MR: Yes. We were at his memorial service. It does happen that I know a lot of the people and a lot of big things were just coming in the 60s. We weren’t trying to be famous. We were doing the right things and following our instincts. Also Alan Watts, I’ve been to his house in Malibu at parties many times.

MillValleyLit: I used to hang out on Watts’ giant houseboat in Sausalito, the old ferry S.S. Vallejo. My friend lived there helping with the restoration after Alan died. It was the site of the 1967 “Houseboat Summit” on LSD with Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Alan Watts.

MR: O.K., if you want a big name, I dropped acid with Jimi Hendrix. Then I was just a few feet away from him as he performed tripping on stage in New York.

MillValleyLit: Now we’re talking! That’s more impressive than “I Dropped Acid with Groucho Marx.”** The late Paul Krassner’s booklet. Krassner (Editor’s note: Yippie leader, Chicago 7 Trial, etc.) gave it to me in North Beach. Actually, he sold it to me. But at least he signed it.

MR: Timothy, Richard Alpert and Metzner from Harvard were the three main people that were doing experimentation with psychedelics. They were going into prisons and doing sessions with prisoners with the authority’s permission. And they were the first discovering the spiritual aspects and healing aspects of psychedelics, that it could help heal people who are criminals, or criminally insane or strung out on heroin. I personally turned people on to acid that were junkies that quit shooting dope right then and there and never went back to it.

One San Francisco couple like that, the man came with me to Laguna Beach, and the wife checked into rehab, already done the standard government whatever rehab. He never shot heroin again. She overdosed six months later. So, I think the whole thing with Harvard was that they started out with psychedelics as a tool, a psychological tool and a spiritual tool. I mean that’s where it was born and by the fact that a bunch of hippies started taking it, I mean if you’re going to have a revolution you have to have people doing the revolution. It isn’t going to happen in the doctor’s office. It’s not going to happen in the research facility. It’s going to happen on the streets or better in the countryside on the beaches and mountains and rivers and streams – getting high. And discovering who you are, your inner self. It’s an amazing opportunity that we’ve been given in my opinion to be able to take a pill. It seems like it pisses some people off to even suggest that you can take a pill and have a spiritual revelation, but it’s true. You can. It happens. It happens I’m damn sure near every time anybody takes it, under the right circumstances.

That’s why we put out a guide book, A Psychedelic Guide, which is a guide book that follows closely upon Timothy Leary’s book, Psychedelic Prayers. His book is a reinterpretation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, written 2500 years ago in China, before Christ, which is some of the most profound simple, clean wisdom about Consciousness and about how to not be attached; how to un-attach yourself from all of the things that life sort of gets glued onto you.

LEARY – The WORLD’S GREATEST LSD SHOWMAN: U.S. Senate hearing 1966 with Alpert aka Ram Dass.

MillValleyLit: Yes, right. You gave me a copy of your book a while back. It’s a good guide. I wish I had it when I first tripped.

MR: It’s something I don’t make any money on. In fact, I lost money. I never did it to make money. We give it away. You can buy that book on Lulu Press.* It’s a good book and it’s nice to have a little bit of guidance and some suggestions as how to still your mind. How to go about it, to prepare your mind. The real overlooked truth about LSD is the immediate spiritual revelation.

CIA, COPS, COURT and DISORGANIZED CRIME

MillValleyLit: Let’s get this question out of the way. We know about CIA documented use of LSD for mind control, MK-Ultra, etc. Also, theories of their involvement influencing the psychedelic movement, using some leaders as tools, perhaps attempting to get people to drop out of everything and become useless and controllable. What are your thoughts?

MR: Yes, we know that the CIA tried to use it, so people have come up with government conspiracy theories like that – maybe Timothy Leary was working for the CIA? That’s bullshit. I hear something like that and take exception to the suggestion that Timothy Leary was a CIA stooge. He was a brave man. He was not a perfect man. I don’t like perfect. I have never met a perfect person and I hope I never do. But he was an inspiration and to reduce the whole psychedelic movement to…. that we were puppets in the strings were being pulled by the CIA or some government, is complete bullshit. That is what someone who has never taken LSD would come up with. If one did, they would know what the experience with LSD would be like. You are not subject to anything. It frees you, right? It frees you from all these vines and bindings that we have, and we damn sure weren’t connected to any government conspiracy. We were free young people discovering ourselves and trying to help others free and discover themselves.

MillValleyLit: Right. I agree. I suppose the only time the authorities ever got involved besides busting people, and I guess trafficking themselves, and all those Black Ops like Air America, Barry (SEAL) and the Boys, was pressuring people to make deals and be informants.

>>>>

A Psychedelic Guide by the Randalls and Trippy Poetry by Carol Randall, one of the original founding members of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love (and Sisterhood), a group of spiritual hippies who helped usher in the psychedelic era in the 60’s and 70’s. (Lulu Press**)

“Now, little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux.” From Albert Hoffman notes.

Documentary on LSD chemists Tim Scully and Nick Sand.

The Sunshine Makers documentary on the LSD chemists Tim Scully and Nick Sand. “The undaunted spirit and psychedelic warrior of love and light, Nick Sand, the outlaw chemist, died in his sleep on Monday April 24th, 2017 at the age of 75. (They were)…most famous for the Orange Sunshine brand of LSD distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love…” “Nick Sand found a way to smuggle in and dose many prisoners at McNeil Island Penitentiary with psychedelics during his stay there. ‘We got the whole prison stoned…’ (said Nick).” From Casey Hardison at psymposia.com.

LSD was first synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1938, who was the first man to trip on LSD in a self-experiment in 1943, known by fans as “Bicycle Day.” He rode his bike home high as a kite. The drug was legal in CA until Oct. 1966.

>>>>

MR: That didn’t work very well with our people. In court at my sentencing in the early 80s, the judge, Ramirez, said, “I’ve got to tell you, you guys have really stuck up for each other. I’ve never seen so many people lie to this court, just trying to defend their friends.” (laughs) And I thought, oh shit. But he continued, “I admire that. And by the way, I was at your store in Laguna Beach when I was a law student and I thought it was beautiful. I hate to sentence you to prison right now.” But of course, he did. But he kind of had a little insight into it. It was strange. He made a point of saying during sentencing that he had been to our shop, “Mystic Arts World” (Ed. note – Brotherhood’s “hippie emporium” shop\HQ) in Laguna Beach. He lived in Palos Verdes and was going to UCLA law school. He had visited our shop when he was a student, and now he’s the judge sentencing me to prison.

Weird the way fate works – it’s the Little Wonders, we’re all woven together. We made a deal and the judge took a year off that deal. We made a deal with the prosecutor and the judge gave a year less. The judge got in some trouble because of a big Mafia trial was going on about the same time. The Bonanno family (Ed. note – one of the Five Families of New York, involving Donnie Brasco). “Joe Bananas” they called him, and they got a pretty sweet deal and that judge got into a little bit of hot water. My judge had suggested that I apply for what they call Rule 35 for a sentence reduction, but I had to go to the parole board first. When in in the meantime, the shit hit the fan with the Bonanno family. Look, your iPhone is still recording. White man’s magic, Brother.

MillValleyLit: (laughs) Steve Jobs!

MR: …who took Orange Sunshine, by the way. So anyway, I had to finish my sentencing, but he helped me write my first —. He was a great judge and I really trusted him. It was a good thing I was on the run for twelve years before that, because the heat of the first trials (the conspiracy indictments of the Brotherhood members -Ed. note) was insane! They hated us so badly. Nixon is calling Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America” and labeled the Brotherhood “the most dangerous organization in America.” And they fucking hated us. So many times, they would have guns drawn. And they told me, “Go ahead and try to run, we would love it.”

MillValleyLit: They shot one of your people in the back right in Mill Valley.

MR: Yes, they killed Chuck Scott. They’ve killed a lot of my friends. When we started in Laguna Beach, we used to antagonize the police, but we were just having fun, right, we didn’t take it seriously. And then they started killing people! Young surfers, an 18-year-old. The kid goes out a window and he’s got an ounce of weed, and the Orange County deputy sheriff and another officer shot him and killed him. For an ounce of weed. They hated us, it was terrible. So, we didn’t like them very much either.

At our conspiracy trial, after they finally pulled some of us into court, they charged us with conspiracy for every crime every one of us did. Like thirty-five of us. They were trying out new RICO conspiracy charges on us. RICO was a new federal statute, just on the books in Oct. 1970. RICO was designed to fight organized crime. We were a bunch of hippies and surfers. We were disorganized crime! Which is why the authorities had a difficult time figuring us out. In the courtroom, under Judge Vincent, oh my God, it was hot. It was almost on fire – the animosity and the division. We had eleven motions for the defense. We won all our motions, but it was so hot, I had to skip out.

MillValleyLit: It didn’t help when Joe Esterhaus, in Rolling Stone magazine, called you the “Hippie Mafia,” which I know you fully rebuke. Because you weren’t the ones shooting people.

MR: Funny thing is, we were NOT organized crime. We were DISORGANIZED CRIME! That article didn’t help, but our trial had already started.

MillValleyLit: What year was the indictment trails?

MR: 1972, ‘73.

LSD, LABS & LEARY Oh my!

Fictionalized Leary by one of our favorite authors.

MillValleyLit: OK. By 1972, you estimated that your group distributed upwards of 130 million doses of Orange Sunshine LSD. That is a large quantity of anything. And those tiny little pills were so powerful. Like diamonds. Maybe added symbology for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Plus, humongous quantities, tons and tons, of top-shelf hash and pot. Thank you very much by the way!

MR: We were the biggest.

MillValleyLit: It seems that without the Brotherhood and associates, the revolution certainly wouldn’t have had as much influence or staying power as it had, and certainly not as much mind expansion. What’s your thoughts on that?

MR: Somebody else would have done it. If we didn’t, somebody else would have been there.

MillValleyLit: Hard to believe anybody else could have done what the Brotherhood did, with your skill, enthusiasm, love, and yes, luck.

MR: Yeah, there’s higher things that sometimes are, maybe guiding life. I do not know, but I know that you’re right about what we did. It was pivotal in Consciousness. It was pivotal in that time. But if we hadn’t been there someone else would have filled that role. But we did so that’s the way it happened.

MillValleyLit: You mean if the Brotherhood was not there, Sand and Scully would have done something on their own?

MR: The first distributors were the Hell’s Angels. And then Ram Dass…. I’m not going to go any further than that. I have to be careful because I don’t want to say anything that… But connections were made and they came to us. They didn’t want to work with Hells Angels so much. The Hells Angels… and you’ve heard of the Diggers?

MillValleyLit: Yes, I’ve interviewed Peter Coyote about his Digger days in the Haight, and about his mentor/partner, Emmet Grogan, so I know a bit about the Hells Angel role.

MR: You know some of the Hells Angels got turned on to acid and it changed their life. And some of them turned on and it didn’t change their life; there’s not a guarantee. It depends on your insights. And the Angel’s started feeding hungry people.

MillValleyLit: So, it turned some of them around. And they were bad ass. Yes, the Diggers and their enlightened Angels friends were collecting and serving food to the influx of runaways and hippies that San Francisco government didn’t know what to do with. Kind of like now – San Francisco seems to be lost about the homeless and street people. On the flip side, what’s on your insights on the negative impacts of LSD?

MR: It has a positive effect on most. At one of our showings, I think it was in Austin at the South by Southwest Film Festival where they were showing the documentary about us, Orange Sunshine. We took questions and answers on stage after the film and somebody asked, “Do you feel guilty about people that took LSD and had bad trips and came to harm?” And I said, “Of course, absolutely we do. We all do.”

MillValleyLit: The best known one was Diane Linkletter, Art Linkletter’s daughter. Everyone loved Art Linkletter, so it was even more shocking to straight society.

MR: Most of the stories really aren’t true to begin with and the ones that are true – are multiplied in the news. Multiplied so much that it seems like more than what it is.

MillValleyLit: Right! That story that Diane Linkletter was on LSD and thought she could fly – people still believe that today, although it has been repeatedly debunked and the tox report was negative for LSD. Art Linkletter led a media anti-drug frenzy.

MR: And let’s talk about alcohol here while we’re talking about bad consequences. Like John Perry Barlow said recently, not long before he passed away, that alcohol, prescription drugs and tobacco harm more Americans every day than LSD has since it was first taken in 1943. And that’s a true factual statement. And LSD’s been villainized. It’s coming out now.

MillValleyLit: Look at heroin. People drop dead all the time. I just heard that there were 239 O.D. deaths in San Francisco last year. And the new stuff – there was a mass overdose, in a New Haven park last October from some bad synthetic cannabinoid, “spice” or “K2.” 70 people hospitalized.

MR: Right. And people used to say, “I’ve taken every drug there is.” Now with this new thing Fentanyl, and this shit I never heard of and don’t even know how to pronounce.

MillValleyLit: Weird stuff coming of China.

MR: Oh my god, China. Those fuckers! You know, nobody that ever made LSD was some greasy criminal. All of them, all of them, have been spiritual people that I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a lot. There was never really that many back in the day, only a few of them, and we just happened to be the biggest and the best. We worked the hardest, too. We did not make money on it, either. We barely broke even. You’ve seen the movie, the drug dealers are driving sports cars, and we’re driving old pickup trucks.

MillValleyLit: And to finance the LSD operation, is that why you got into the marijuana /hashish smuggling?

MR: Yes. Well, no. We had already been doing that. But we used the money from that to finance the LSD. And that was one of our big motivations to keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Everything I pretty much earned from that, and it was quite a bit of money, went to making acid. And when you do things on a big scale, and we did, and we did things on an international scale…

MillValleyLit: Huge. That blows my mind, the enormous hutzpah, the size and ambition …

MR: And the laboratories we created were not done in someone’s garage. We had…

MillValleyLit: Official labs, with real brilliant scientists….

MR: Yes, with PhD’s running the whole thing. And some were very famous. We had some very famous people working with us. I met Albert Hoffman twice. He endorsed our endeavors and even gave us a few tips. He knew we were doing it for the right reason. He had some very spiritual writings. He took acid all of his life. He never did quit taking LSD.

MillValleyLit: I don’t believe I’ve read his work.

MR: He wrote a couple of books and he wrote many articles, essays for newspapers, magazines or journals. They are brilliant and beautiful and spiritual. He was a trip. Albert Hoffman was a boxer, and a bodybuilder. Not the little…

MillValleyLit: … little spindly Einstein-looking character. (both laugh) Albert Huxley I have read. I know he took acid as he died.

MR: Oh yes. I’m going to do that, too.

MillValleyLit: That would be interesting. So, let’s get into Leary and the beginnings of your operation. Your group’s leader, John Griggs, he went to Millbrook, New York to meet with Leary. When he came back your group came up with a premise that drug would usher in a spiritual awakening?

MR: We already had that figured-out way before we met Timothy Leary. I’ll tell you one thing. We were not disciples of Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary was actually, if truth be known, more of a disciple of John Griggs than the other way around. Timothy was in awe of John Griggs. John was a very special, deep spiritual being. He came here for such a short time and had such a deep impact and then left. He died at 25-26 years old. Timothy said that John Griggs was the holiest man he had ever met. And he was right about that.

 

CONVERSATION CONTINUED BELOW:

Notes:

*Lennon wrote “Come Together” for Leary’s political campaign song, according to his Playboy interview, two days before his assassination.

**http://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-and-carol-randall/the-Brotherhood-of-eternal-love-a-psychedelic-guide/paperback/product-22139474.html

***Krassner wrote that, “the acid with which Ram Dass, in his final moments as Dick Alpert, failed to get his guru higher was the same acid that I had the honor of taking with Groucho Marx.” Originally in February 1981 issue of High Times. “I Dropped Acid with Groucho” – Paul Krassner.

  Inscribed by Krassner to our publisher J.Macon King.

 

King with Randall, Fairfax, CA. 2019

1960’s HOODLUMS

MillValleyLit: And before that, John was a hoodlum. That is really quite the character arc. What we writers call that change or growth.

MR: We were all hoodlums.

MillValleyLit: He was in a bad-ass car club and raced around, picked fights, had motorcycles…

MR: He didn’t race cars. We were in a hotrodders car club called the “Street Sweepers.” But what happens when someone becomes somewhat famous, all of the sudden they did all these things that people just imagine and whatever. The real story is good enough. Grigg’s doesn’t have to be a car or motorcycle racer, which he was not, I mean he probably has ridden motorcycles. I’ve known John Griggs since we were in high school. Though we went to different schools, we kept running into each other in all different kinds of places. Young guys know each other, especially when you’re with guys that are getting high, smoking weed. Smoking weed was like such a bad thing, such a taboo —- and you were this clandestine little group of people that enjoyed smoking marijuana.

MillValleyLit: Right. It was supposed to be only musicians, black people, and people who wanted to go crazy that risked smoking reefer back then. Reefer Madness.

MR: And we were middle-class people in Orange County.

MillValleyLit: And Orange County was a very conservative area then.

MR: Yes, but somehow a little cluster of Spiritual Beings formed. We as the Brotherhood thought, and always had thought that we had incarnated together in previous lifetimes, maybe many times. Who knows? The trouble is, people keep trying to compare us to the Christians and John the Baptist and all that. I don’t care for the comparison but I think that we had some previous lifetimes together where we explored the spiritual world.

MillValleyLit: Because you were very, very close-knit, right?

MR: Yes. The core of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was less than twenty men and whatever women were there, and their wives. And those girls were sisters – just as important as the men. Sometimes they’d be riding shotgun with the baby to make it look good, when you were doing one of these things, because doing them just alone would look suspicious.

MillValleyLit: “Scams,” which the Brotherhood termed drug operations.

MR: Yes, scams. We always made plans to eliminate most danger before we ever got started. But you can’t eliminate it all. On those times when you are just keeping a tight asshole and running the border. And hoping to God it works. And it did most all the time.

MillValleyLit: John Griggs. Without him, and the people who were drawn to him, the Brotherhood would probably not have happened. Probably not such an evangelical, spread LSD far and wide, phenomenon. And peace-and-love John Griggs started out robbing people at gunpoint. He got his first acid at gunpoint?

MR: That happened one time. It’s been over dramatized.

MillValleyLit: You weren’t there though, right?

MR: No. I wasn’t. I have been written into that. I wouldn’t have been there. I wouldn’t do that kind of thing. Not that I’m more moral or whatever. Johnny did not run around robbing people. That was a one-time thing. He was in the Street Sweepers. They were just about the baddest motherfuckers in Southern California. They had some people in there – Joel Ore. Heavyweight Champion of the Navy, comes out of the Navy and now he’s just a fun-loving guy. Caroll Snow and a bunch of other people that were really very famous street fighters. Especially Joel Ore. People would come from long distances to find him. There was a bar called The Stables in Anaheim where everybody hung out. People would show up from San Diego to see if they could whip Joel and that just didn’t happen.

MillValleyLit: Like, (western accent here) I hear that dude’s the fastest gun in the West, but I’m gonna’ give him what fer!

MR: Pretty much. But it was fist fighting and no weapons allowed at all. When we were kids if somebody pulled a knife you were considered chickenshit. I mean, let alone guns, oh that was just unheard of. Those years was it was real men fight with their fists, and if you crack a bottle – a bystander someone will jump on you and take the weapon away, or whatever. But Joe was real, real handsome and women loved him. He was buffed and all, but he couldn’t see that. He wasn’t really all that big, but he was like the Muhammad Ali. He had a little thing, technique, and he could BING! and big guys would fall down and go to sleep and their feet would be twitching.

So, the Street Sweepers were kind of the bad boys. But they weren’t robbing banks. And some of these guys wearing sandals and very collegiate-like, were shooting dope. They chipped around with heroin. I did not. I don’t know anybody other than that guy Bob – that guy I was warning you off about – that actually became a junkie. And by the way, most people that are alive today from the Brotherhood, they don’t know who he is!

MillValleyLit: And he kind of tried to take over the BEL name. Weird.

MR: He can change it, do whatever he wants, you know. I’m not going to feed that dog. I am not going to get into a polemic with him. He’s just not worth it, if anybody asks you about it – he said some really harsh things about my wife, Carol. The least of which was, “What does she know?” You know what? She knows a lot. She was right there with us, she was fucking side by side with me in those labs and doing all this stuff. My wife is one hell of a wonderful woman.

MillValleyLit: I bet she is. So, after LSD became the focus, the Brotherhood formed and soon everything the Brotherhood would do would become more legally risky, dangerous, and extraordinarily more ambitious. Your enterprise went way beyond more than anything most people can imagine. At that time, people were getting prison time for a little weed. Smugglers would be shot or put away in a hellhole forever, like the film Midnight Express, which was based on a real story. Did you have any idea what you were really getting into, this obsession and drive that would create a group of friends, Brothers, to do this – worldwide?

MR: First of all, we started smuggling way before this. I mean I’d been smuggling weed way before I took LSD. In high school, my junior year, I was I was working with people that were bringing kilos in. They were bringing weed across the border and I was selling it for them.

We started making a lot of money. I hardly knew what to do with it. I was just a kid in school. I took my girlfriends out to the finest restaurants. I’ve always been a cash spending person, but my friends and I had been doing things a long time. But what compelled us to do all that followed? We were more like gangsters a little bit. The way —you’re breaking the law, for no particular reason. Weed made you feel good. We knew it wasn’t bad for you, wasn’t harmful. I’d take Benzedrine, take bennies, you know, and now and then take Red Devils. I never did like those things much and didn’t take heroin. We all stayed away, well, not everybody, but I personally stayed away from heroin. I didn’t like cocaine, but that was not on the scene then. So, it was just a few drugs around and weed was my favorite. Most people didn’t drink much and there were more potheads than drinking. And we were like the Stoners and then there was the football players that were beer drinkers, and loud and obnoxious.

MillValleyLit: The Jocks. And the “Greasers” were a real presence back then.

MR: Yes. We never hung out with any of them. We had more in common with the Mexicans. They were always into the weed thing. By the time I was 18 years old, in the Barrio – the Mexican area – I was the weed connection. As this young white boy. And me and my friend Tito, and Tom Jones, we’re running the border and I was selling to the Mexicans and I was the connection.

MillValleyLit: Wow. Orange County or L.A.?

MR: Orange County. It was actually probably Santa Ana. Probably city limits; it’s like here, you don’t know what city you’re in. It was real close to my friend’s house. So, what inspired us to do this? On a larger scale, it was the LSD experience.

Legion TV series went psychedelic based in the final season. 2019.

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, DODGE CITY, GEORGE WASHINGTON DROPPED HERE

MillValleyLit: It made you believers?

MR: We found God. I don’t like that word much. It has so much weighty bullshit connected to it. I like the Creator as an idea. And I was a stone, flat-out, smartass atheist. And I found out I was wrong! And that there is a Creator, there is a divine presence, there is a unity. We became evangelists in our own way. LSD Evangelists. It was you find this thing that is so…

MillValleyLit: That’s why some have made comparisons to John and the Apostles, or Jesus?

MR: I suppose. I don’t. We never made those comparisons. People read about them. It’s been misinterpreted. In The Sunshine Makers we almost had a falling-out, so they cut me out of scenes in the movie. Because I don’t want to be associated with that. I said, you teased that out of me. I don’t want the — there’s too much of it in the movie. I’m sitting there drinking beer, with somebody like you, and I say something like that. I could say to you that we turned on more people than Jesus, and it would be true.

MillValleyLit: I understand, because you remember what happened with John Lennon. Young people probably don’t, but it was a huge deal. Lennon remarked in an interview, something to the effect that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Lennon had been reading a lot of religious texts at the time, and in Britain, people said, hmm, I get it, but then later, in the American press, it was taken out of context, and he got BLASTED. This led to a huge uproar, actually banning concerts and burning Beatles records.****

MR: And that’s what in The Sunshine Makers, the British guys, tried to expand on. I said that’s not really fair, Jesus is riding around on a fucking donkey, and we have jet airplanes, traveling around the world.

MillValleyLit: So, we’ll move on. Speaking of technology, how did you guys stay in touch around the world? There were no cells, texts, barely faxes, or any of that.

MR: Amazing, isn’t it? But we did. I’ll meet you here or I’ll call you from there. We used to have to call a place that we knew that somebody always would be at, maybe it was somebody’s mom’s house. We used people who were clean. People also might want to know, when we incorporated our church the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who were the original signers on the docs? They were the people who had been in the least trouble with the police. A lot of them just drifted away. I don’t even know where they are. I was one of them. I hadn’t been getting in trouble with the police.

MillValleyLit: You were the businessman of the group. John Griggs was like the go-for-it, more trouble-making, charismatic leader.

MR: I’m fairly charismatic myself I’ll let you know. I hold my own in the charisma realm.

MillValleyLit: (laughs) Well, you did take over the group after John’s death, right?

MR: I was the college graduate. I was the businessman. Philosophy and religion is what I went to school for. Johnny was fine. But, I could be the communicator between us and, say, educational institutions. I mean people from UCLA studied us. We were one of the first groups that became an overt religion. We had a place in Modjeska Canyon in Southern California that was an old church that we had rented with lots of rooms. It still had the chapel. We started studying with the Roshi Zen Buddhists. With psychedelics you gravitate more toward the more non-anthropomorphic interpretations of God or the spirit, whatever, with which Eastern religion is about. So we became different, we started dressing different.

MillValleyLit: Do you think this was part of the Leary influence? He and Alpert had incorporated in New York with the League for Spiritual Discovery (LSD) church. (Ed. note: in 1966)

MR: This is all before Timothy Leary. Before we made that contact. And Alpert came to see us many, many times. I don’t think Tim ever came to Modjeska Canyon, but Ram Dass did. Multiple times. We started having zendos and other spiritual events at the place. We went back there, not too long ago,with some of the movie people and we were looking at the house that used to be the church.

One evening, during filming the movie, an old lady came walking up the road. Someone asked, Do you know who the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is? And she said in this cheery voice, “Of course. Everybody around here knew them.”

While we were there we went to Laguna Canyon to “Dodge City.” What we called Dodge City, which was just right outside Laguna Beach. There’s a canyon that runs right to the beach. If you start walking at the main beach on the road you could walk and be in Laguna Canyon in about 5 or 10 minutes. A lot of us lived there and it was kind of a small little neighborhood. That’s where the Brotherhood lived.

MillValleyLit: Did your group designate it, “Dodge City?”

MR: The place just grew into it. Somebody found a house there. It was nice. Somebody else found a house there, not too far away, and pretty soon people realized, “this is a nice place to live.” It was only 120 dollars a month for nice little houses with two or three bedrooms. Pretty soon we realized our people are almost the only ones living here. There was a black community there, a very small black community. Eddie Coleman was our neighbor. We loved that man. He was a great guy. He loved us too. Roosevelt Lane – that’s where it’s was and it’s kind of historic now. Now, we’re famous enough, our movement is, they want to put historical plaques up.

MillValleyLit: Like Jack Kerouac Alley in North Beach? That’s so cool.

MR: Yes. And on certain places. Over in Richmond there was a LSD lab in a place there.

MillValleyLit: Right. In Point Richmond. (CA)

MR: Yes. And they were trying to find the house because they wanted to make it a historical monument. The house has been torn down as it turns out. The house in Windsor, where Nick and Tim had a lab, there’s already a plaque there. We’re a fucking part of history! And we didn’t ask these people to put a plaque up.

MillValleyLit: How about a statue? Of you about to swallow a tab of Orange Sunshine?

MR: The thought of this kind of recognition never crossed my mind. They’re starting to happen around. It’s like, George Washington slept here.

MillValleyLit: Or, George Washington dropped here.

MR: Or, George Washington dropped here and screwed three women before the night was over. I mean really!

MillValleyLit: (laughs) This whole ambitious nature of the Brotherhood. Did it start really with the energy of John Griggs or do you think it was a synergistic mesh of everybody that was in it?

MR: I think it was both of those things. John Griggs was the first… to almost instantly understand. As I mentioned, I was an atheist when I first took acid.

SEND LAWYERS, no GUNS, AND MONEY

MillValleyLit: But you did believe in lawyers? (laughs)

MR: So, we’re at Cannabis Cup in San Francisco. Michael Kennedy was my attorney who was 100% owner of High Times magazine. He puts on the Cannabis Cup. Michael’s been at High Times for decades and decades, and over time people wanted out and Michael bought them out. He said, I never intended to own the whole magazine. I was mostly doing people a favor, a share for your share, I’ll give you what you want…

MillValleyLit: And he’s featured in the movie Orange Sunshine. He owns High Times?

MR: Right. He owned it then. He’s dead now. He died six to eight weeks after that interview. When we went to the premier of The Sunshine Makers in New York. And while I was there, and I wanted to see my “brother”, my dear friend up from all my life, Michael Kennedy. His apartment was the whole 23rd floor of this apartment house on Central Park South, looking straight down Central Park. Michael’s done very well for himself. Very brave man, very, very brave man.

MillValleyLit: He got really harassed. (Ed. note: Attorney Michael Kennedy also represented such radical activist orgs as the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and the Chicago Seven.)

MR: Harassed? They hated him. They hate lawyers that are as brave as him. That are willing to break the law, if that’s what it takes. There’s a lot about that I can’t talk about with you right now today. I forget where we were. I get to rambling but that’s just when you start getting good information.

WE GET DOWN TO IT: THE DROP ZONE

MillValleyLit: Ha! Seems like it. So next topic: you told me last time we met up, that you’ve done over eight hundred trips.

MR: I think that’s about right.

MillValleyLit: Shouldn’t you be in the Guinness Book of World Records?

MR: No, there are others.

MillValleyLit: That have done more? Wow. Can you describe what your best trip was like?

MR: Acid tripping is almost impossible to describe. It just is. It is beyond words. I’ve never had a bad trip. I’ve had some trips that were kind of challenging. I’ve been arrested high on acid and that wasn’t too fun. But it was funny.

MillValleyLit: Because a lot of people, like myself, have become very paranoid. I had a couple of trips that I got paranoid of being busted, over some minor legality, like my fake I.D. and trip out. You guys were doing massively illegal activities and you were also doing massive doses of acid. Cops were watching you and…

MR: Oh, those cops couldn’t find us most of the time. That’s for one thing. And they weren’t watching us that much.

MillValleyLit: It blows my mind, I just can’t imagine doing what you were doing, and drop all the time…

MR: Once you know, you realize that when you take acid enough, and we used to take really strong, stupidly strong doses…

MillValleyLit: What six or ten hits?

MR: More. Because a lot of time you’d be playing with the crystal and you might take fifty hits…

MillValleyLit: Shit. Fifty hits!!!

MR: I shouldn’t do that. (laughs) I never did hurt anybody. I’ve never seen anyone do it but I’ve heard stories of people finding white crystal and thinking it was cocaine, and later on realizing they were snorting a line of acid, which is probably like three hundred hits.

MillValleyLit: 300 hits!? I can’t imagine.

MR: I can’t either. But, these people, three or four days went by they were just like normal. I have taken probably 30 hits on purpose at one time.

MillValleyLit: Uh, no thanks.

MR: And if you’re feeling paranoid…when’s the last time you took some acid? Besides your beer I just put some in?

MillValleyLit: (laughs) It’s been a long time.

MR: You ever hear of microdosing?

MillValleyLit: Yes.

MR: You should microdose. You’ll like it.

MillValleyLit: I’m kind of afraid to now. I like my brain the way it is. And myself. I feel lucky to have escaped my escapades.

MR: You shouldn’t be afraid. That’s why you want to microdose. That’s why I said microdose. If you take 10 to 15 micrograms, you’re not going to get scared of anything. It’s not enough to scare you. It’s enough to sort of make you realize, “Well, there’s more to this than I realized. Whoa.” I have never had anybody… I’ve told quite a few people to try micro-dosing.

MillValleyLit: This would be an eighth of a hit, a tenth?

MR: A normal hit would be around a hundred micrograms. A microdose would be around 10. So, one tenth. I have turned on a lot of people to consider that, who have never taken acid. They’ve smoked weed. You smoke weed?

MillValleyLit: I have.

MR: What am I going to do with you? I’m going to have to… now you’re in trouble. I’m going to have to be after you. Weed is a psychedelic you know. And sometimes people come up with, “weed makes me paranoid.” It’s because it’s expanding your mind and you just need to relax and let it do that. But microdosing is real gentle. The people who believed me, and found some, and tried it out for the very first time – even older people, every single time – if they took, say 10 micrograms, they’d say, “I want more next time. I want to know more, this is interesting, I want to know more about it, I want more.” And you would say the same thing.

MillValleyLit: I lived in the Haight Ashbury for ten years, mostly in the seventies. Believe me, I’m not unfamiliar with the drug scene and the effects. How about what we called in the Haight, “acid casualties,” “acid burnouts?” That happens, right?

MR: Listen. Acid burnouts. Yeah, there’s people that did things that are probably less than intelligent and —- I would love to know how many of those acid casualties were also fucking around with speed or other things. I would like to know that, because I think there wouldn’t hardly be any acid casualties if they were taking acid out in nature, in a quiet place…

MillValleyLit: Like Golden Gate Park or Mt. Tam.

MR: …not on some dirty street corner, and not snorting or doing other things. You start doing that shit, you start mixing it with bad drugs and doing it in bad situations, things can happen. Jack Daniels causes a lot more problems than that, you know.

MillValleyLit: True. But not everybody sees God, either. And I’m a Christian. Always have been. I took acid recreationally and it never happened with me. I never had some “spiritual awakening,” saw a burning bush, or anything. I had a number of mind-expanding experiences, and I did have quite a few long-lasting epiphanies.

MR: We took it recreationally, maybe at the very, very beginning, but we never thought it was a recreational drug. And paranoia, when you become used to tripping you can become aware of the tricks of the mind. It’s almost like a separate thing that wants to get you to stop… it wants to make you think, it wants you to do something, anything, but don’t be still. It’s like it’s afraid of that, and that’s how the concept of the devil, I think came about. The mind is a controlling mechanism in your brain that likes the comfort of repetition. And knowing that this is all going to be here tomorrow. We all have this little program.

MillValleyLit: I didn’t know about that, so I could have used the book you gave me, your psychedelic guide. I didn’t even have the Leary and Alpert books. I would do crazy stuff, drop by myself, hang out with drunk friends, play ping pong, go to Disneyland, ride my motorcycle in Tuna Canyon…

MR: How can you still your mind when you’re doing those things? No wonder you never did… So this is what paranoia can be – this little trick of the mind to get you into: “Oh, this is important. You need to stop what you’re doing and think about this.” Well you don’t either. You need to discard that and continue to let your consciousness unravel, unfold. What you’re doing, is your nervous system is starting to work on a higher level. And if you get in the way by thinking – you’re not going to let your nervous system ascend to a consciousness – that I don’t know how to describe in words. I just really seriously don’t.

MillValleyLit: That’s profound, Michael. And you’re right, you are charismatic. I wish I would have met you when I was 20. Do you meditate?

MR: A little.

MillValleyLit: That helps me free up the mind. Quiet down those little monkeys chattering in there.

MR: Those are the ones you don’t want. Meditation does help. One of my favorite lines from the Tao Te Ching, translated by Timothy is, “Stillness is the master of agitation.” It’s just very simple and it’s really, really true. Stillness is the master of agitation. So, most meditation is to still  the mind so that you can turn off the monkey mind and – see the sunlight. To feel the breeze. To smell things. So that you become this this wonderful organism of senses.

MillValleyLit: And we are.

MR: That’s right. And we’re fairly limited in that, too.

MillValleyLit: Yes. We don’t have the dog sense of smell or the cat sense…

MR: Right, exactly. And we know there’s things you can smell, but there’s things you can’t smell. We know that there is light you can see, but there is light you cannot see. So, our whole conception of the world is based on the limitations of this flesh that we’re in. Will LSD and psychedelics take you beyond that flesh that you’re in? The nervous system that is working, the thirteen billion cell computer inside your head – you’re never using but a tiny fraction of it. They have brain scans where they can show the brain lit up from psychedelics. The scans show the difference between a regular person’s brain and the same person’s brain after taking psychedelics – and the brain is lit up in a completely different way. It’s amazing.

 

At this point Michael’s lovely wife Carol joined us. Carol was the wife of Brotherhood leader and guiding spirit, John Griggs, before he sadly passed Aug. 3, 1969. Later she wedded Michael Randall. Her appearance during the interview led to an interesting chat off the record.

**** https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/burn-the-beatles-1966/

Note: This interview originally ran in MillValleyLit’s 2019 “Salutes Psychedelia” issue.

END

 

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NOTE: Barry & the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History, by Daniel Hopsicker. This is the story of Barry Seal, the biggest coke smuggler in American history, who died in a hail of bullets with George Bush’s private phone number in his wallet…

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Recent MillValleyLit interviews include:

DeLorean Auto CFO Walter Strycker, Anne R. Dick, Lyle Tuttle, Catherine Coulter, Jennifer Egan, David Harris, Tom Barbash, T.C. Boyle, Louis B. Jones, Peter Coyote, James Dalessandro, Michelle Richmond, Beat expert\biographer\poet Gerald Nicosia, rockin’ writer Deborah Grabien, poet and journalist Jeff Kaliss, audiobook narrators Simon Vance and Paul Costanzo, poets Pat Mooney and San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin.

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“I get it!” Tony Soprano.

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Case Closed on Hippie Mafia Smugglers. Dec 03, 2009 by Nick Schou

The strange case of the so-called “Hippie Mafia,” the longest, most surreal saga in the annals of American counterculture, is finally over. On November 20, 2009, Brenice Lee Smith, the last remaining fugitive from the legendary band of outlaws known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, pleaded guilty to a single charge of smuggling hashish from Afghanistan to Orange County. Brenice Lee Smith was arrested at San Francisco International Airport after four decades on the run. He was arrested on two, nearly 40-year-old warrants related to the sale and possession of drugs ….the prosecutor handling the case, Jim Hicks, is the son of DA Cecil Hicks, who presided over the 1972 conspiracy case against the Brotherhood, and who is said to be retiring next March, meaning this case could be his last hurrah.(Condensed from Nicholas Schou’s article in OCWeekly.)

Meddle by Pink Floyd, 1971. “One of These Days…” This album will trip you out even without psychedelics. Wa,wa,wa.

Field of Lights photo by Scott Roberts – ScottOfTheWorld.com

Credits:

Alpert & Leary courtesy Dying to Know documentary 2014.

Side photo Lights: Scott of the World photography.

Macon King headshot: Perry King

Uncredited photos: J. Macon King, except some stock promotional book jackets, posters, archival, or credited.

© MillValleyLit. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any material without permission is strictly prohibited.

All writing, submissions, and comments are the views of the respective authors and interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the views of MillValleyLit or Editorial staff.