CAMROSE VILLAGE I started out the year 1975, living by myself again after a 12-year partnership with Simon Posthuma went on the rocks. The Highland Camrose Bungalow Village next to the Hollywood Bowl was one of those unique places in Los Angeles with its own special appeal and ambience and truly felt like a community. […]
MALIBU (Chumash word for rough road) The Booker Taliafero Jones ranch on Malibu’s Winding Way was a family affair. The main house was a typical California ranch house with four bedrooms, a huge living room with a fireplace and a cozy country kitchen. Booker had a special music room that he had outfitted with the
WITH A LITTLE BIT OF HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS On July 16. 1969, the date of the Moon landing, Yosha & Barry got married at “The Builders of the Adytum’” Temple in Highland Park. Their oldest daughter Violet Aurora was born a few weeks later, the first of their 6 children. It was a happy
COSMIC COUTURE When he was not residing in his mansion in Montecito, Santa Barbara, to be near his beloved polo field at Earl Warren’s equestrian center, Michael Butler had a large four bedroom house with a pool off Kings Road above the Sunset strip where he conducted his various business projects. The latest of which
HAIR It was the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” and living in Hollywood during the late sixties felt like it was just the right place and time for “the Fool” collective. Simon and I immediately started to create more artwork in our a large studio upstairs in the Shoreham Drive house while our manager
A SHIP OF FOOLS The Fool celebrated New Year’s Eve of ‘68 being served dinner in our painted Bentley parked in front of Mr. Chow’s popular Chinese restaurant, because it was too crowded inside. Soon thereafter, we were approached by John Heyman of “World Film Services” (the agent for Liz Taylor & Richard Burton), to
The Other Side The latter part of 1967 brought film director Joe Massot to The Fool’s door once more. We had met him first in our St. Stephens Gardens studio where he had been impressed with the painted Wonderwall armoire. Joe was tall, dark and handsome with a sturdy physique, we had seen him and
A IS FOR APPLE The Baker Street APPLE headquarters building was a dreary affair and the Beatles wanted to do something extra-ordinary with it so they approached us to brain storm the project. We met with the four of them and Brian Epstein in the upper floor offices and a general proposal was worked out
One evening Mal Evans, the Beatles’ assistant called to say John Lennon & Paul McCartney wanted to meet Simon and myself so a few days later they knocked on the door and like an apparition suddenly stood in our living room in St. Stephens Gardens. They had seen the “Saville Theatre” program cover I created
ERIC CLAPTON’S 1964 GIBSON SG During my adventures in London during 1966, my ex-partner Simon Posthuma and I had established our selves in a great Georgian style place in St. Stephens Gardens, Bayswater. The house was quite run down and dilapidated but had large rooms. The living quarters were on the ground floor and a
ROCK & POP From the island of Ibiza my ex-partner Simon Posthuma and I moved to London in the summer of 1966. We were invited to stay at our friends Harry and Pamela Kerr, a painter we had met during our exhibition in Madrid earlier in the year. Right away we were happy to eat
SERENDIPITY The notorious island of Ibiza in the Balearic Sea was waiting for us so Simon and I took a train from Madrid to Valencia and from there, a boat to the island. The Mediterranean smelt fresh and briny, at the island’s picturesque harbor the docks were busy with merchants and stevedores hustling sacks of
ADELANTE Simon and I got off the ferry from Tangier in Morocco at Gibraltar but unfortunately didn’t see any of the resident Barbary Macaque old world monkeys…After clearing customs we boarded the train to the stately metropolis of Spain, Madrid. From the glass domed “Atocha” train station a taxi driver brought us to the “Plaza
After the flight from Athens landed in Casablanca we took a bus to the city of Rabat, the capital of Morocco. From his previous experience in the country, Simon had an acquaintance in Rabat, an older man called Abdullah and when we looked him up at his business in the Medina he insisted we stay
THE PYTHIAN ORACLE After returning from our Paris trip I was tired of the craziness of the Amsterdam scene so I accepted an invitation from Mr. Aristide Skylitzis, the director of the Greek advertising agency “Greca” to work there for three months. Simon wanted to come along so we soon were on a flight to
STONED IN THE STREETS The explosion of freedom of expression in the 1960’s by the baby boomers was a reaction to the turbulence of the preceding World Wars and the Great Depression. There was an urgent tendency of this younger generation to explore new forms of music and art enhanced by the expansion of consciousness
My life had changed drastically…After my mother married Wim Verhoef, I was made to leave my beloved foster family and live with them to attend a new middle school. I moved to a new neighborhood called the Watergraafsmeer at 5 Linnaeusparkweg, a few miles from my previous abode. We occupied the second floor of a
WAR BABY The Wheel of Fortune turns in mysterious ways…During 1943 in the middle of World War II, the people in Holland were going through extremely hard times. I was born on November 6 on the Rozengracht in the center of Amsterdam. I can still remember the high whistling sound of falling bombs. After ’45
