Crime
L.A. Confidential
Thirty-four years ago, El Paso rocker Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car in Hollywood. The mystery of who killed him lives on.
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Bobby had built a recording studio in his parents' house, and he and the band started recording their own singles and putting them out themselves. Bobby was obsessive about recording, staying up all night to tinker with some song that everyone else thought was fine. He also refused to record anything that couldn't be recaptured live. His seriousness paid off: He started racking up regional hits, including a Crickets cover, "I Fought the Law," suggested by Randy. By 1963 Bobby was billing himself as "the Rock and Roll King of the Southwest," and nobody was contesting the title. He and his band had done all they were going to as a farm team; it was time to move up to the majors. Bobby had been out to California that summer and had come back high on the music scene there. (He also introduced surf into the band's arsenal of styles, which was a little incongruous — what other El Paso band would play a song called "King of the Beach"?) Randy and Jim were up for the move, but Dalton wasn't willing to give up his construction job, so they tapped DeWayne Querico to play drums instead and headed west.
Once in Los Angeles, the West Texas boys hooked up with Bob Keane, the veteran producer and manager who'd made Ritchie Valens a star. Their faith in his credentials was soon justified. They had cut a single, a new version of an older song of Bobby's, "Let Her Dance," and, Randy remembers, Keane had some business partner who not only claimed he could get the record on the air but also told them exactly what time on what day it would first play. Sure enough, at the designated moment, "Let Her Dance" came blasting out of the radio. It didn't occur to anyone at the time to question just how their man was able to pull that off.
By early 1965 they had a residency at PJ's on Santa Monica Boulevard, and every night they played, there was a line of skirts around the block waiting to get in. In a town full of make-believe bands composed of failed actors, they were the real thing, and all those years in the trenches had made them as tough and tight as a pair of leather jeans. Which none of them wore, since they still subscribed to the all-for-one school of rock couture; wearing matching outfits was just one more thing you did if you wanted to make it, like recording shoe ads or lip-synching another band's songs in the Nancy Sinatra-Boris Karloff vehicle The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini — both of which they did. The stairway to the stars was a lot more rickety back then, and if your guide was someone who'd been up it once already, well, you followed his directions.
But in 1966 the ground was shifting under pop music, and it was hard to tell which way to jump. Down the street a guy named Jim Morrison, who actually wore leather pants, was singing with his band, the Doors, and they weren't exactly using the same playbook as the Four. LSD had started to get loose on the streets, and the Brylcreemed Jay Sebring look that had epitomized Southern California was starting to evolve into something scruffier and less recognizable. There was confusion within the band too. Bobby and Bob Keane were butting heads constantly about what the records should sound like, and Bobby the purist wasn't happy with Keane the popmonger's approach. It didn't help matters that their first real hit, a rerecording of "I Fought the Law," wasn't one of Bobby's songs, or that he had made plenty of hit records without Bob Keane's help back home. Rumors about Bobby leaving the band started to spread. Even more unsettling, the clean-cut kid from El Paso was letting his hair grow and was talking about experimenting with acid.
Sometime in the small hours of July 18, Bobby left his super's apartment, where he'd been drinking beer, and disappeared into the night. At nine-thirty that morning the other band members gathered for a meeting that Bobby had called at the Del-Fi studios. He never showed up, and later that day his body was discovered by his mother in his car, which was parked in the lot outside their apartment.
Bobby's death came at a difficult time for the band, and it intensified the anxiety and uncertainty that had been building in his last days. It was the rock and roll version of John F. Kennedy's assassination, and as with that tragedy, once doubt was cast on the official explanation, the floodgates opened and the air grew dark with suspicion and innuendo. Of all the theories about Bobby's death, the following are the most widely circulated:
It was the mob. There are two versions of this. One says that Bobby was getting ready to ditch his contract and that certain unsavory music-industry types were unhappy about it. The other involves a Judith Exner-like figure, reputedly the girlfriend of a club owner linked to organized crime, who had been seeing Bobby as well, incurring her boyfriend's displeasure. This is the theory with the most staying power, in that it explains both his injuries and the indifference of the police.
It was the drugs. While Bobby wasn't much of a recreational drug user, he'd expressed interest in the inspirational and creative aspects of acid, which was still legal at the time. Parties where it was dispensed freely were flourishing along the coast, and Bobby might well have attended one. This theory posits a bad trip and an accidental death, followed by an attempt to make it look otherwise. But it fails to account for the bruises on his body.
It was a rival. Professional jealousy to the point of homicide has been suggested as a motive, but it's hard to imagine anyone considering Bobby enough of a threat to want to off him.
It was an insurance scam. The theory was advanced in the liner notes of a collection released by Keane's Mustang Records in 1997. Killing someone to get his life insurance payoff is not unheard of. There's only one problem: Why try to make it look like a suicide?
It was suicide. It would be interesting to hear someone make the case that Bobby beat himself up, doused himself with gasoline (drinking some in the process), and then drove himself home three hours after he'd been dead, but advocates of the official story are few and far between.
Ultimately, though, dwelling too long on Bobby Fuller's senseless and sordid death is a disservice to his legacy. It's how he lived, not how he died, that should be remembered. So take a moment of silence to honor one of rock's great lost heroes . . . and then crank up "I Fought the Law" as loud as it'll go.
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