Craig Braun

Our guest, for this memorable episode, Craig Braun, is a man who woke up to find himself in the center of music and pop culture history, surrounded by epic romances and an uncanny creative brilliance. An extraordinary talent with three sons, all thriving in the arts, Craig’s story is a celebration of imagination, artistic daring, unfathomably highs and lows, the unbreakable drive to create. And sex, drugs and rock’ n’ roll.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome back to How We Love. I'm Robin Lane, psychologist and host, and my guest today is Craig Braun, a man who, although he has never stayed with one love for long, has nonetheless lived a lifetime of passion and artistry. Famous not for the music itself, but for the look of it, Craig designed some of the most iconic album covers in music history, winning countless awards and shaping how generations perceived rock and roll. Craig is a man who has done it all. And today we will let him tell us about his extraordinary life. Welcome, Craig Braun. It's an honor to have you on as our guest.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Well, thank you for the flattering remarks and the intro. I've got to live up to something now.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Well, you've lived an extraordinarily glamorous life and hung out with some of rock and roll's most famous talents. So let's begin, though, with the backstory. How you became how do you how did you start getting into record graphic business from the very beginning?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Well, it was through the printing business. Uh I took a job in New York in 1964 and worked for a uh a printer. Uh and um I was hired as a new salesman, and uh I moved from Chicago to New York in April of 64, and I wasn't given any clients, so I had to ferret them out from the bushes. Uh, and one of one of them was RCA Victor Records. And uh the buyer called me one day and he said, We we we need to promote a single. Uh, I'm not sure what it was, but I believe it was an Elvis Presley album. And uh it had one single, maybe Heartbreak Hotel. Uh, and then uh I forgot the I forgot the one that I did, but this is many years ago, probably early 65, and I came up with uh a pressure-sensitive label that they could put on the shrink wrap.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

And what is a press what is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

The pressure a self-adhesive, like band-aids, you know. They when you take a band-aid out, it sticks to your skin. So that's that's an adhesive self, it's called self-adhesive or pressure sensitive. And so it it became uh a merchandising gimmick that wound up selling many more albums than they anticipated. So I took that to all the record companies, and I became, in short order, the sticker king of the record industry, and then uh most of what's happened to me, I'll call it happenstance or rather the accidents of life. Uh most of them were uh were me saying yes, even when I didn't know what I'm saying yes to.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

Can you give me an example?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

London, London Decca. They they had all of their acts coming from England, including uh Stones, Manovan, Engelbert, Humbert Dink, and so but they signed a rock and roll band here in America in Detroit, and he said to me, Do you think you could do an album cover? Because we we get all the artwork from London, but we won't have any artwork. Could could you do an album cover? And I said without a hesitation, yes. So I went ahead and designed this album cover, but I ran around to all of the record stores, you know, the mom and pop stores. I mean, this is back in the 60s, and and there were mass merchandisers like Sam Goody and Sears and so forth. And I just browsed through all the bins to see, you know, photographs, illustrations, type handling, and that kind of thing. So I put together this album cover, and somehow it uh it lit a fire inside of me. And very quickly I thought, why do all album covers come in a 12 by 12 uh jacket format? Maybe I could do some other things because I didn't have uh a traditional graphic design background. I think I had good graphic taste, but I started to come up with ideas uh uh for making album jackets more, let's say, proactive or more interesting.

SPEAKER_03 5:06

More interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

More what? Interesting. Yeah, more interesting. So I wanted to get into uh uh kind of turning the tide and opening up a new window because all of the people that supplied the record industry, they were just basically the same people had been doing it for decades after decades. So there weren't any creative people there. So I started putting a wheel in an album. I started to put in a wheel, uh a uh um eyelidd wheel so that you could pull it from the right side, and uh and little windows that I had die-cut on the cover would come up with. For instance, the this was a uh Led Zeppelin album. So you'd get a picture on the wheel of Jimmy Page, who was the lead guitarist, and then in the other little windows on the front cover, you'd have his home, his Rolls Royce, and uh other things would come. So people would they'd get high and they'd trip, yeah, they'd trip going through it well with this wheel, listening to the record album. And and then I did one for Joe Cocker. He did he had a tour called Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and I made the album fold out into a giant poster by using thinner board. I could fold and score the board so when uh when the consumer unwrapped the shrink wrap, they could start unfolding it like a napkin, and they had a giant poster of Joe Cocker with holding his muscle up in the air, and the tour was enormously successful. Uh and so one thing led to another, and then I did an Alice Cooper package for a record that was coming out in in uh I think in springtime called School's Out. And then and it was a hit single. So I did a school desk, an old school desk. I had one of my people, and then by this time I had 15 people in the art department, and uh I had them find an old antique desk like the ones we used to have uh when you and I went to school. There was a little die cut, there was a little hole in the upper right hand, and then there was a groove for putting your pencils and pens, and the ink bottles went in that little. You remember that little circle, and yeah, so I I used that. I print, I had it photographed and then cut, I cut a middle section out of it, pushed it together and airbrushed it so you could not tell that this was in two pieces. And uh, I carved the initials of all the band members in, and I had that flip-up just the as you unwrap the album, you could lift up the top of the desk and look inside, and there was a slingshot and marbles and a comic book uh liberace comic book, and and then and then I and I had no uh stops, and me, I just did what I wanted, and people were buying it. So I put a pair of panties on Alice Cooper, even though he was a male singer, and so I got I got these paper panties from UK, and I put so everyone would open up the school desk and find the record is wrapped in this pair of women's panties, so that it was a monster success. And there's a little anecdote that comes afterwards because we had trouble uh getting the second I bought 500,000 pairs of panties and those came in by plane, but then I ordered a million two hundred thousand pairs of women's panties from London, and when they came in, it was the biggest snowstorm. This was in March of I guess 1972 or something like that, and so we couldn't clear them in customs, and they put up an objection. They said, But this is women's wearing apparel, and you have to either treat them to deflamatize them because they were paper. And I said, They're a promotional gimmick, no one's gonna wear these. And he's they said, No, we this by the rules, you have to cut the crotches out, or you have to make them not flammable. So we found uh I said, We're not cutting the crotches, that that's too sadistic. I said, We'll find a place where we can dip a million two hundred thousand uh pairs of panties up in Canada, but then no trucks, nothing was moving. There was eight feet of snow. I'm exaggerating probably, but so two weeks went by, and finally my production guy says, We're shipping, they're gonna arrive in Toronto tomorrow. Um so I'm happy. So I said, call up uh Warner Brothers Records and tell them that we're gonna have availability in the next two weeks, uh, and we'll ship them out to all your pressing plants across the country. So he comes into my office with his head hanging below his his chest and saying, Craig, they uh they they found someone in Mexico to make the panties. They were worried because of the story I told them. So they bought a million pairs of panties from this supplier in Mexico. So needless to say, uh, I was eating a lot of panties, so I uh I told them, bring bring my poster down here, which was a uh it was a porcelain dog with his tongue hanging out, it was like a bulldog kind of thing. And I said, and um I I want you to uh I want you to uh give me eight pairs of the panties, and so I I I at my desk I wrote in blocked letters, I can't believe I ate the whole thing, and then I told them to tape it to the dog's mouth and roll these up and send them air freight to the uh president, the CEO of Warner Brothers, all the major executives. So their vice president of Creative Director called me the next day, Stan Corner, and he was in this chairman's office, and these these guys were laughing their ass off. And he says, Craig, I can't believe what you sent us. I said, Well, you guys screwed me. I got you an across the country controversial article. It was in UPI. You know, I told uh I told this reporter Lee Zito at the Washington Post that the government was holding up the release of this schools out album, and it went all the way across the country, and this is the reward I get. I've created this momentous cover, and you're buying the panties from someone else. And he said, We just thought we're gonna take the panties whether we need them or not. And I said, Well, that was very smart, and he said, What do you mean? And I said, If you didn't, I was gonna put uh in a helicopter, the million two hundred, maybe two helicopters, and drop them all over the Warner Brothers film lot. And I heard uh Joe Smith, who's the president of uh Warner Brothers, he said, Would this guy do that? And stand the guy on the phone with me, and he said, Yes, he would. He's fucking crazy, this Craig Bryant. So I said, You saved yourselves a big cleanup, my man, and showed a little appreciation for what I've done for you. So those are the kind of things that would happen when I'd step outside the format of uh how a record is packaged. And I did, you know, Cheech and Chong. I did, I did so many, I did uh oh man, so so many different kinds of custom covers like this. And of course, the bands and their managers and their producers came to me because they wanted something different than a conventional cover. So, anyway, that's uh that's what happened. And uh, you know, for me, you know, I would do a carpenters and a Rolling Stones package at the same time. I'm the guy who put the zipper on the Rolling Stones package, the sticky fingers.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Can you explain that? Because we don't we're this this is audio, so the audience can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Well, it's a cover that has the front part of a um uh a man wearing a pair of jeans and uh die cut only from the waist to the thigh.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

Yeah, from the from the from the belt, Craig, the crotch is very noticeable.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah, yeah, though the crotch was noticeable because in those days uh we're talking about 7071, uh tight was the thing, and not and then it goes through different periods, you know, where sometimes jeans were baggy, but they were very tight, and they were called French jeans, and then a lot of young people were buying French jeans because they they the women couldn't even wear underwear, they were so tight, you know. They would use Kleenex. Uh so uh I had them take one of the guys. Uh I called Andy and I said, I want you to shoot some Polaroids for the new Stones album. And he he was the guy who inspired the zipper because he's he was at hippopotamus one night at club, and Mick came over to him and he said, Mick, I have a great idea for you. You we should put a zipper on the next album. So the Mick Jagger, yeah, and so and uh so uh Marshall Chess was running their label and he calls me up. He says, Can a zipper go on a cover? I said, uh I don't think so. We're we're it could be a lot of damage, you know, both sides of the zipper. He said, Well, Mick and the Stones really want that. So I spent like a month working on different constructions with different construction people. I had people come in that were from architects to designers of uh cosmetic packaging, and I finally came up with a way of incorporating the zipper on the front cover. Which was which was about a five-inch zipper. Uh and the I had the panel open up so that the fabric on both sides of the zipper could be adhered. Adhesive, could be adhered, and then uh, you know, the albums go down an assembly line, uh or a conveyor belt, and they have a time to dry, and then they go they're put in boxes, and I had them staggered like uh Chinese laundry, you know, does with shirts, and uh, so I get a call, uh, and Andy did the photographs, and I know in the last minute I'm talking about Andy Warhol. Yeah, Andy Warhol. And uh I said, Andy, I I'm uh we got the front. I'm not worried about the pull of the tag of the zip, but the back, even though it's flat, it could dent the tracks because we're dealing with vinyl here. So I said, I gotta put another panel in behind the cover, and I want you to get the same guy and uh put him in tidy whiteies. I want him in tight jockey shorts, and I want and I want him to play with himself before you start shooting pictures because we're showing this uh a semi-hard on.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

You wanted him to have an erection.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Well, a quasi uh one, not not a full erection. That would have been that would have been pornographic.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So he says, Craig, what a wonderful idea.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

And so, you know, Andy and I had some history because we did the we did the Velvet Underground together. That's the album that had a giant banana sticker that you could peel. I don't know whether you've ever seen the cover, but it was the first uh John Cage and Lou. Oh, who was the who was the creative guy? Lou Lou. Anyway, so we did that in '67. So that Andy and I had already had a relationship, we had become friends, and then the Stones thing came up, and uh, so he did all the Polaroids, and I said, I want this this one with the underwear to be in color, and I want you to send me your stamp, you know, property of or photograph by Andy, and I'm gonna put it where it usually has a jockey uh logo. I want to stamp it there, Andy Warhol. We're gonna sell a lot more albums with your fucking name on it, you know, for sure. So I was always thinking about the consumer and how to grab the impulse consumer, no matter what the products were. I had this marketing uh savvy, and I was a pretty good idea guy. So, anyway, we went ahead with this, and then I get a call from uh from uh Ahmed Erdogan's uh brother, Nesui Erdogan. He says, Well, we're gonna put you out of business. And I said, What are you talking about? And he said, Well, there's this track on side two, the sister morphine track on the new Stones album, and we're getting a lot of returns because there's the dent mark. So that's when I called, uh uh and I put put this extra panel in to solve the problem. And apparently uh I did some experimentation. I realized that could still be a problem. So uh Neswe was saying to me, why don't you print the fucking zipper? I told you that in the first place. I said, Look, the stones want this. Your brother Amit agreed to it, so uh don't come after me and say you're gonna put me out of business. They wanted this, they asked me to develop it, and so he said, Well, you better fix it. So I said I stopped everything, and I stayed in my office till about one o'clock in the morning playing with that jacket and trying to figure out a way to protect the records that were in these boxes. I'd never had any idea that they were gonna stack like 20 cartons on top of one another, and so in a truck where it's bouncing up and down, that's how the damage occurred. So I'm playing with it. I'm very high. I'm probably doing several lines of cocaine and smoking some dope. And I think, and I think, let me see what will happen if I pull the zipper down, all the way down, and I did that, and I put an album on top of it, and the dent that was being caused was now in the center disc label where they have all the song titles of what's on the record. And who gives a shit about that? You know, so I called Nestle the next morning. I said, I got the solution. We're gonna have little old ladies down at the end of the uh conveyor belt, and we've got to extend it because we want that glue to dry, and they're gonna be pulling these zippers all the way down. And he said, Is that gonna work? I said, Yeah, it's gonna work. He said, 100%. I said, Yeah, 100% it's gonna work. There's gonna be a dent, but it's gonna be in the center disc label, and nobody cares about that. So he says, Okay, roll, and and we did it, and the album became a monster success. And some of it was due to the fact that it was in this unusual cover with a guy with a guy's rear end on the back, you know, really tight ass, great young guy, and and with the back then.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

I mean, yeah, you know, it's pretty shocking.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yeah, well, you know, Sears refused to take it, and a lot of uh mass merchandisers, you know, they thought of their record stores as family stores, so they didn't take it to start the release, but then when it started selling like hotcakes, I think they jumped in and said, Let's compromise, you know, like we do in today's political world. Uh, so anyway, uh the the record was a huge success, and uh uh I was my business model was to design for free, but I manufactured the package, so therein lies you know my big paydays because I was getting royalties just like the stones for the packages. No one no one had ever done that. Album designers and they charge a couple of thousand dollars for a cover, and I was not in it for that.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

No, you're just enormously creative, Craig. But let me ask you something what was your life like at that time, aside from the business aspect? What was your personal life like? Well, because you had I know you were married many times.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

You had well, I was married twice, yeah. I married a stewardess in 61 and had a child at 62, uh, my first son. And his name is Timothy Braun, and he's a you know, he worked for CNN and ABC. He's a journalist, uh, you know, he did a lot of their stories, and now he has his own production firm, and he's very successful.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

And uh and that marriage lasted how long?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Six years.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Okay. And then uh about great staying power, and and the next one?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Well, the next child came from a brief love affair in Paris, and uh a woman whose family owned a hotel in the Marais. She came to New York and she knew of me, she had met me socially, and so we wound up spending a weekend together. She got pregnant, and I didn't know about it. She called me a couple of months later and said, I'm pregnant. And I said, Well, why are you calling me? Who who is it? And she says, she says, I've only slept with one person in my life, and it was you.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So she said, I'm calling you, and I know this doesn't sound like an American woman would say, but I would like your permission to have the child. Oh my goodness. And I was adopted, and my mother was from Ireland with her family in Chicago, and she got pregnant at 17, and uh, you know, they moved her to Michigan or Wisconsin for the last couple of months, and then she gave the baby up for adoption. And uh you you you're talking about to a place called the Cradle, the Cradle Society in uh uh where the hell was it? In Evanston, Illinois, and my parents were on the list to to get a son or daughter, anyway. Uh so I was adopted there. I was a very sickly kid. They tried to dissuade her, which means I wouldn't be on the phone with you. I wouldn't be on this right now. They said, listen, he's got a rash over 90% of his body, it keeps losing weight. We can't find the formula, like a symbol across something. So why don't you wait for the next boy? And she said, uh, she told me this, this story. She said, No, I want to come in, I want to see him because you say it's my turn, and we've been waiting for months. And so she she saw me and she said something that you might say to someone is selling you a used car, and you say, Do you mind if I take this car to my mechanic uh and have it checked out?

SPEAKER_03 25:41

And she said, uh what this is the this is the mom that adopted you.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yes, yes, my adoptive mother, and she said, I'd like to take him to my doctor, if you don't mind. And they said, Well, it's a strange request, but but because he's sickly, yes. So she took me to the doctor. He said, This is your child. Don't don't release this, don't wait for another one. We'll fix him, we'll find the right formula. You you'll be taking him out in the sunshine 40 or 45 minutes a day. We're gonna clear up the rash, and so and here I am talking to you.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

You live, but let's go back to the child with the French woman. What happened to that son?

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Oh, yeah. So I said she said, I called you, asked permission, so I said, give me a few days, and I uh I deliberated and I called my sponsor in AA and I talked to him at length a couple of times, and he said, Listen, if if you have no relationship or the prospect of a relationship with her, but you were adopted in such a situation, and if that motivates you to give her a yes, just put in in a letter form that you will not be responsible, she shouldn't look forward to a father who participates in the life. Uh and so write this letter. He gave me the four or five deal points, and I I did. I called her, I said, It's okay, go ahead. And uh, you know, uh he was born, and uh she gave me a call and said it was a difficult birth and then some problems, and I said, Well, I'm glad he's alive, and uh uh and I'm glad you're happy. She said, I couldn't be more happy. I I knew a lot about you because I knew this woman that you were deeply in love with, and uh her sister was a friend of mine, so she told me all about you, you know, what what you did, what your personality was, and all this stuff. So I'm so happy that it was a successful birth. And then she called me about eight months later and she said, Now listen, there's no obligation, but if you if you have any interest in seeing the child, we're going to baptize him at uh a small church on Isle Saint-Louis, and it's just gonna be a small baptism, just you know, my relatives, and if you wanted to come, uh no one's gonna point a finger at you and to see uh to see your child. And I was uh I I just said, yes, I'll be there. And so I showed up, and the moment I picked up this little creature, uh, I I looked at his, I looked in his eyes, I saw my I saw myself, and it was like uh a brand of love. I uh I had never I had never felt this kind of love. And I so we wound up being connected for quite a few years, and then her her best friend told me her her design was always to marry you. Wouldn't it wouldn't be a surprise to know that she planned her trip when she knew she'd be ovulating. I said, really? She said, Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Uh so great, great, great.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

That was you were such a well, you were a big name at that time, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah, yeah. I was well, I was big, uh I somehow had this kind of gift of talk and charm. I and so any place I wanted to connect, like you know, Women's Wear Daily, I was in that crowd. I was in the uh John Richard, the the intellectual crowd, I was in all of them, but I was a bounce-in, and I went to the places like Elaine's, I was there four or five times, and Mortimer's, and yeah, I had my own table there and stuff like that. So yeah, I'd become like a social butterfly. And all of this.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

And were you stoned during most of this period?

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yeah, yeah, I was probably in the bathroom as much as I was uh sitting at the table. And Elaine used to come and she'd bang on the women's uh door, you know, she'd be saying, Craig, get out of there, because I was always in the ladies' bathroom, uh putting coke in the noses of uh all of these victims uh that I had. But I was I was kind of a cute guy, but wait a minute, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

What do you mean, victims that you had?

SPEAKER_01 30:27

What?

SPEAKER_03 30:28

What do you mean, victims that you had? What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Well, uh, victims, I don't know whether they're victims.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

I think they were uh consensual victims that you bought a lot of coke and you gave it to a a lot of women, which was yeah, yeah. So you must have spent a hell of a lot of money that way.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, I spent a fortune, yeah. I called it my hundred thousand dollar a year diet, and in today's dollars that would be probably two fifty. But anyway, uh, and I was at money. Do you think you threw away on drugs? Oh man, I I don't know. I I I don't want to know.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

No, come on.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

It's a lot of money. It's it's it's let's say it's uh 10 jaguars, you know, 10 cars from Britain.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

But you're looking at a million dollars or more.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Oh, I don't think a million, no, but uh maybe if six figures uh between 100 and 250, let's say in those days, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Which would be difficult money.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

You know, I was loaded a lot of time because I was I was mixing a lot of drugs too. So I was doing uh uh I had started doing heroin, so heroin and coke together. What made you what made you use heroin? That that's was dangerous stuff. I well, I told you the secret to my success and my failure was uh saying yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

So I said yes a lot, and uh but I wasn't doing no I'm not gonna let you get away with that seriously. What made you take heroin and how did you take it? You injected it? How did you take it?

SPEAKER_01 32:12

No, no, I promised myself that I would never put a needle in my arm, so I was snorting the coke. Okay. I mean snorting the I was snorting the heroin, you know. I let me ask you in the years we're talking about right now, I was basically doing cocaine was my drug of choice, but I did a lot of tripping too, you know. Uh with mescaline and LSD and and uh purple pain and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Why?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

I I didn't feel right in my skin. I wasn't comfortable in my skin, and I wanted to change how I felt about myself. I wanted to become oblique to my life in a way, so I numbed myself out. Yeah, but I can give you a list of 25 people that follow that exact description of them and they died. They died of drugs, you know. So that's it's really I think boils down to a low self-esteem or self-worth that I uh uh I I never thought this consciously, but I had an act where people in their eyes would see me in a certain way as being much more than I was.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Uh like an actor, like this charm that I had, and I was uh physically attractive, and I had you know a lot of a lot of coin, and I lived in an enormous carriage house on 69th Street, so my parties were, you know, thing uh anyway. It was that life of having all the boys, uh all the toys and uh and cash and chicks.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

There was a lot of glamour.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah, a lot of glamour, a lot of glamour. Yeah, fashion world. I was big time in the uh I had two very big uh love periods with Diane von Furstenberg, for instance. Uh in the in the 70s and the 90s, we reunited, but um yeah, and and royalty uh probably a few princesses too. I remember Giovanna Bignatelli. We had a mad crazy uh uh time she lived in Rome. Uh Piazza Priscilla. But anyway, uh yeah, I women were another addiction to me, I think. Uh something to change how I felt about myself, and these women would become they would they they would um they'd fall for me, and I uh and I needed I couldn't love myself in those years. I I was proud of these incremental successes I was having because they were keeping the boat afloat, but my my if I if I really went within myself, I I didn't find much to value there. And maybe part of that stems from the fact that I found out I was adopted when I was nine. And uh uh it was a devastating uh discovery for me.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Why? What was that like? Well, I how did you find out?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

I found out uh I was uh rummaging around in in this cabinet in my uh where I lived in Chicago, and uh you know, where where my mother would keep the linens and the tableware and all that stuff. But I found a document and at the top of it it said the Cradle Society, and then it said a sentence about this child is now adopted and shall be named Sonny Braun. And so I was floored because finally the coin dropped. I didn't look like my father, I didn't look like my mother. All my schoolmates they look like their parents. So uh it it it just dropped, and it dropped in such a way that I thought I must have been given away, you know, and uh I I think my whole consciousness went blank in that moment. And about I never had the courage to approach my mother about it, but I said to her about 30, 35 years later, I said, you know, something that's always been in my mind is when I discovered at eight or nine, I think I was nine, that I was adopted, my mind went blank. I don't know what happened after that. She said, Well, I do, I remember it so well because I cried the whole afternoon. I was making the beds upstairs, and you came running up the stairs and you wrinkled up that paper and you threw it at me and said, If you paid more than a nickel for me, you got gypped.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

So as an actor, I discovered that anger is a false emotion. It usually is covering hurt or fear. Pain and yeah, pain, yeah. So the reason I bring that up is I think that that planted a a low self-worth in me that I had been given up, you know. Uh so that so that's why uh it was a scar that never healed. It was uh oh god.

SPEAKER_03 38:22

I understand what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah, I I was devastated.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

How many years were you were you stoned?

SPEAKER_01 38:34

I'm gonna say twenty-five to thirty-nine, fifteen years. Fifteen years. I was but prior to the my starting that, I started with alcohol. I started drinking heavy 100% you know, like Stolichnoya and beefeater martinis and stuff like that. Because I was really not a connoisseur of taste, but I wanted to get high. I wanted I wanted to change my consciousness.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

So you like the feeling.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yeah, I I I I didn't I I didn't have much regard for myself, let me say that. Uh and I didn't the more successful I became and got these, you know, checklist of all the all the toys and prizes, uh you know, I'd feel good for with with a tailor-made suit from London or something, I'd feel good for a week. And with a new, I collected old Porsches, I'd get an old Porsche, you know. I I bought that same car that James Dean died in. Not his car, but the same model of that that sports car.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

How many how many cars did how many Porsches did you have?

SPEAKER_01 39:50

At one time I had four in the carriage house where the horses used to be tied up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah, and I was stuck. I had started to fly.

SPEAKER_03 40:02

They must have gone nuts for you.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah, well, you know, here I am, uh a decent looking bloke.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

You're a good-looking guy, and you have all this stuff, yeah. And you're hanging around with famous people, so women must have gone nuts for you.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They did, they did. And I needed to be loved. I mean, I I I needed the look in their eyes and the kisses and the caresses and the sex, I needed all of that to kind of give me uh yet another high. So I would say that that was another addiction of mine. Women became an addiction, and as sex became an addiction. So I was very chameleonic about my uh my needs to change Craig. And I I never went inside myself.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Never Craig, let me ask you something. Why in the world did you stop?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Uh I had overdosed. Yeah, I was now in my late 30s, and I had gone through a lot of trials, literally, and tribulations. I was indicted for tax evasion and uh uh uh and I was sentenced to two years uh in in prison and uh 22 months suspended. So I got this famous lawyer who was uh that the attorney general under uh Lyndon Johnson uh to represent me. He was very, very expensive. And so uh and then I had letters written from uh you know for the pre-sentencing probation officer and uh from all over the world, you know, saying that I was a gemstone of a person and uh a remarkable person and that that I should not go to jail. This is my my first offense, and uh so it's uh it the thing mushroomed, and uh uh the the judge gave me a long lecture when he sentenced me about you know, very few people have the wherewithal that you had to hire Boris Kostellanitz to represent you, and uh, you're gonna be an example for white-collar criminals. And uh that was the gist of what he said. So I have to sentence you. And he so he sentenced me to two years and he suspended 22 months, and he said, so you can spend the two months in the tombs here. I don't know if you ever heard of the tombs.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Yeah, so uh so this is crazy. So I start thinking, you know, like I did about solving the zipper thing, and I call up uh uh Gerald Ford had just pardoned Nixon for the Watergate thing, you know. So I call up Boris and I said, I want you to make a motion to uh Judge Frankel to dismiss the sentence, to to to waive the sentence, because I'm I'm uh I've committed crimes that are far less grievous than uh than uh President Nixon, and that motherfucker walked. He didn't even have to go through the judicial system. He said, Yeah, yeah, I know all that. So I said, on that basis, uh and the talk he gave me about being an example for white collar criminals, I want you to throw it in his face. And so he said, It's gonna cost you some money, and it's probably not gonna do anything because the book entitled Criminal Sentencing was written by Marvin Frankel, you're your judge, and it's you. In every law university in the country, criminal sentencing. There's no way he's gonna change it. So I said, do it anyway. So I get the notice I have to show up to be fingerprinted and the photographs on a Friday, and then I have to surrender to uh the prison on Monday. So I I'm down at 100 Center Street, and they they do the fingerprinting and uh and the pictures, and I leave, and I'm so so so down. I get to my back to my carriage house and I'm putting out, I have this glass table, I'm putting out these wavy lines of coke, and uh I get my secretary says, and by this time I had lost the business, you know, I had lost everything. And I I still had a secretary in my carriage house, my bunker. And uh she says, There's someone on the line, he says, It's very important to talk to you. So I said, uh, who is it? He's and she said, I don't know. He didn't give his name. So I pick up the phone, and the guy says to me, uh, my name is Gabe Pressman, and I'm with uh, I don't know, W-N-E-T or something like that. And he said, uh, he said, uh, I said, Who is this? Who the fuck? I thought this was one of my friends, you know, because they had sent me prison suits and balls and chains, balls and bowling balls and chains and shit. So uh so I gotta say this. I I said, is it true? He said, Yeah, we we all went down to the courthouse because we heard that a man was pardoned because of the Nixon pardon, and you're that guy. He said, Your your street, 69th Street, is gonna be packed with buses, trucks, and all kinds of reporters, and you're gonna be in every newspaper in the country. So I I'm flabbergasted, so he's he's asking me what my reaction was and so forth. And I didn't want to tell him that I inspired this, but he said, we didn't even have your name, your name wasn't on the documents, it only the case number. So all the reporters had to do like some diligence to find out who was number this number, and it turns out it was you, so we know where you live, and uh and you're gonna be in the news.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

And uh let me go back, but still when so you were still getting high. What made you stop?

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Oh, so uh I would say 20 years later.

SPEAKER_03 46:48

No, not 20 years later.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Let's see, let's see. 39. Yeah, about about 20 years after I started my addiction.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Uh made you stop.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Yeah, so I had lost the carriage house and I lost everything that I owned, and I I was deep in debt. And I the government, when it's a tax evasion case, they go. Uh they have these German Shepherd kind of forensic accountants that go through your books. And I had three corporations, they went through all of those, and I went through my personal for seven years, which is the limit. So that was 28 audits that I went through. So I wound up owing them a lot of money. Uh uh, I think 285,000 or something, and the interest on that it's it's astronomical. It's like it's like a small, a small insurance, a small loaning company, you know, cash, cash the insurance, the the the interest is like 10% a year or something like that. So and I was broke, and uh a friend of mine from Chicago who used to be a DA under uh Richard J. Daley in that dynasty, he had to escape and he moved to Santa Monica and he called me and he said, Why don't you why don't you come here, Craig? Come here, live with me. And uh and I I knew that his practice was defending drug dealers and drug smugglers. So I said, Okay, okay, I'm moving to Santa Monica. So I wound up moving, and uh he would always tell these uh drug dealers, you know, bring the cash and also bring a bag of uh the goods, you know, so we'd always have a lot of drugs. But what made you stop? Well, I was there for a couple of years and I had a couple of uh really close calls where I bought almost bought the farm. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_03 48:55

What what do you mean, almost bought the farm?

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Well, bought the farm means you die.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

What can you give me an example of what you're talking about?

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Yeah, heroin, uh uh overdose.

SPEAKER_03 49:06

What happened?

SPEAKER_01 49:09

You you collapse, you have almost a seizure, you collapse, and you lights go out in your eyes, and uh you're on the edge of death. Why didn't you die? I don't know. I uh look at it's just another accident.

SPEAKER_03 49:27

There was somebody there that rescued you.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Well, yeah, there was people there, but this guy I was living with, but he was a heroin addict too. In fact, we got so bad and we knew it that we decided we need just to maintain our intake every day. So we we opened an account and got a savings safety deposit box at the Security Pacific Bank on Santa Monica in the 405, and we put we put the heroin and the coke in a safety deposit box. No, yeah, but every morning we would go there at nine in the morning, you know, first ones in line waiting for the bank to open. And so we we would go in and we we'd fold up these packets and put them in our pockets, you know, and do a few lines just to get out of that room, the private room, you know, and then all of a sudden the clerks we'd be saying, hey, hey, have a great day, you know. In those days, have a nice day was the slogan of Los Angeles. But anyway, uh, yeah, so but it never really worked because you know, by five or six o'clock, I'd say you gotta make a call to a dealer, you know. So it just went from bad to worse.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

But I want to know what made you stop.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Well, I went, uh uh his sister had had a couple of head-on accidents, and she was a quaalude junkie, which is a cheap, like uh uh a lightweight heroin drug uh quaaludes, roarer 714, I think they were, and you and people use them for sex because it it gave your skin a tingling sensation. And if you complained, if if you combined uh uh having a quaalude and poppers, you know, uh that you would snort, you know, and you you would get so high, you know, that sex became a whole different experience. Anyway, I don't want to go into details about that, but uh she had had uh a couple of very bad car accidents, and she had told Mike, my buddy, she said, I'm I started going to these AA meetings in on West Ohio Street, but I I'm nervous about going there. And uh uh uh would you would you would you go with me? And he said, Well, I'll see if Craig will come along. And so I said, get get her a jar of Qua Lutes and I'll go. So he gets a jar and he gives me a couple of Quaalutes, and so we take her to this AA meeting. This is LA in the 70s, you know, so uh I'm uh I'm I'm walking in tentatively. I never, you know, I saw Ray Maland in the last weekend and uh uh days of wine and roses, but I I I'd never been to an AA meeting, and I I didn't know what they were about, but I I walked in and I thought they were just gonna be old men with you know bottles hanging out of their raincoats and so so but there were a lot of young people and they rushed over welcoming me, and I said, No, no, no, no, no. I'm here for her. She's she's she's got a real problem. And so I I I just agreed to join her, and I was high uh at that moment. So she said, Can you sit with me? And I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll we'll sit with you for the meeting. And then this guy got up, a red-faced uh Irishman in a uh in a suit, tailored suit, and he started marching back and forth in front of the podium, you know, screaming, Life is now in session. Life is now in session. Let's get it on. And this disease is gonna cut you off too short to hang up, you know. And he went into this thing where he sounded like a cult leader. And in those days, you could throw a rock, and within a block, you could hit two cults, you know. This is this is the mid-70s, man. So I dismissed it, but I found the guy funny, pathetic, and he was admitting things that he did that I would never have said. I I turned to my friend Mike and I said, This motherfucker's crazy. He's telling all of his sins, he's telling everything he did that was insane. And so he said, he looked at me with this quizzical look. So he was saying the most embarrassing things you ever heard and screaming throughout life is now in session. So I I I I kind of got a boost from it through my eye. I felt this is a good place, and all the people's eyes looked sincere, and they were talking to me, not like they were looking behind me for who they wanted to talk to, but they they were talking to me like they really cared. They they wanted to know how I'm doing what I and I was just touched by the sincerity, the level of self-honesty that they had, and I kind of wanted to be that way. But I was always this show guy, a soft shoe shuffler. So I was attracted to it, and I said, I when you go to another meeting, I want to come with you. So I went to another meeting, and I saw a guy named Clancy. Wait a second, were you high at the next meeting? Probably a little. And then I the guy was very funny, he was uh it was like being in a comedy store. So I got my I got his phone number from him because he was saying, get phone numbers, get phone numbers. So I said, I want your phone number, I don't want those people's phone number. For me, I was different. My case was different, I wasn't like all these other people, but I wanted to call him and see where he's speaking.

SPEAKER_03 55:38

Wait a second, you felt you weren't like all these other people because you were a celebrity.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

I think I had a heightened, yeah, self-image that was pseudo. It wasn't real, but I just when I would see the people, I'd say, well, look how they dress, you know, fucking jumpsuits and orange county and all, you know, stitching on the side and their bony beads and shit. And so I said, I you know, you have to know it's the 70s. And so I I I separated. I and so I so I went to I called this guy and I said, 'Are you speaking tonight?' He said, 'Yeah, I'm speaking in Mid Wilshire.' So I said, Well, uh, give me the address and the time. And he said, No, I'll pick you up. I said, No, I don't need to be, I have a car. He said, No, I'm gonna pick you up. That's what we do. And I said, I thought, maybe this guy's gay. And he wants to pick me up and and take me to the meeting. And I I I said to him, No, no, no. I if you don't want to tell me where it is, don't, but I'm I don't want to be picked up. And so he said, I'll give you the address. And so I went, I saw the guy, he spoke, and it was the funniest. He was as funny as Lenny Bruce. And I went up to him afterwards and I said, Man, I like where you're at, and I I love your story, and uh I I I I'm gonna keep coming to these meetings, you know. And he said, Well, uh, how sober are you? And I said, I'm I'm not sober, but I I want to get on this train. And uh so that's that's what changed me that experience.

SPEAKER_03 57:20

How long did it take you to get on that train?

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Well, after about three or four months, uh oh I have to cancel. I've got a 4 30 at the at the physical therapy place down the street. So we're gonna have to stop. Yeah, can we can we pick it up at uh six uh at 5 36?

SPEAKER_03 57:48

It doesn't matter, we can stop now because what I want everyone to know is that you have been sober for what 40 years, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Forty-six years, April the first. I got sober on April the first, nineteen seventy-nine.

SPEAKER_03 58:07

And you are now an accomplished actor.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

We should talk about the acting because there's a lot of stories there. Uh uh maybe we do two parts. Can your can your son uh edit this thing? Because I I went on too long with these stories.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

To be honest with you, it's one of the first interviews I've done where I don't want to do any editing. But let's say goodbye. Okay, let's say goodbye, and I'll talk to him and see what we can do.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

But yeah, yeah, I think you have to cover uh that moment of when I changed the way I was living and uh all of the chemistry I was living with, to what self-discovery, and that is the biggest mission of my life, was to finally go inside and find out who the real Craig was. And that's a fascinating story, uh, if I say so myself. So I think there should be a part two.

SPEAKER_03 59:00

Okay, let's see if we can rearrange that.

SPEAKER_01 59:03

Okay, so thank you, Craig. Ciao.