Rock and roll provocateur Simon Stokes enjoyed a peculiar bent for landing in unusual situations: Stokes, rolling his bright red convertible Cadillac El Dorado to a stop at a Mulholland Drive red light one hot 1970s afternoon, was only slightly surprised when a baby chimpanzee suddenly hopped into the passenger seat. Figuring he’d been attracted by the zebra skin upholstery, and considering the little ape wore trousers, Stokes drove home. A day or two later, a knock on the door. It was Jeff Beck, come to collect his girlfriend’s pet after neighborhood chatter placed the critter at Casa Stokes. “I hated to see him go,” Simon said, “but what could I do?”
A typically exotic happenstance for Stokes, whose safari through the Hollywood rock & roll jungle thrust him amongst everyone from Timothy Leary, the Hells Angels and Russell Means to Chill Wills, Keely Smith and Buck Owens. While many have never heard of Stokes, those who did found him unforgettable. “I‘ve had quite a few people come up to me and say, ’When I was a kid, in my school, they burned your records,‘“ Stokes said. ”I always considered that to be a terrific tribute, that I reached people enough that they would go to that extreme.“
One of outlaw rock & roll‘s consummate gravel-throated shit-stirrers, Stokes was a weirdly poetic thug. His only friend was ”an old black cat holding a losing hand“; he ”looks at the world through eyes of stone“; his ”skin is fitting too goddamn tight.“ His blues-based, country-influenced biker rock featured wild, innovative lyrics that twisted from squirm-inducing candor to surreal humor in a flash, all framed by a chaotic electric crunch best described as a slick and greasy LSD nightmare wet-dream meltdown. Stokes’ total lack of comity with rock‘s commercial standards was a valuable one that, while clearly anticipating the punk-toughened landscape which followed, always maintained a populist thrust which wed it to working-class slobs, not bored middle-class teenagers.
Stokes’ journey from teenage big-beat fan to major-league shocker was a curious one. Raised by his grandparents in Reading, Massachusetts, even as a boy he was restless, troubled. ”I was alone a lot,“ he said. ”When I was less than 10 years old, I became a sleepwalker. A lot of times I‘d end up late at night, 1 or 2 o’clock, outside the house, and have to get back home somehow. My grandparents were very cool; Grandfather was a great guy who led the Harry D. Stokes Orchestra. After a while they decided I should go with them, so when he was playing a gig, they‘d bring me to a motion-picture theater and then pick me up afterward. I was a kid, by myself, and they were playing Frankenstein and Dracula. At first I was petrified, but soon I loved horror movies. I loved Bela Lugosi.“
