For those of you who might not know…about Kim Fowley

Kim Fowley – the self-professed King Of The Creeps and Legendary Prick – was born in California on “the day Hitler went into Poland”. The son of b-movie actors Shelby Payne (an uncredited cigarette girl in The Big Sleep) and Douglas Fowley (who wangled the role of the frustrated film director in Singin’ In The Rain), he was like an American Jonathan King: record producer, hustler, songwriter and musician who was behind a string of novelty and cult pop singles in the 1960s, and created a number of bands in the 1970s, including the all-girl Runaways.

Fowley co-wrote a number of songs, including Portobello Road with Cat Stevens, two Kiss ‘classics’ (including Do You Love Me?, which was covered by Nirvana in 1990), a couple of songs for The Byrds, and the title track of Warren Zevon’s debut solo album, Wanted Dead Or Alive.

His first record as producer was Charge, released in 1959 by the Renegades, a group that included Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, drummer Sandy Nelson and the man who originally produced Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy, Nick Venet (who also penned the song).

Fowley’s first major success was Alley Oop, credited to The Hollywood Argyles . It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was co-produced by Fowley with Gary Paxton, who sang lead on it. (The piano was played by Gaynel Hodge of The Penguins, who also co-wrote Earth Angel.) Following this hit, Fowley and Paxton formed a short-lived partnership that begat Like, Long Hair by Paul Revere & the Raiders, an energetic piano instrumental rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude In C-Sharp Minor. It was a minor hit in 1961, but paved the way for what was soon to follow from Fowley.

Alley Oop was later covered by The Beach Boys and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, while David Bowie ‘borrowed’ the line “Look at those cavemen go,” for his song Life On Mars?

In 1962, Fowley produced and arranged Nut Rocker for B. Bumble And The Stingers. This was a reworking of the march from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet and became a number one hit in the UK. It was subsequently covered by Emerson, Lake & Palmer on their Pictures At An Exhibition live album in 1971, when the B. Bumble version was reissued and charted again early the following year.

Fowley’s pilfering of (to use Zappa’s words) “music that was written by a bunch of dead people” was something FZ himself would continue throughout his career – from The Planets suite quotation on 1967’s Absolutely Free to the ‘Reader’s Digest Classical Medley’ and reggaefied Boléro of his 1988 tour.

As noted in my essay on Gail, when she returned to LA in the early sixties, she met Fowley (he said they ‘dated’) and recorded the single Americas Sweethearts with him as Bunny And Bear, a parody of Sonny & Cher. (Geddit!!??!) Gail told Alan Clayson, “I was walking along Sunset Boulevard one day when Kim Fowley approached me and asked if I wanted to make a record. He was always wanting to be the power behind an all-girl rock group – which he was much later on...”

Fowley also produced Popsicles & Icicles by The Murmaids (1963), which FZ named as one of his favourite songs. It was written by David Gates, who went on to produce two singles for Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band and later formed the group Bread.

In 1964, Fowley recorded a version of Justine with The Rangers, a song written by ‘Sugarcane’ Harris and Dewey Terry and also covered by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan with prototype Turtles, The Crossfires. While in London that year, he claims he turned down a marriage proposal from Marianne Faithfull.

In 1965, hoping to repeat the successful Nut Rocker formula, Fowley produced Satan’s Holiday by The Lancasters, which was a surf instrumental version of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall Of The Mountain King. The Lancasters included one Ritchie Blackmore, who copped a co-write credit with Fowley for the ditty (along with Derek Lawrence, the producer of the first three Deep Purple and Wishbone Ash albums, and the pseudonymous Nanker Phelge).

1965 also saw two former members of Van Morrison’s band Them form a rival Them. Following legal action, they were allowed to call themselves The Other Them in the UK – elsewhere they unofficially became The Belfast Gypsies and recorded an album produced by Fowley that got released in Sweden and The Netherlands only. They would also have two singles released in the UK on Island Records: Gloria’s Dream, a sort of sequel to Them’s biggest hit, and People! Let’s Freak Out, issued without the band’s knowledge under the nom de plume The Freaks Of Nature; both were arranged, produced and co-written by Fowley.

When GTO in waiting Pamela Miller started hanging out on Sunset Strip in early 1966, Fowley was one of the first people she met. He profoundly told her that he’d rather be married to her for forty-seven years than fuck her for forty-seven minutes. He did neither.

Around the same time, Fowley claimed he was invited to formally join The Mothers – which he did “for approximately six weeks. The highlight of our association was when I guested with them at the Vietnam Artists’ Peace Tower project on Sunset Strip. While we were on stage, a brick was thrown at us the size of a football. It was during the guitar solo. In hindsight, I should have done two or three albums with them, and then I would have been legitimate as a performer. But I’m only on one album with Frank.”

On Freak Out! he is credited with playing the ‘hypophone’. Zappa clarified that “The hypophone is his mouth, coz all that ever comes out of it is hype.”

1966 saw Fowley produce a single for Vito Paulekas called Where It’s At (credited to Vito And The Hands – also the title of the b-side) which supposedly features some members of the Mothers.

Fowley, who shared the same middle name as Frank, once described Zappa as the Orson Welles of psychedelic freak music.

Fowley also provided vocal content on Zappa’s 1969 side project, An Evening With Wild Man Fischer and can now be heard on the posthumous releases, The MOFO Project/Object (2006) and Whisky A Go Go, 1968 (2024).

On the latter, FZ talks about a lady called Della who asks to be beaten with a belt...and not for the first time! Zappa explained, “There’s a girl in LA named Della who likes to get whipped. So we’re playing at the Shrine Auditorium and Della shows up and wants to get whipped. I say. ‘Is there anybody in the audience who wants to whip Della?’ So Kim Fowley says. ‘Hey I’m really far out, yeah, fantastic. I’ll do it.’ He jumps up there and starts to beat her a little bit, but he’s making a big dramatic production out of it – you know, he wants to be a star while he’s beating her, and she’s going. ‘No way!’ Then this guy named Skippy Diamond, with a head built like a barrel, walks up there, takes the belt away. Skippy’s normally a mild mannered guy, but he takes the belt away from Fowley, doesn’t beat Della, starts beating FOWLEY. Fowley is on the floor with a microphone screaming for help at the audience and Skippy’s beating HIM, then beating Della, wailing around the stage with this belt.”

Back to 1966, and Fowley recorded a cover of Napoleon XIV’s They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! While at London’s Roundhouse that same year, Fowley was recognised by drummer Robert Wyatt and ended up producing Soft Machine b-side Feelin’ Reelin’ Squeelin’ featuring Kevin Ayers on lead vocals.

While in England, he also produced a cover of The Young Rascals’ You Better Run by the N’ Betweens, who would change their name twice more before becoming incredibly successful. The record spent six weeks at number one on the local Midlands chart, and later appeared alongside the group’s rendition of Zappa’s Ain’t Got No Heart on the 1975 budget compilation, Beginnings Of Slade.

A few years later, GTO Miss Cynderella married John Cale of The Velvet Underground, but the marriage lasted only a few years; Cale’s song Guts opens with the line “The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife”,  a reference to the afore-mentioned Ayers.

In 1967, Fowley recorded a version of Wild Thing with Buddy Rich’s 13 year old daughter Cathy. Apparently her dad wasn’t best pleased and asked the record label why they let that weird guy produce his daughter doing that?

In 1968, Fowley issued two solo albums: Outrageous, which seemed to live up to its title, and a comedy album, Good Clean Fun, on which Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Band supposedly make uncredited appearances, and Rodney Bingenheimer (the self-proclaimed ‘Mayor of the Sunset Strip’) is on the Search For A Teenage Woman.

In 1969, Fowley produced the country-tinged album I’m Back And I’m Proud for Gene Vincent. Jimmy Page apparently asked to play on it, but was denied by Vincent. The album featured Jim Gordon on drums and Linda Ronstadt on backing vox. Gene declared Ronstadt ‘more rock and roll than The Doors’!

Around this time, Fowley claims Jimi Hendrix recorded a cover of his song Fluffy Turkeys with Robert Wyatt on drums.

On 13 September 1969, Fowley was master of ceremonies at the Toronto Rock And Roll Revival Festival and can be heard introducing John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band on their Live Peace In Toronto album.

Fowley put together his first ‘conceptual band’ in 1973, The Hollywood Stars, as a West Coast answer to the New York Dolls. They worked with producer Bob Ezrin on the song Escape, which was later reworked by Alice Cooper for his Welcome To My Nightmare album.

In 1975, he formed The Runaways as an all-girl answer to Grand Funk.

Original bass player Micki Steele (later of The Bangles) claimed she was fired from the band for refusing Fowley’s sexual advances and calling the band’s debut single Cherry Bomb stupid. She was replaced by Jackie Fox, who was spotted at a nightclub by Bingenheimer, who introduced her to Fowley.

After he passed, Fox alleged that Fowley had raped her on New Year’s Eve 1975 at a party following a Runaways performance. She had just turned 16 and claimed she was given Quaaludes by a roadie and, while incapacitated, was assaulted in full view of a group of partygoers and her bandmates.

Fox wasn’t allowed to play on the band’s 1976 debut album – instead, Fowley hired Blondie’s Nigel Harrison to play bass.

In 2023, Runaways songwriter, co-founder and original vocalist Kari Krome claimed both Bingenheimer and Fowley “used their roles, status, and power as adults” to manipulate, exploit and sexually assault her from the age of 13.

Fowley once said, “Having my voice on Freak Out! and a Lennon record got me laid multiple hundreds of times. I didn’t have to say anything. Girls I’d meet in public places pushed me away to their bedrooms: ‘You’re the guy on John Lennon’s record, fuck me and my girlfriend’. ‘Why?’ ‘Because we’re not going to be able to fuck him and you’re the closest thing.’ ‘No problem.’”

In his autobiography Lord Of Garbage (Volume 1) – published in 2012 and written whilst he battled bladder cancer – he wrote, “Frank Zappa was very gifted, but he maybe wasn’t as great as they said he was. Overrated. His widow is a genius for keeping it going, and the kids are good at what they do, it’s all complimentary, but...possibly Frank Zappa’s greatest moment was on Freak Out! Kim Fowley sang Help, I’m A Rock, the unreleased live album [Whisky A Go Go, 1968, finally issued in 2024], and on some unreleased outtakes. Zappa called me his Brian Jones.”

Fowley succumbed to his cancer on 15 January 2015. After he passed, Pamela Des Barres (née Miller) wrote, “He was my friend for almost 50 years and I’m honoured that he saw the real me all those decades ago, and ushered me into utter unfettered rock’n’rollness with such insight, encouragement, conviction, hilarity and grace.”