My Days of Driving a Limo on the Sunset Strip, 1972-1973
In August 1972, I reluctantly returned from Bolivia, after spending two years. I never wanted to leave Bolivia and my beloved Quechua and Aymara relatives, but eventually I had no choice.
I returned, with great reluctance, at the behest of the Universal House of Justice.
As my wife was pregnant I needed to work immediately, after my return. Through a friend, I was able to get a job painting the home of Keith and Bob Quigley in Beverly Hills. They created produced an old television game show called "Hollywood Squares."
After taking three months to paint their home they got me a job driving for the BLS Limousine Service on Sunset Boulevard. I hadn’t driven any Limos before, so I had to fake it a little bit in my interview, but I started driving my dad’s 38’ pickup when I was 13, and I had driven many Wheat and Pea Trucks over the years. I figured I would have no problem driving a Black, Lincoln Limo.
One of the Rolling Stones that I started chauffeuring was guitarist Bill Wyman. A credo of the BLS Limo driver’s, in those days, that was shared with me before the hiring was, we are blind, deaf and we have no sense of smell. Living in the very competitive and “dog eat dog entertainment world, due to our Credo, sometimes we had good, “ off the record visits or you witnessed a lot of activity, not meant for public consumption. This Credo seems to be pretty well in effect because you do not hear of too many chauffeurs breaking confidences.
The first time I drove Bill Wyman, he was by himself and we had a good conversation. In the course of our visit, I shared my recent journey and my Native American background. He also knew that I knew the Credo. After that, when he needed a Limo when he called BLS, he would only say, “Send the Indian” and I would be dispatched to pick him up.
Because of our relationship over a couple of months, I had the opportunity to drive all five of the Rolling Stones to Downtown to shoot an album cover for a new album. I remember picking them up at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset, driving downtown, waiting for them to take photographs and then bringing them back to the Continental Hyatt House on the Sunset Strip. They did not pay any attention to me, I watched and listened to them carefully, but then there is the BLS Credo!
In those days the Continental Hyatt was called the “Riot House” because of the night and day parties. The hotel wasn’t very fancy, but bands like The Doors, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and their Road Crews, stayed there every time they came to town. I remember that one of the things they liked to do was to throw TVs out of high floor window. I don’t know why they did this, but they did.
I’ll put a bookmark into this part of the story for now and share more in the book I am working on. I was going to call it “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” but that name was already taken.