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| photo by Dove Shore, courtesy Celadon Books |
It wasn’t exactly an ideal hangout for youngsters, but little about Jollett’s early life could be considered normal. His parents were members of Synanon, a California rehab center-turned-cult, where babies were considered “children of the universe” and placed in an orphanage.
The gambling venue and Jollett’s unorthodox upbringing are at the heart of the musician-writer’s compelling “Hollywood Park: A Memoir,” encompassing what he calls a life-changing journey that took 40 years. The book is out next Tuesday, with a companion album of the same name by Jollett’s alt-rock band The Airborne Toxic Event in stores now.
Both the album and book projects stemmed from the death of Jollett’s father. To prepare, he read various biographies and other books (Toni Morrison was a major influence) and wanted to tell his story from four perspectives; two of them being children.
“To probe the interior world of the child, it was important to give him a voice, said Jollett, 45, about structuring the book, during a recent phone interview from home in Silverlake. “The imagination of orphans and the dangerous world of children felt really close to me. I’d never seen it written and wanted to write about it.”
When the pervasive atmosphere at Synanon turned violent, Jollett’s mother escaped with him and an older brother to Oakland. Jollett learned the meaning of family and to appreciate such mundane activities as going to a restaurant, riding in a car and hearing his mother’s Bob Dylan and Joan Baez LP records. There were frequent moves around the west coast to evade dangerous Synanon personnel before finding a safe home in Salem, Oregon.
A few years later, Jollett forged a relationship with his father - an ex-con who overcame a heroin addiction at Synanon, but left before it got really bad - in Southern California during summer vacations and eventually relocated there.
“My dad had been kind of a wild child when he was young; then he cleaned up,” Jollett explained. “The day he got out of Chino prison, he took a bus to Hollywood Park and won $14.
“I asked him why he put everything on one horse and he said, ‘What’s the point of going if you can’t walk out, maybe owning the place?’ He went there at different points in his life and then all through growing up, we would go every Saturday. That’s where I learned fractions - from trying to figure out the odds.”
Having lacked a dominant, positive male figure in his life, young Mikel’s frequent trips to the racetrack were eye-openers.
“For boys with single mothers, men are like these rare beasts; these magical creatures,” he said. “You’re wondering, ‘Who are these things with muscles, beards, old trucks and gruff voices?’ We only knew the world of our mom: emotions, discussions, sewing threads and pinochle. Here were these men that burped, played poker and bet on horses. To me, Hollywood Park represented that and symbolized my learning to become a man.”
Jollett’s mother worked long hours at an Oregon hospital and battled mental health issues. So he had to mature fast. Around other adults, Jollett would make astute observations considered wise beyond his years. School administrators even suggested Mikel skip a grade, but his mother disagreed.
“I don’t think I was a genius or anything,” related Jollett, “Some traumatized kids try to act like little adults because they’re dealing with an inappropriate amount of emotional strain. The adults turn them into a caretaker.
“Suddenly, I was eight years old, trying to hold together a household with an alcoholic [stepfather], a depressed mother and an angry brother. We’re broke, on food stamps, I’m trying to kill rabbits for dinner and wake up early to make sure the house doesn’t freeze over. Then I had to go to school, come home and do chores, make sure everything’s clean, that he’s not off drunk and she’s not off somewhere crying. Meanwhile, you never stop to think about taking care of yourself.”
All those burdens probably contributed to Jollett smoking weed, drinking alcohol, ditching classes and getting poor grades as a pre-teen.
“Some kids become scapegoats, some become mascots and some become super children. I think I tried to become some sort of super child - inadequately. Then you grow up and wonder why you’re so focused on trying to attain the approval of others which isn’t necessarily the best way to approach life.”
After becoming a model student at Westchester High School in Los Angeles, Jollett attended Stanford University. Upon graduation, he briefly taught high school English, served as a YMCA program director and a ranch hand.
Yet Jollett always penned songs. Throughout the pages of “Hollywood Park,” he references songs and albums by David Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths and others that made an impact on his life.
“I wanted music to populate the book,” he said.
Jollett moved onto fiction and music writing and became the managing editor at music magazine Filter. One entertaining chapter in the book finds the budding musician seeking input from his idols Bowie and Cure leader Robert Smith on songwriting techniques.
“I was a really bad music journalist,” admitted Jollett. He would speed through some standard questions and then “we’d spend 90 percent of the time talking about songwriting because I was trying to learn from them. I got great advice through the years from them and Lou Reed, Tom Waits and [Pavement’s] Stephen Malkmus. I really tried to take it all to heart.”
Everything came to fruition in 2006 when Jollett formed The Airborne Toxic Event and found success two years later with the alt-rock radio hit “Sometime Around Midnight” and self-titled debut album.
Before recording the new “Hollywood Park” studio release, the band road tested the material during a series of 2017 gigs at LA’s El Rey Theatre.
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| The Airborne Toxic Event, courtesy Big Hassle PR |
“We wanted it to be a real performance. If you turn the record on, [imagine] you’re standing in the front row watching a band that’s been on tour for nine months just get up there and slay it.”
TATE took its cues from Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and tried to create a big sound where the listener feels “like you’re in the room with us, you can hear the energy and feel us,” said Jollett.
Speaking of acts that came to prominence in the 1970s, Jollett’s father was a major fan of the Allman Brothers and Jackson Browne.
When he passed away, the latter artist provided a full circle moment for Jollett in a poignant “Hollywood Park” chapter. While blaring “The Pretender,” he drives a car they restored together to Santa Anita racetrack, bets on a horse and secretly scatters his father’s ashes.
A version of this interview originally appeared in The Press-Enterprise, Orange County Register and other Southern California News Group publications.
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