We love a good mystery, and this is one of music’s finest.
Jim Sullivan was a Malibu Man, a sunshine state singer and guitarist who, in 1969 when he released his debut U.F.O, was on the cusp of something incredible.
The man was cool, he had a handlebar moustache, suede jacket and boots; your typical free spirit of the late 60s. The kind of chap you might see riding a Harley on his way to Santa Barbara. He was a vagabond, a nomad, moving from one chance to pluck his guitar to the next. Nebraska, San Diego, Los Angeles it didn’t matter. His music led the way, he just followed.
He “grew up in a government housing project with a bunch of other Okies and Arkies,” a regular joe. He moved from town to town, place to place blending whatever music he found; blues, folk, rock, country it was all the same.
When he hit the strip in ‘68, wife and kids close behind, the strip hit him back. From the get-go he was ingrained in Hollywood culture, mates with the stars Lee Majors, Lee Marvin, and Harry Dean Stanton. He was no longer among people, he was among greats, people who were pushing the boundaries of film, music heck whatever it was. Times were changing.
A year later in ‘69, Jim made an appearance alongside Fonda and Hopper, in ‘Easy Rider’. The film optimized the era. It’s free-flowing, lackadaisical narrative dowed in acid was every young person’s dream. Though ‘Nam and Nixon were knocking about, people wanted freedom and they wanted it now. Ol’ Jim was no regular person anymore, he wanted more.
When he finally got the chance to record his debut, Jim funny enough wasn’t among regular session musicians. The guy who brought his twelve-string in his pack to the City of Angels was backed by The Wrecking Crew, a legendary group of musicians Phil Spector used to back the Beach Boys Pet Sounds among others.
He had made it, or so he thought. His debut and follow-ups flopped, releasing on a tiny label. He was left lost wondering how close he’d come to breaking through the bullshit of the day and writing music that people cared about.
Then suddenly, he was gone. One night, as the story goes, in 1975 he split for Nashville, home of the king, driving alone in his Volkswagen Beatle. After the police cautioned his driving he thought it best to swing by a dustbowl motel, La Mesa Motel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and call it a day.
Just a regular sandstone block in the desert, he parked up and paid up, putting the keys on the wooden table in his room before heading back out for some vodka from the general store. Back in the car, he followed the line of the road, watching the headlights of the Beatle criss-cross ahead of him and listening to the hum-drum coughs of his VW.
Soon enough he lost his way, but he just kept driving. Soon enough, everything around he was unfamiliar, but he just kept on driving. And, in the end, he was nowhere at all, somewhere out in the sticks with no piece of string to guide him home.
“Is it a place out there? / Just a town down there / If you’re driving slow”
In a late-night conversation with his manager months before that night the question “how would you disappear?” arose. Jim replied, “I’d walk into the desert and never come back”.
Reports say he was last sighted the next day, 26 miles from the place he’d started from, stumbling on a family ranch. The Beatle, and only the Beatle, was found there with his money, his papers, his guitar, his clothes, and a box of his unsold records.
Jim would never be seen again, the desert had taken him. Some say he got out and just kept walking and walking, just like he said, until he couldn’t no more. Part of me thinks he made it to an oasis, brushed himself down and started his life again. Whatever happened in the sand stayed in the sand, only to be blown away by the wind.
“There’s a highway / Telling me to go where I can / Such a long way / I don’t even know where I am”
His first record cryptically foreshadows the way events might have unfolded. U.F.O is laden with messages of long highways, leaving his family, ‘checking out’ and among other things being abducted by aliens in the desert. Yup, abducted by those little green lads from outer space; he was after all in New Mexico, the world’s capital of UFO sightings.
As albums go, it’s pretty eerie and unsettling stuff. Violin plucks and strings create a strange ominous sound, whilst Jim’s voice, a broken up, dirt-filled Americana voice, part-country, part-rock, part-crooner, sings in abstract riddles.
Perhaps the mystery influences you, but there is something surreal here. The record is bitter, almost regretful, whilst at the same time hopeful of the future. After all, the man who moves with his music must be hopeful of where it’s taking him. Maybe he did get a new start?
In 2010, Matt Sullivan (no relation) took it upon himself to solve the mystery once and for all and get the original master tapes for U.F.O. Neither happened. After trawling through relatives, friends and acquaintances of Jim, sending emails, faxes, and participating in telepathy and palm readings, Matt only found a single pristine copy of U.F.O. Light In The Attic records, his label, would later reissue it on CD and Vinyl.
And so, the mystery lives on.
The unknown gives a record something that can’t be created, something that can’t be thought up on a marketing board. And, in a strange way, by taking away the answers to our questions, it makes the music itself more honest and truthful. You try to understand it, you try to just get a little more out of it, but you seldom do.
Instead, you fall further and further for it. And, in the end, you give yourself to it. Jim Sullivan is a complete enigma. By his disappearance being completely unexplainable, we have a record that defies any and all explanation. U.F.O too is a complete enigma.
To hear his mystery, check out U.F.O on Spotify or Apple Music, and get the latest edition of our magazine HERE.
