Response to the Extended Playhouse Review of The Covert War Against Rock By Alex Constantine EXTENDED PLAYHOUSE is an Internet e-zine that bills itself as ³the newsletter that respects your intelligence in the morning,² If so, it certainly molests its readers in the evening, as I recently discovered upon reading a review of my book The Covert War Against Rock (Feral House, 200), an analysis of rock musician deaths since the 1960s that finds the ³official² versions lame and weighs suppressed evidence of fascist and organized criminal conspiracies objectively as the true cause. ³Conspiracy theory,² EP¹s Rodney E. Griffith informs us, is a province in which ³the plausible is usually drowned out in the implausible, yet the concoction is swallowed whole by recipients.² Uh-oh. After a decade of taking heat from reviewers who frown on all conspiracy research, I¹ve learned that this type is generally incompetent to form rational judgments � anyone who does not understand that ³conspiracy² has been commonplace throughout history is prone to ultra-conformity and engages in the type of status quo thinking that once equated vegetarianism with communist lunacy. Anyone who dismisses ³conspiracy² research out of hand, and cannot distinguish legitimate research from Birch Society-type scare mongering, is intellectually molded by adhering to the vacant, self-serving reasoning of a controlled mass media. (am I going to fast for you, Mr. Griffith?) As a result, they ALWAYS get their facts wrong, even as they demand perfection from the ³theorists.² (In fact, I have always written about fascism, largely, which is inherently conspiratorial, a fact most establishment thinkers find impossible to comprehend.) Griffith takes the book to task first for ³who it fails to mention: Stevie Rae Vaughn, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger, Brian Epstein, John Belushi, Karen Carpenter, Tom Fogerty, and especially Bill Hicks.² Excuse me? Covert War discusses the deaths of more than a dozen major musicians: John Lennon, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Each was murdered. (In the case of Brian Jones, the founder of the Rolling Stones, I was recently denounced by a London talk show host as a ³conspiracy theorist² for suggesting that he was murdered � Jones¹s killer confessed on his death bed, testimony acceptable by any court in the UK, and was supported by the eye-witness accounts of four witnesses to the murder.) It is not incumbent upon me to write about EVERYONE. If the book was about the death of John Lennon alone, should I expect to be criticized for not also discussing the shooting ot Tupac Shakur? And if I managed to squeeze in everyone Griffith mentions, would I not also be remiss for excluding Janice Joplin, Curt Cobain, or dozens of others? (Fact is, I have planned all along to write a second book on rock musician deaths, including some Griffith mentions, IF the first book finds a market.) Griffith¹s savage review of my book largely concerns my chapter on Michael Hutchence, who, I maintain, was the victim of organized crime. The chapter makes it clear that Hutchence was a Mafia hit. Yet Griffith misread the chapter entirely, noting falsely that it ³ends with speculations that the hanging death of INXS vocalist Michael Hutchence, officially ruled suicide, was a hit enabled by his girlfriend¹s ex, Band Aid czar Bob Geldof.² This gives the impression I blame Geldof. Many do, but I don¹t, and I haven¹t written one word that suggests otherwise. Griffith¹s reference is to an afterword written by the head of a musician¹s union in the UK. Nowhere do I contend that Geldof had anything to do with Hutchene¹s death. Michael Hutchence was penniless on the day of his death, although on paper he was worth 28 million pounds. His wealth had been siphoned off by a crooked accountant, who stashed Hutchence¹s millions into a mazework of financial blinds and trust funds controlled by the Mafia. Hutchence was killed for financial reasons. The chapter makes this clear, undisputably. Yet words are put in my mouth, a tactic often used by those who frown on ³conspiracy² research, and I am ridiculed for statements about Geldof that I have never made. ³Whatever tenuous grip Covert War had is lost here,² we are told. This might be true � IF I had make the statements falsely attributed to me. But the most amusing accusation EP makes is the false claim that I hold Hutchence¹s death to be politically motivated. As I say, Hutchence was bled financially and killed by the Calabrese Mob before he could figure it out. There was nothing political about it. Yet Griffith feels compelled to point out, ³as he became older, Hutchence was becoming more conservative, not less.² Nowhere do I claim that Hutchence was killed for political reasons. Griffith is arguing against straw statements made by a straw man. ³Hutchence was also beset by numerous other personal problems, well documented by E! but mostly ignored by Constantine.² Such as? ³It was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that Hutchence was technically bankrupt at the time of his death.² As mentioned, Covert War discusses the INXS vocalist¹s financial problems at length. The book is about murder, not presumed personal problems that support the official cover story of ³masturbatory asphyxiation.² Griffith should read the chapter again, and if he can understand English, the truth may yet sink in. Griffith concedes cryptically, ³there is a difference between murder and assassination, and even if Hutchence was a homicide victim, he was no martyr.² I have never maintained that he was a martyr. I said that he was murdered by the Mafia, and if he liked women and drugs, as most rock musicians do, so what? Perfection in personal deportment was not a qualifying factor for consideration in Covert War. In fact, all of Griffith¹s reasons for deriding the book are based on his own misreading of the text. Thus, we are assured, ³the career of Mama Cass ... was not spectacular enough to warrant the establishment¹s concern.² Please read the actual words on the page, Griffith. Covert War details reasons why certain parties wanted Cass out of the way, the primary one being the fact that she interacted socially with killers who had CIA connections. Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield was obsessed with her political activities. Cass announced publicly that she was planning on a run for Congress. But most damaging of all was her engagement to Pic Dawson � the son of a State Department official � wanted internationally for drug smuggling. Cass didn¹t have to be ³spectacular² to die. Knowing where some of the CIA¹s bones were buried was enough. I don¹t expect a fair review from status quo reviewers, but I do expect a fair reading of the text. Statements are frequently ascribed to me that I have never made because dealing with the facts I¹ve reported are NOT so easy to dismiss with a sniff and a guffaw. It would be a pleasure, for once, to be damned for words I have actually written, but Extended Playhouse would rather burn a ³conspiracy theorist² in effigy, I suppose.
