The Raven
One summer afternoon I was sitting in the living room with Wild Man Fischer and a few of the GTO's (Girls Together Outrageously). The front door was open. A guy walked in off the street and
introduced himself as "The Raven," and said that he had something for me.
First he handed me a bottle of fake blood with a rag in it, said, "I have isolated The Specimen!" and pulled out an Army .45.
Wild Man Fischer turned white -- he knew the guy was crazy. My eyebrows went up and down. He obviously wasn't from Southern California, so I said, "Have you been in Los Angeles very long?" "No," he said, "I just got here." Trying to be as 'helpful' as possible, I said, "You know what? If the police see you with that gun around here, you're going to be in a lot of trouble."
"Yeah?" he said.
"Yeah," I said, "-- and I know a place where you can hide it." Everybody who was in the room got up to perform the mystical ceremony designed to 'Help The Raven Hide His Gun.'
We went out the front door, around the side, past the fish tank to that hole with the stagnant water in it. I said, "Look, if you put it in there, they'll NEVER find it."
Everybody had to throw something in the hole. Gail and the rest of the household gathered little objects to toss in. Then we got our visitor to drop his gun in, and I sprinkled some leaves on top of it, saying, "It's taken care of now."
We told him we were very busy then, and urged him to leave -- and started looking for another house to live in.
John Mayall refers to this incident in his song 2401
