November 27, 2023 • 39 mins
Peter Ivers’ death marked the end of an era. Though David Jove tried to recreate New Wave Theater, he couldn’t do it without Peter. We examine the legacy Peter left behind, and the scene that ended with his death.
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This episode features information and audio from the following sources:
Twin Peaks
In Heaven, Everything is Fine by Josh Frank
New Wave Musician Killed; Family Creates Harvard Fund
'An Einstein among Neanderthals': the tragic prince of LA counterculture
Over the edge: The incredible life and mysterious death of Peter Ivers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The content in this episode might be disturbing for some listeners.
Listen to discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's early nineteen eighty four in a bustling television studio
in LA. There's an audience of punks, just like New
Wave Theater. But unlike New Wave Theater, this ain't hokey anymore.
It's a big crew, a control booth. It's a real
production coming to you from KTLA. New Wave Theater's gone
(00:34):
corporate thanks to Harold Ramus. After Peter's death, Harold introduced
David Joe to a TV exec named Bill Cameron. Here's Bill.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So David came in and I found him to be enchanting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The devil is a brilliant prankster, but the greatest trick
he ever pulled was making David Jove enchanting to some people.
Definitely not to me, but I guess some people found
him endearing anyway. David pitches Bill a TV show idea.
It's a spin on the New Wave theater formula.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
What he was doing was something called the Top and
it was an entertainment variety.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Our Bill's interested, so he sets up a meeting for
them at MGM. In the meeting, the Suits have a
question for David.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
What's going to make your show different?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Tell me what happens when the lights go up and
the camera goes on. What do I see?
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Joe?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And we hadn't rehearsed this, had and talked about it.
David said, you see seventeen little ducklings and a lama
on the set and they're running around and it's a
set like Johnny Carson has on Tonight's show, but they're
ducklings and a lama on there, and that's what you see.
(01:57):
And it sold the show because it was so It's clever,
it was clever, it was different.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
The Suit's green light a pilot. It's a huge break
for David. Despite its roots in public access, new Wave
Theater had been a real TV show on national cable TV.
But the Top was going to be on a whole
nother level.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This was going up, upscaled quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
This was going to be How big a budget was
this going to be?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
This in those days? I think we were talking three
hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
In other words, a good chunk of change, which brings
us back to that TV studio in La David and
Harold are filming the pilot for the Top and the
pressure is on. Jove skulks around, creating tension, but Harold
tries to bring a sense of calm. It's thanks to
(02:51):
him that there's a level of professionalism on the set.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
So Harold raymis enters the scene. It's like, okay, this
is going to be a real TV production.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's Michael Dare, a film critic for LA Weekly.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
This is no longer your underground new ad theater that's
shown as part of Night Flight on the USA network.
This is going to be on an actual television network
that's going to have commercials, and you're going to be
the director in the booth, and there's going to have
to be a script that everybody's going to have to follow.
(03:29):
You're going to hire a writer, and David says, well,
I don't need a script, and Harold Reimer says to him,
you're going to hire a writer. And so David Jove
comes to me and says, will you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Be the writer, the head writer of the Top.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
And I said, well, sure, what do you want me
to do and he says nothing, You're not going to
write a single word. I'm going to write every single
word that everybody says on the show. And I'm only
hiring you because Harold Raimas says that I have to
hire a writer.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Now that he's got a writer. All Jovenies is a
celebrity host. So Harold Ramis picks up the phone and
calls it a favor from one of the biggest comedians
in town, a guy looking to get back to his
TV roots, a guy named Cornelius.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Everybody knows Chevy Chase is one of the biggest assholes
on Earth. You can't read anything about him without someone
telling a story about what a fucking asshole he is.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Nobody likes it except me.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
I had the best meeting I've ever had with Chevy
Chase because Harold Ramos was in the room. Harold Ramis
calls a meeting. He says, Okay, David, bring your writer,
I'll bring Chevy Chase. We're going to sit together and
figure out what this show is.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So Michael's in the room of Chevy Chase, Harold Ramis
and David Jove. Chevy stands up and starts talking, and it.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
Was hilarious and brilliant, and I was like, oh my god,
I'm going to be the head writer of the Chevy
j Show.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Except that's not what happens. Jove puts the kabash on
every single one of Chevy's ideas.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
No we're not going to do that. Oh I don't
want to do that. No we're not going to do that.
Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna keep cutting back
to the sound booth, and all the technicians are gonna
be animals. And when we cut to the audience, it's
going to cut to a bunch of baby ducks.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh no, not more baby ducks.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
So we kept having meetings and meetings and meetings at
which nothing was decided except that nobody was allowed to
do anything if David Joe didn't tell him to do it.
I wrote a monologue for Chevy, he turned it down.
Chevy wrote a monologue for himself, he turned it down.
Nothing happened, Nothing happened. It was all getting up to
(05:57):
the first day of you know, the production, the live show,
and not one word had been written for Chevy Chase,
not one word. He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And now they're out of time. The audience is in
the studio waiting, and Chevy Chase has no script. Backstage,
Jove walks up to Chevy to give his host some
words of encouragement.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
Jove went up to him right before the cameras went
on and put a freightwig on his head and said, Okay,
you're you're a You're a punk, You're a punk rocker.
Just get out there and win.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The show starts. Chevy Chase comes on stage in a
shitty punk rock wig.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
Hollywood, California, the entertainment capital up the world.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
We walk on your tower, surrounded by real punks. He
looks ridiculous. What happens next makes the news.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
Teddy Chase was taking a television show in Los Angeles
last night before invited audience of punk rockers.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Things seemed to get out of hand, and here's what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Chevy comes out on stage in his stupid wig and
starts improvising. It's not too long before the punks in
the crowd get restless. One of the people watching is
my dear friend Dirf Scratch. DIRF played bass and Fear,
the band that got kicked off of Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
DIRF to me was the punk post boy that's Alan Sachs.
Dirf was a hard Dirf looked like a preppy. He
wore saddle shoes, but he was a hard corere punk.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I remember one time Dirf asked me to go to
his apartment and he gave me some couple of lines
of speed and it burned my nose so bad that
I never did speed again. So God bless Irf and
thank you man. Anyway, Dirf is in the crowd for
the taping of the Top and he starts hackling Chevy.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Dirf was yelling you homo, you homo, and Chevy said,
who said that? Come on up here? Tell that to me,
and Dirf didn't wait a second and went running up
to the stage. He ran up to the apron, pushed
himself up on the riser, and ran over to Chevy
(08:21):
and kicked him in the nuts.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Apparently Chevy had just had a asectomy, so this kick
was particularly unwelcome. Other punks jump on stage two.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Pandemonium broke loose. I mean, I produced many television shows
I've never been involved where a fight like that broke
out in the audience.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And then Chevy Chase leaves and never comes back. Normal
people would give up after a shit store like that,
but not David Jove. He badgers Harold Ramis to help
him make another pilot. Harold reluctantly agrees, but with a
(09:10):
new host and some conditions.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
And this time with Andy Kaufman instead of Chevy Chase,
And this time Jove isn't allowed to write anything, isn't
allowed to direct, it is allowed to do. I mean,
Harold actually did handcuff him to a chair in the
director's booth where he had to give directions to the
(09:33):
cameraman to do what they were going to do.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Even with Joe physically restrained, things go off the rails,
although this time it's not completely his fault.
Speaker 8 (09:44):
Now, let me tell you a little about this video.
It's called by Randy Newman, and it's called I Love La.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And now it.
Speaker 8 (09:52):
Starts off with a bum. You see a bum, and
it's all in black and white. So you think the
whole thing's going to be black and white, right, But
it turns out that then the for a few minutes
of this, the thing turns to color. Okay, so that's
a surprise. That's a surprise.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Now, Andy Kaufman is a comedic genius. Have you ever
seen him do Elvis Presley? It's fucking hilarious. But on
this taping of the Top he was not at his best.
The audience might have assumed he was having an off night,
but in reality, Kaufman was dying of cancer. Here's Ken Daw,
(10:28):
a New Wave theater fan who was at the taping.
Speaker 9 (10:32):
It was obvious he was so far I'm sick. He
shouldn't have been there at all. I don't know why
he's ready to do it, just because he wanted to
do one last performance or something.
Speaker 10 (10:43):
And you know, a week or two weeks later, he
was gone.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
He was dead.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It was Andy Kaufman's last ever TV appearance. He died
in May of nineteen eighty four, and The Top, such
as it was, ended with him a pilot that never
went anywhere. By the time they started filming The Top,
(11:09):
it had been almost a year since Peter Iver's murder.
No arrest had been made, no one had been charged.
Across the city and the scene, those who loved Peter
began to move on, some reluctantly, some angrily. But one
person who couldn't let things go was David Jove. With
(11:32):
The Top, he tried to revive New Wave theater but
couldn't make it work, and all the while he was
literally living in the cave surrounded by Peter's stuff, grizzly
souvenirs he had stolen from the crime scene.
Speaker 11 (11:48):
He was obsessed with the murder.
Speaker 10 (11:49):
He would answer the phone who killed Peter Ivers for
at least a year after Peter's death, so it was
like he was on this crusade to find out who
killed him, and obviously that was the cover up.
Speaker 12 (12:02):
He grabbed Peter's quilt out him. It was green and
had bloodled it, and he kept it. He kept and
he slept with it in his bedroom.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
All of this fed into the gossip. Could David Jove
have something to do with Peter's death? Today we try
to answer that question head on and pay tribute to
our friend Peter and the musical legacy he left behind.
I'm Penelope Spheris and this is Peter and the Acid King.
(12:51):
Sometime after Peter's death, David Jove invited Don Bulls over
to his place. Don was the drummer in the Germs. Anyway,
here's where things get a little creepier. I'm going to
hand it over to Alan Sachs for this part, because
y'all know I don't do creepy.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
So when I talk to Don Balls from the Germs,
he told me a story about David Jove that I
keep thinking about and seeing as clear as day.
Speaker 11 (13:19):
He invited me to come over and he played me
these cassettes and micro cassettes of psychics who to whom
he had sent Peter's watch, the one that Peter had
been wearing at the time of the murders.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Apparently, along with the bloody blanket and sequin jacket, Jove
also took a watch that belonged to Peter. So Donna
is sitting there across from David Jove. I could see
that so clearly. Jove talking to Don showing him the watch.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
And he kept looking at me, just like really staring
into my face.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
I see his face.
Speaker 11 (13:57):
He's like yeah, he was like, you know, vains are
coming out. You know, the coke had obviously gone in,
and he's going, you know, and well, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So David wants Don to listen to the tape with him.
Donn's like, okay, put a little creep down, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 11 (14:16):
There was this one where the guy sounded like Peter,
and he's like living a moment in time when this
watch was last worn by the person, when they were alive.
He's like in a chance, right, and he's channeling this.
He's like, oh, hey, how you doing? What's what? What
what are you doing?
Speaker 13 (14:34):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (14:34):
Hey, oh my god?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
No, oh no god, are you killing me?
Speaker 11 (14:41):
It was the most horrifying death shrieks of a person
being killed that I have ever in my life heard.
And it sounded like Peter. And David didn't tell these
people whose watch it was or anything, or that there
was a murder world or anything. Right, it sounded like Peter.
(15:03):
This person didn't know who Peter was. This was like,
it was the most blood curdling stuff you could even
imagine hearing. It's like watching someone you love die or
something in this agonizing, awful leg There's nothing you could do.
It was that bad. And David is just like looking
at me, like, love, what do you think. I'm like, well,
David sounds like he knew the person, and he's like, yeah, anyway,
(15:28):
check this out.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
This is shocking and freaking weird. But Don told me
that David was totally calm.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Think about that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
The tape of pits to capture the moment his friend
was killed seemingly by someone he knew, and Jove seems
fine with it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
There was nothing incriminating about Jove's behavior that day with
Don Bowles. To some extent, it was just Jove being Jove,
an average day in the life of an occult obsessed
drug but it definitely wasn't normal. And it's the kindest
story that explains why some of us suspected Jove from
(16:09):
the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
David Jove had motive, means, an opportunity. He was angry
Peter quit a new wave theater. He was already known
to have been violent and an unpredictable cat, and he
knew whe Peter was going when he left the cave
that night. He was also the guy who many say
was first at the crime scene. He chimed his way
past the cops, and he was the guy that took
(16:33):
a bloody blanket, a watch, and a peak Sinkuin jacket
as though they were trophies.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Given all of this, you'd think the cops would have
picked David up and questioned him, but actually they didn't
have to. Here's that Oaks.
Speaker 14 (16:48):
David walked into the police station, you know, the next
day voluntarily. He asked to meet with a detective on
the case. He told the detective that he was in
the country illegally, and he told the cops that he
didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
The cops took.
Speaker 14 (17:04):
Down his statement and they, for whatever reason, they discounted
David as a as a person of interest.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
On the day after Peter's death, David Jove, who was
apparently a fugitive from Canada living under a pseudonym, walked
into a police station to chat with the cops. He
told them he had nothing to do with Peter's murder,
and they sent him on his way. It's so ridiculous
to those who knew Peter and David that it's laughable. Literally,
(17:36):
here's Alan talking to former rocker and current addiction counselor
Bob Forrest.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I've spoken to the cold case cops.
Speaker 11 (17:45):
It's not in the kitchen, not in the.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Casebook that they spoke to David.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
They didn't interview, they didn't He was never of suspicion.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
That is even more faith in cops, doesn't it. Some
people say that the cops did question Jove and that
he was later dropped as a suspect, But Alan asked
the LAPD directly and they said they never took a
serious look at Jove.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
The real mystery to me isn't why the cops dropped
Jove as a suspect. It's why Jove went to the
cops in the first place. He had spent decades being
paranoid about people finding out who he was. Then all
of a sudden, Pete is dead and he feels the
need to reach out and tell the authorities his secrets.
(18:34):
Why is that. Maybe he was worried about his dead
friend and wanted to help with the investigation. Or maybe
he wanted to stay close to the cops so he
could stay one step ahead of him.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That's one possibility. Or maybe Jove was trying to get
ahead of any questions by acting like he had nothing
to hide. Whatever the reason, it was an odd thing
for him to do, but was capable of murdering someone.
According to some people, maybe he was rumored to have
(19:07):
a very violent past.
Speaker 12 (19:09):
He'd also in the past when he was raving back
in the Cave days, he used to hint that he'd
somehow accidentally killed somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's Maggie Abbott, the agent who brought Mary Anne Faithful
to the cave. She was Jove's friend. According to her,
Jove told her straight up, I killed a guy. No,
not Peter, a different guy before that.
Speaker 12 (19:35):
It was tied in with the fact that he'd taken
a huge overdose of LSD because he had it in
the fridge and the bottle tipped over and it dribbled
down into a cake, and he hit the cake, chocolate
keate at the cake.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And when the cops apparently questioned him about the crime,
he had been too high to answer.
Speaker 12 (19:55):
He allowed the cigarette to burn down and burn his fingers.
He sat there and it was burning his flesh and
they were so it persuaded them, or convinced them that
he was too high to make any sense.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Well, that's one way to get out of jail.
Speaker 12 (20:11):
And that's how he got away with whatever it was
he got away with.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
The idea that Jove would have confessed something to Maggie
is interesting because to confess implies that you think you've
done something wrong, that you have a moral code. Here's
Nicholas Shrek, a friend of Jove's. He and Jove both
shared an interest in the teachings of Aleister Crowley, and
according to Crowley, killing someone wasn't necessarily something to feel
(20:41):
guilty about.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I also think, and this is more of an intuition
that Jove, like Crowley, and other people of that elk
would think that taking a life would be like a sacrifice,
and in almost like an ancient Gemanic tribal way, that
he would be taking power by taking a life.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Crowley taught that power was assumed through the exchange of energy,
but he also taught that taking power wasn't immoral. In
Crowley's view, there was no difference between consensual sex and
sexual assault, or natural death and murder. In my view,
Crowley had his head up his ass so far he
(21:25):
was looking at brown wallpaper.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I think that this is the way Jove thought about things.
I to think whatever it was, it probably wasn't strictly
impulsive hatred or criminality. It struck me when the murder happened,
that he would be more than capable of doing it,
because I don't think he had any moral sense whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
On the night before his death, Peter Ivers quit New
Wave Theater. It was a major blow for the show,
but was bad enough to cause Jove to murder his friend.
Maybe Jove was so spased out on drugs and Aleister
Crowley that he wasn't thinking straight that he followed Peter
back to his loft, broke in and killed Peter in
(22:14):
his sleep. Then, in an effort to cover his tracks,
Joe ran to the cops and offered to help find
the killer. At the end of the day, it's just
another theory of the case. No witnesses have ever placed
David Jove at Peter's loft that night. Maybe the biggest
reason to doubt Jove as the killer was that Peter's
(22:38):
death was a huge blow to Jove's creative aspirations. It
put a definitive end to New Wave Theater, and Jove's
career never recovered. In any event, If David Jove did
kill Peter, he never confessed or did he. Here's some
clips from the last episode of New Wave Theory. As
(23:01):
you'll hear, Jove edited audio from news reports about Peter's
death into the episode. Meanwhile, what's playing out on screen
is creepy as all hell. What's the meaning of life?
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Lez are still looking for Leeds and the murder of
thirty six year old musician Peter Ivers. I'll go then,
Amber talks about that case now and gives us this
portrait of Ivors, who was a pretty interesting man. Peters
was the irreverent, zany host of New Wave Theater.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
On Cable.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
US.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
In that last episode of New Wave Theater after Peter died,
Jove is fucking creepy. He's wearing this rubber mask, just
staring into the camera. He cries, but the mask distorts
his features. I don't know what he was thinking doing this.
It's really disturbing to look at now. He wore the
mask outside for like a week after that, but eventually
(23:59):
the mask came and David went back to the cave.
He never made another TV show after the Top. David
Jove died in two thousand and four of cancer.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
If there's any hard evidence that he killed Peter, it's
lost to history or hidden inside the LAPD's case file. Today,
many people who know Peter Ivers know him through New
Wave Theater. There are hours of footage of Peter hosting
the show, performing those weird monologues, interviewing the bands, but
(24:34):
all the while he's playing a character, a version of
himself filtered through David Jove. Peter's music, on the other hand,
is an expression of his true self. Way back in
episode two, we played a clip of him singing in
Heaven at a party. This is how I remember Peter direct,
(24:59):
sweet confident. Here's Mark MOTHERSBA of Divo, who used to
perform in Heaven at their shows.
Speaker 15 (25:07):
I think he contributed to the part of music that
was forming in our community in LA at that time.
He was into pure art and pure ideas, and I
think LA was lucky to have him when we did.
He was very artistic and his ideas were very artistic,
and you know, I think he wasn't like tied down
(25:30):
by trying to make a hit record or trying to,
you know, see if he could get on the radio.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Jello Biafa of the Dead Kennedys agrees a lot of
that had to do with the uniqueness of Peter's voice.
Speaker 16 (25:44):
As long as you're when the minute you open your mouth,
people know who it is. And one way to do
that is if your voice is incredibly and possibly even
deliberately obnoxious. And it's not as though Peter's voice was
that different from mine either, so I would say he
(26:06):
was actually crept in there as one of the formative
influences of my own voice.
Speaker 17 (26:12):
My sentense in retrospect is that Peter represented something and
kind of an intersection between popular entertainment, a new kind
of creative energy. It wasn't copying things but was actually
using the tools to make things that were fresh, yet
(26:36):
not being a kind of snob about trying to reach
an audience.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
That's Ron Howard. Peter wrote the theme for Ron's first movie,
Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 17 (26:47):
The mere fact that he was there kind of writing
the theme on a harmonica just tells you that he
had confidence that these things could be approached in a
new way. There was a dimension to what he was
offering popular culture that was suddenly a bit limited.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
His music was hard to define, sitting somewhere between genres.
It was cool and strange and experimental. During Peter's life,
that limited his commercial appeal. But a funny thing happened
(27:29):
between nineteen eighty three and now, the culture caught up
with Peter. You can hear Peter's influence everywhere. That's partly
because many of the people he touched went on to
have towering creative careers of their own, and they have
kept his memory alive. One of Peter's early credits was
(27:50):
in Heaven, a song he wrote for David Lynch's film Eraserhead.
Now Here's a song from Lynch's TV show twin Peaks.
It aired almost ten years after Peter's death. Sounds like Peter,
(28:12):
doesn't it. Here's film critic and writer Kayla Denise.
Speaker 18 (28:24):
Peter Ivers was an incredible creative influence on everybody he
ever met when he moved out to La originally to
score Tim Hunters AFI movies. Tim Hunter who was a
writer director who would end up writing the great film
Over the Edge and then directing River's Edge in the eighties.
(28:48):
So these really iconic and important teen youth in Revolt
or teen Angst films. But when he moved out to
Los Angeles, he had a girlfriend for many many years
named Lucy Fisher, and she, you know, as Peter's pursuing
his sort of independent musical projects and stuff like that,
she got a job originally as a script reader at
(29:10):
United Artists and then quickly sort of rose through the
ranks as a film executive.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Peter's girlfriend, Lucy Fisher has played an important role in
cultivating Peter's legacy.
Speaker 18 (29:22):
And as she progressed in her field, she started hiring
all of Peter's friends. So basically, all these musical influences,
all these filmic theater influences. Basically she has admitted this
herself that she knew everything because of Peter. She knew
all about music because of Peters and was able to
use her position to give opportunities to a lot of
(29:45):
these people that kick started their own careers or gave them,
you know, gave us movies like Caddie Shack, you know,
like Harold Ramis and Doug Kenny from National Lampoon and
Saturday Night Live. Even when Lucy Fisher was heading up
Zoetrope Studios and she arranged the private screening that eventually
(30:06):
got David Lynch the job to direct The Elephant Man.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
A few years ago, the record label RVNG got the
rights to Peter's music and released the compilation Becoming Peter Ivers.
Here's Jello Biafra.
Speaker 16 (30:22):
Now that I hear Becoming Peter Ivers, all those demos
are much more smooth and honing his voice more to
make it more accessible to a top, if not even
middle of the road audience. I don't know. Which makes
me wonder all the more why when he had his
(30:43):
big chance to make a Warner Brothers album he made
Terminal Love first instead of what became the second Warners
album first.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
All of it makes you wonder what could have been.
Speaker 16 (30:55):
I also wonder what might have happened with him as
far as people not just looking at him as this
goofy guy they had to put up with for new
wave theater, although a lot of people who tried to
dial in on those wraps at the end realize, my god,
this guy is a heavy dude, and he's more than
a little brilliant too. I wonder how things might have
(31:16):
gone for him if he had start putting out his
own records himself, or gone with an independent or something
who wanted to present him as he was, you know,
whether he might be more remembered or remembered differently and
more in depth. Today.
Speaker 13 (31:37):
I was delighted that there was some things out there,
but I wish that there were more. And I know that,
you know, some people, including my mom, have these old
VHS tapes and probably audio tapes and archives that they
don't really know what to do with.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's Violet remis Harold and Anne's daughter.
Speaker 13 (31:58):
You know, I would love to see all of his
archive out there and made public so people could not
only you know, understand and experience his music, but just
really see who he was as a person, because he
was involved and interested in so many things, and he
really you know, studied and just seemed passionate about, you know,
(32:22):
everything he was doing.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
If you're interested in exploring Peter's full artistic legacy to
an extent, you can. Lucy Fisher donated Peter's personal archive
to Harvard. It makes you wonder what would Peter think
of all this? Here's Mark mothersbaught again.
Speaker 15 (32:42):
I think if Peter was still here right now, you
would be looking back at him and saying, my god,
that guy blew don Hoe out of the water. He's
the best performer we've ever had here in Las Vegas.
And he would everything from circusole to the Prey.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This is right.
Speaker 11 (33:00):
He would have.
Speaker 15 (33:01):
Pulled in every piece of high end lower art and
exhibited them and celebrated them.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Some of Peter's biggest commercial successes have happened after his death.
Here's his songwriting partner, Franny Goldy.
Speaker 19 (33:17):
Every song that we wrote, maybe minus one or something,
something happened with it, whether it was recorded. I went
to two major song festivals, one in Korea and one
in Japan, and I won awards for both songs. I
sang them live. One of them I sang with a
(33:38):
fifty piece orchestra. He would have just been blown away
to hear his song, his words, and every you know
sung with this fifty piece orchestra in the Buddha Khan
in Japan. I mean, he would have been over the moon,
(34:00):
over the moon, and I remember, like instinctively. It didn't
even I didn't even have to think about it when
I finished the song, and here I was like, I
don't know how many thousands of people that place holds,
and it was for me an amazing experience that I
would never have had. I finished the song and I
(34:21):
looked up and I said, love.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
You, Pete.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I spend forty years wondering who killed Pete Rivas? And
I talked to everyone I could think of about it.
I was hoping there was something someone would say that
that would be the smoking gun. It's hard. David Jove
was such a big character and Penelope and I would
not have done this at all if he was still around.
(35:11):
It's one of the first conversations we had about this show.
You said to me, is David still alive? And I
said no, And you said, do you remember what you said?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I probably said good.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
You said, okay, I'll do it. Is that right, I'll
do the show? If when you knew he wasn't alive.
You said, you said, I'll do it. And do you
remember what you what you said about him that I do.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I know what I think about David, but you go
ahead and tell me what tell me you Tolmer, Well,
you told.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Me he was one of the scarce.
Speaker 20 (35:45):
First of all, you said, you know who I've met,
who I've been around where I grew up, and that
guy is one of the scariest fuckers I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I'm gonna say the scariest, the scariest. Yeah, that's that's
a good I'm scared.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
That's what I say.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I know, yeah, yeah, no, And you were scared of
him too, So it's pretty fucking crazy. I was too
close to all of this. I really cared about Peter,
and cared about Jove and about the scene. Maybe I
was too close to see what really happened. And maybe
I just like hanging out at the cave too much
guvasia and blow. After all these years, this mystery remains.
(36:25):
I think what this case needs is fresh eyes, fresh perspectives. Regardless,
I think Peter would just want people to appreciate his art,
So go out and listen to his music. I think
you'll like it. I know you'll like it. There's something
in there for everyone. Go watch New Wave Theater. It's
weird as hell, but it's a piece of history.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I mean, look, I'll just say it. For years, I've
been absolutely certain that David Jove killed Peter Ivers. Now
that I've learned all the availables, I'm not so sure anymore.
But maybe there's someone out there listening who does know
(37:06):
the truth. If you have information on Peter ivers homicide,
please reach out to the LAPD. The tip hotline is
one eight seven seven lawful. That's one eight seven seven
five two nine three eight five five. This is Peter
(37:28):
and the Acid King by Peter We Miss You. Peter
and the Acid King is based on interviews recorded and
researched by Alan Sachs. It's produced by Imagine Audio, Alan
Sachs Productions and Awfully Nice for iHeartMedia. I'm your host,
(37:53):
Penelope Speerris. The series is written by Caitlin Fontana. Peter
and the Acid King is produced by Amber von Schassen.
The senior producer is Caitlin Fontana and the supervising producer
is John Assanti. Our project manager is Katie Hodges. Our
executive producers are Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carra Welker, Nathan Kloke,
(38:20):
Alan Sachs, Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges. The associate producers
are Laura Schwartz, Dylan Cainrich and Chris Statue. Co producer
on behalf of Shout Studios Bob Emmer. Sound design and
mix by Evan Arnette, fact checking by Katherine Barner. Original
(38:43):
music composed by Alloy Trax, Music clearances by Barbara Hall.
Voiceover recording by Voice Tracks West Show artwork by Michael Dare.
Special thanks to Annette van Duren. Thank you for listening.
The content in this episode might be disturbing for some listeners.
Listen to discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's early nineteen eighty four in a bustling television studio
in LA. There's an audience of punks, just like New
Wave Theater. But unlike New Wave Theater, this ain't hokey anymore.
It's a big crew, a control booth. It's a real
production coming to you from KTLA. New Wave Theater's gone
(00:34):
corporate thanks to Harold Ramus. After Peter's death, Harold introduced
David Joe to a TV exec named Bill Cameron. Here's Bill.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So David came in and I found him to be enchanting.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The devil is a brilliant prankster, but the greatest trick
he ever pulled was making David Jove enchanting to some people.
Definitely not to me, but I guess some people found
him endearing anyway. David pitches Bill a TV show idea.
It's a spin on the New Wave theater formula.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
What he was doing was something called the Top and
it was an entertainment variety.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Our Bill's interested, so he sets up a meeting for
them at MGM. In the meeting, the Suits have a
question for David.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
What's going to make your show different?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Tell me what happens when the lights go up and
the camera goes on. What do I see?
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Joe?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And we hadn't rehearsed this, had and talked about it.
David said, you see seventeen little ducklings and a lama
on the set and they're running around and it's a
set like Johnny Carson has on Tonight's show, but they're
ducklings and a lama on there, and that's what you see.
(01:57):
And it sold the show because it was so It's clever,
it was clever, it was different.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
The Suit's green light a pilot. It's a huge break
for David. Despite its roots in public access, new Wave
Theater had been a real TV show on national cable TV.
But the Top was going to be on a whole
nother level.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This was going up, upscaled quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
This was going to be How big a budget was
this going to be?
Speaker 3 (02:25):
This in those days? I think we were talking three
hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
In other words, a good chunk of change, which brings
us back to that TV studio in La David and
Harold are filming the pilot for the Top and the
pressure is on. Jove skulks around, creating tension, but Harold
tries to bring a sense of calm. It's thanks to
(02:51):
him that there's a level of professionalism on the set.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
So Harold raymis enters the scene. It's like, okay, this
is going to be a real TV production.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
That's Michael Dare, a film critic for LA Weekly.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
This is no longer your underground new ad theater that's
shown as part of Night Flight on the USA network.
This is going to be on an actual television network
that's going to have commercials, and you're going to be
the director in the booth, and there's going to have
to be a script that everybody's going to have to follow.
(03:29):
You're going to hire a writer, and David says, well,
I don't need a script, and Harold Reimer says to him,
you're going to hire a writer. And so David Jove
comes to me and says, will you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Be the writer, the head writer of the Top.
Speaker 6 (03:48):
And I said, well, sure, what do you want me
to do and he says nothing, You're not going to
write a single word. I'm going to write every single
word that everybody says on the show. And I'm only
hiring you because Harold Raimas says that I have to
hire a writer.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Now that he's got a writer. All Jovenies is a
celebrity host. So Harold Ramis picks up the phone and
calls it a favor from one of the biggest comedians
in town, a guy looking to get back to his
TV roots, a guy named Cornelius.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
Everybody knows Chevy Chase is one of the biggest assholes
on Earth. You can't read anything about him without someone
telling a story about what a fucking asshole he is.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Nobody likes it except me.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
I had the best meeting I've ever had with Chevy
Chase because Harold Ramos was in the room. Harold Ramis
calls a meeting. He says, Okay, David, bring your writer,
I'll bring Chevy Chase. We're going to sit together and
figure out what this show is.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So Michael's in the room of Chevy Chase, Harold Ramis
and David Jove. Chevy stands up and starts talking, and it.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
Was hilarious and brilliant, and I was like, oh my god,
I'm going to be the head writer of the Chevy
j Show.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Except that's not what happens. Jove puts the kabash on
every single one of Chevy's ideas.
Speaker 6 (05:17):
No we're not going to do that. Oh I don't
want to do that. No we're not going to do that.
Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna keep cutting back
to the sound booth, and all the technicians are gonna
be animals. And when we cut to the audience, it's
going to cut to a bunch of baby ducks.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh no, not more baby ducks.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
So we kept having meetings and meetings and meetings at
which nothing was decided except that nobody was allowed to
do anything if David Joe didn't tell him to do it.
I wrote a monologue for Chevy, he turned it down.
Chevy wrote a monologue for himself, he turned it down.
Nothing happened, Nothing happened. It was all getting up to
(05:57):
the first day of you know, the production, the live show,
and not one word had been written for Chevy Chase,
not one word. He didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
And now they're out of time. The audience is in
the studio waiting, and Chevy Chase has no script. Backstage,
Jove walks up to Chevy to give his host some
words of encouragement.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
Jove went up to him right before the cameras went
on and put a freightwig on his head and said, Okay,
you're you're a You're a punk, You're a punk rocker.
Just get out there and win.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The show starts. Chevy Chase comes on stage in a
shitty punk rock wig.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
Hollywood, California, the entertainment capital up the world.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
We walk on your tower, surrounded by real punks. He
looks ridiculous. What happens next makes the news.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
Teddy Chase was taking a television show in Los Angeles
last night before invited audience of punk rockers.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Things seemed to get out of hand, and here's what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Chevy comes out on stage in his stupid wig and
starts improvising. It's not too long before the punks in
the crowd get restless. One of the people watching is
my dear friend Dirf Scratch. DIRF played bass and Fear,
the band that got kicked off of Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
DIRF to me was the punk post boy that's Alan Sachs.
Dirf was a hard Dirf looked like a preppy. He
wore saddle shoes, but he was a hard corere punk.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I remember one time Dirf asked me to go to
his apartment and he gave me some couple of lines
of speed and it burned my nose so bad that
I never did speed again. So God bless Irf and
thank you man. Anyway, Dirf is in the crowd for
the taping of the Top and he starts hackling Chevy.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Dirf was yelling you homo, you homo, and Chevy said,
who said that? Come on up here? Tell that to me,
and Dirf didn't wait a second and went running up
to the stage. He ran up to the apron, pushed
himself up on the riser, and ran over to Chevy
(08:21):
and kicked him in the nuts.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Apparently Chevy had just had a asectomy, so this kick
was particularly unwelcome. Other punks jump on stage two.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Pandemonium broke loose. I mean, I produced many television shows
I've never been involved where a fight like that broke
out in the audience.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And then Chevy Chase leaves and never comes back. Normal
people would give up after a shit store like that,
but not David Jove. He badgers Harold Ramis to help
him make another pilot. Harold reluctantly agrees, but with a
(09:10):
new host and some conditions.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
And this time with Andy Kaufman instead of Chevy Chase,
And this time Jove isn't allowed to write anything, isn't
allowed to direct, it is allowed to do. I mean,
Harold actually did handcuff him to a chair in the
director's booth where he had to give directions to the
(09:33):
cameraman to do what they were going to do.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Even with Joe physically restrained, things go off the rails,
although this time it's not completely his fault.
Speaker 8 (09:44):
Now, let me tell you a little about this video.
It's called by Randy Newman, and it's called I Love La.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
And now it.
Speaker 8 (09:52):
Starts off with a bum. You see a bum, and
it's all in black and white. So you think the
whole thing's going to be black and white, right, But
it turns out that then the for a few minutes
of this, the thing turns to color. Okay, so that's
a surprise. That's a surprise.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Now, Andy Kaufman is a comedic genius. Have you ever
seen him do Elvis Presley? It's fucking hilarious. But on
this taping of the Top he was not at his best.
The audience might have assumed he was having an off night,
but in reality, Kaufman was dying of cancer. Here's Ken Daw,
(10:28):
a New Wave theater fan who was at the taping.
Speaker 9 (10:32):
It was obvious he was so far I'm sick. He
shouldn't have been there at all. I don't know why
he's ready to do it, just because he wanted to
do one last performance or something.
Speaker 10 (10:43):
And you know, a week or two weeks later, he
was gone.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
He was dead.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It was Andy Kaufman's last ever TV appearance. He died
in May of nineteen eighty four, and The Top, such
as it was, ended with him a pilot that never
went anywhere. By the time they started filming The Top,
(11:09):
it had been almost a year since Peter Iver's murder.
No arrest had been made, no one had been charged.
Across the city and the scene, those who loved Peter
began to move on, some reluctantly, some angrily. But one
person who couldn't let things go was David Jove. With
(11:32):
The Top, he tried to revive New Wave theater but
couldn't make it work, and all the while he was
literally living in the cave surrounded by Peter's stuff, grizzly
souvenirs he had stolen from the crime scene.
Speaker 11 (11:48):
He was obsessed with the murder.
Speaker 10 (11:49):
He would answer the phone who killed Peter Ivers for
at least a year after Peter's death, so it was
like he was on this crusade to find out who
killed him, and obviously that was the cover up.
Speaker 12 (12:02):
He grabbed Peter's quilt out him. It was green and
had bloodled it, and he kept it. He kept and
he slept with it in his bedroom.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
All of this fed into the gossip. Could David Jove
have something to do with Peter's death? Today we try
to answer that question head on and pay tribute to
our friend Peter and the musical legacy he left behind.
I'm Penelope Spheris and this is Peter and the Acid King.
(12:51):
Sometime after Peter's death, David Jove invited Don Bulls over
to his place. Don was the drummer in the Germs. Anyway,
here's where things get a little creepier. I'm going to
hand it over to Alan Sachs for this part, because
y'all know I don't do creepy.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
So when I talk to Don Balls from the Germs,
he told me a story about David Jove that I
keep thinking about and seeing as clear as day.
Speaker 11 (13:19):
He invited me to come over and he played me
these cassettes and micro cassettes of psychics who to whom
he had sent Peter's watch, the one that Peter had
been wearing at the time of the murders.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Apparently, along with the bloody blanket and sequin jacket, Jove
also took a watch that belonged to Peter. So Donna
is sitting there across from David Jove. I could see
that so clearly. Jove talking to Don showing him the watch.
Speaker 11 (13:52):
And he kept looking at me, just like really staring
into my face.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
I see his face.
Speaker 11 (13:57):
He's like yeah, he was like, you know, vains are
coming out. You know, the coke had obviously gone in,
and he's going, you know, and well, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So David wants Don to listen to the tape with him.
Donn's like, okay, put a little creep down, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 11 (14:16):
There was this one where the guy sounded like Peter,
and he's like living a moment in time when this
watch was last worn by the person, when they were alive.
He's like in a chance, right, and he's channeling this.
He's like, oh, hey, how you doing? What's what? What
what are you doing?
Speaker 13 (14:34):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (14:34):
Hey, oh my god?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
No, oh no god, are you killing me?
Speaker 11 (14:41):
It was the most horrifying death shrieks of a person
being killed that I have ever in my life heard.
And it sounded like Peter. And David didn't tell these
people whose watch it was or anything, or that there
was a murder world or anything. Right, it sounded like Peter.
(15:03):
This person didn't know who Peter was. This was like,
it was the most blood curdling stuff you could even
imagine hearing. It's like watching someone you love die or
something in this agonizing, awful leg There's nothing you could do.
It was that bad. And David is just like looking
at me, like, love, what do you think. I'm like, well,
David sounds like he knew the person, and he's like, yeah, anyway,
(15:28):
check this out.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
This is shocking and freaking weird. But Don told me
that David was totally calm.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Think about that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
The tape of pits to capture the moment his friend
was killed seemingly by someone he knew, and Jove seems
fine with it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
There was nothing incriminating about Jove's behavior that day with
Don Bowles. To some extent, it was just Jove being Jove,
an average day in the life of an occult obsessed
drug but it definitely wasn't normal. And it's the kindest
story that explains why some of us suspected Jove from
(16:09):
the very beginning.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
David Jove had motive, means, an opportunity. He was angry
Peter quit a new wave theater. He was already known
to have been violent and an unpredictable cat, and he
knew whe Peter was going when he left the cave
that night. He was also the guy who many say
was first at the crime scene. He chimed his way
past the cops, and he was the guy that took
(16:33):
a bloody blanket, a watch, and a peak Sinkuin jacket
as though they were trophies.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Given all of this, you'd think the cops would have
picked David up and questioned him, but actually they didn't
have to. Here's that Oaks.
Speaker 14 (16:48):
David walked into the police station, you know, the next
day voluntarily. He asked to meet with a detective on
the case. He told the detective that he was in
the country illegally, and he told the cops that he
didn't do it.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
The cops took.
Speaker 14 (17:04):
Down his statement and they, for whatever reason, they discounted
David as a as a person of interest.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
On the day after Peter's death, David Jove, who was
apparently a fugitive from Canada living under a pseudonym, walked
into a police station to chat with the cops. He
told them he had nothing to do with Peter's murder,
and they sent him on his way. It's so ridiculous
to those who knew Peter and David that it's laughable. Literally,
(17:36):
here's Alan talking to former rocker and current addiction counselor
Bob Forrest.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
I've spoken to the cold case cops.
Speaker 11 (17:45):
It's not in the kitchen, not in the.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Casebook that they spoke to David.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
They didn't interview, they didn't He was never of suspicion.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
That is even more faith in cops, doesn't it. Some
people say that the cops did question Jove and that
he was later dropped as a suspect, But Alan asked
the LAPD directly and they said they never took a
serious look at Jove.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
The real mystery to me isn't why the cops dropped
Jove as a suspect. It's why Jove went to the
cops in the first place. He had spent decades being
paranoid about people finding out who he was. Then all
of a sudden, Pete is dead and he feels the
need to reach out and tell the authorities his secrets.
(18:34):
Why is that. Maybe he was worried about his dead
friend and wanted to help with the investigation. Or maybe
he wanted to stay close to the cops so he
could stay one step ahead of him.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That's one possibility. Or maybe Jove was trying to get
ahead of any questions by acting like he had nothing
to hide. Whatever the reason, it was an odd thing
for him to do, but was capable of murdering someone.
According to some people, maybe he was rumored to have
(19:07):
a very violent past.
Speaker 12 (19:09):
He'd also in the past when he was raving back
in the Cave days, he used to hint that he'd
somehow accidentally killed somebody.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's Maggie Abbott, the agent who brought Mary Anne Faithful
to the cave. She was Jove's friend. According to her,
Jove told her straight up, I killed a guy. No,
not Peter, a different guy before that.
Speaker 12 (19:35):
It was tied in with the fact that he'd taken
a huge overdose of LSD because he had it in
the fridge and the bottle tipped over and it dribbled
down into a cake, and he hit the cake, chocolate
keate at the cake.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And when the cops apparently questioned him about the crime,
he had been too high to answer.
Speaker 12 (19:55):
He allowed the cigarette to burn down and burn his fingers.
He sat there and it was burning his flesh and
they were so it persuaded them, or convinced them that
he was too high to make any sense.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Well, that's one way to get out of jail.
Speaker 12 (20:11):
And that's how he got away with whatever it was
he got away with.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
The idea that Jove would have confessed something to Maggie
is interesting because to confess implies that you think you've
done something wrong, that you have a moral code. Here's
Nicholas Shrek, a friend of Jove's. He and Jove both
shared an interest in the teachings of Aleister Crowley, and
according to Crowley, killing someone wasn't necessarily something to feel
(20:41):
guilty about.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I also think, and this is more of an intuition
that Jove, like Crowley, and other people of that elk
would think that taking a life would be like a sacrifice,
and in almost like an ancient Gemanic tribal way, that
he would be taking power by taking a life.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Crowley taught that power was assumed through the exchange of energy,
but he also taught that taking power wasn't immoral. In
Crowley's view, there was no difference between consensual sex and
sexual assault, or natural death and murder. In my view,
Crowley had his head up his ass so far he
(21:25):
was looking at brown wallpaper.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I think that this is the way Jove thought about things.
I to think whatever it was, it probably wasn't strictly
impulsive hatred or criminality. It struck me when the murder happened,
that he would be more than capable of doing it,
because I don't think he had any moral sense whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
On the night before his death, Peter Ivers quit New
Wave Theater. It was a major blow for the show,
but was bad enough to cause Jove to murder his friend.
Maybe Jove was so spased out on drugs and Aleister
Crowley that he wasn't thinking straight that he followed Peter
back to his loft, broke in and killed Peter in
(22:14):
his sleep. Then, in an effort to cover his tracks,
Joe ran to the cops and offered to help find
the killer. At the end of the day, it's just
another theory of the case. No witnesses have ever placed
David Jove at Peter's loft that night. Maybe the biggest
reason to doubt Jove as the killer was that Peter's
(22:38):
death was a huge blow to Jove's creative aspirations. It
put a definitive end to New Wave Theater, and Jove's
career never recovered. In any event, If David Jove did
kill Peter, he never confessed or did he. Here's some
clips from the last episode of New Wave Theory. As
(23:01):
you'll hear, Jove edited audio from news reports about Peter's
death into the episode. Meanwhile, what's playing out on screen
is creepy as all hell. What's the meaning of life?
Speaker 7 (23:14):
Lez are still looking for Leeds and the murder of
thirty six year old musician Peter Ivers. I'll go then,
Amber talks about that case now and gives us this
portrait of Ivors, who was a pretty interesting man. Peters
was the irreverent, zany host of New Wave Theater.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
On Cable.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
US.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
In that last episode of New Wave Theater after Peter died,
Jove is fucking creepy. He's wearing this rubber mask, just
staring into the camera. He cries, but the mask distorts
his features. I don't know what he was thinking doing this.
It's really disturbing to look at now. He wore the
mask outside for like a week after that, but eventually
(23:59):
the mask came and David went back to the cave.
He never made another TV show after the Top. David
Jove died in two thousand and four of cancer.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
If there's any hard evidence that he killed Peter, it's
lost to history or hidden inside the LAPD's case file. Today,
many people who know Peter Ivers know him through New
Wave Theater. There are hours of footage of Peter hosting
the show, performing those weird monologues, interviewing the bands, but
(24:34):
all the while he's playing a character, a version of
himself filtered through David Jove. Peter's music, on the other hand,
is an expression of his true self. Way back in
episode two, we played a clip of him singing in
Heaven at a party. This is how I remember Peter direct,
(24:59):
sweet confident. Here's Mark MOTHERSBA of Divo, who used to
perform in Heaven at their shows.
Speaker 15 (25:07):
I think he contributed to the part of music that
was forming in our community in LA at that time.
He was into pure art and pure ideas, and I
think LA was lucky to have him when we did.
He was very artistic and his ideas were very artistic,
and you know, I think he wasn't like tied down
(25:30):
by trying to make a hit record or trying to,
you know, see if he could get on the radio.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Jello Biafa of the Dead Kennedys agrees a lot of
that had to do with the uniqueness of Peter's voice.
Speaker 16 (25:44):
As long as you're when the minute you open your mouth,
people know who it is. And one way to do
that is if your voice is incredibly and possibly even
deliberately obnoxious. And it's not as though Peter's voice was
that different from mine either, so I would say he
(26:06):
was actually crept in there as one of the formative
influences of my own voice.
Speaker 17 (26:12):
My sentense in retrospect is that Peter represented something and
kind of an intersection between popular entertainment, a new kind
of creative energy. It wasn't copying things but was actually
using the tools to make things that were fresh, yet
(26:36):
not being a kind of snob about trying to reach
an audience.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
That's Ron Howard. Peter wrote the theme for Ron's first movie,
Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 17 (26:47):
The mere fact that he was there kind of writing
the theme on a harmonica just tells you that he
had confidence that these things could be approached in a
new way. There was a dimension to what he was
offering popular culture that was suddenly a bit limited.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
His music was hard to define, sitting somewhere between genres.
It was cool and strange and experimental. During Peter's life,
that limited his commercial appeal. But a funny thing happened
(27:29):
between nineteen eighty three and now, the culture caught up
with Peter. You can hear Peter's influence everywhere. That's partly
because many of the people he touched went on to
have towering creative careers of their own, and they have
kept his memory alive. One of Peter's early credits was
(27:50):
in Heaven, a song he wrote for David Lynch's film Eraserhead.
Now Here's a song from Lynch's TV show twin Peaks.
It aired almost ten years after Peter's death. Sounds like Peter,
(28:12):
doesn't it. Here's film critic and writer Kayla Denise.
Speaker 18 (28:24):
Peter Ivers was an incredible creative influence on everybody he
ever met when he moved out to La originally to
score Tim Hunters AFI movies. Tim Hunter who was a
writer director who would end up writing the great film
Over the Edge and then directing River's Edge in the eighties.
(28:48):
So these really iconic and important teen youth in Revolt
or teen Angst films. But when he moved out to
Los Angeles, he had a girlfriend for many many years
named Lucy Fisher, and she, you know, as Peter's pursuing
his sort of independent musical projects and stuff like that,
she got a job originally as a script reader at
(29:10):
United Artists and then quickly sort of rose through the
ranks as a film executive.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Peter's girlfriend, Lucy Fisher has played an important role in
cultivating Peter's legacy.
Speaker 18 (29:22):
And as she progressed in her field, she started hiring
all of Peter's friends. So basically, all these musical influences,
all these filmic theater influences. Basically she has admitted this
herself that she knew everything because of Peter. She knew
all about music because of Peters and was able to
use her position to give opportunities to a lot of
(29:45):
these people that kick started their own careers or gave them,
you know, gave us movies like Caddie Shack, you know,
like Harold Ramis and Doug Kenny from National Lampoon and
Saturday Night Live. Even when Lucy Fisher was heading up
Zoetrope Studios and she arranged the private screening that eventually
(30:06):
got David Lynch the job to direct The Elephant Man.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
A few years ago, the record label RVNG got the
rights to Peter's music and released the compilation Becoming Peter Ivers.
Here's Jello Biafra.
Speaker 16 (30:22):
Now that I hear Becoming Peter Ivers, all those demos
are much more smooth and honing his voice more to
make it more accessible to a top, if not even
middle of the road audience. I don't know. Which makes
me wonder all the more why when he had his
(30:43):
big chance to make a Warner Brothers album he made
Terminal Love first instead of what became the second Warners
album first.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
All of it makes you wonder what could have been.
Speaker 16 (30:55):
I also wonder what might have happened with him as
far as people not just looking at him as this
goofy guy they had to put up with for new
wave theater, although a lot of people who tried to
dial in on those wraps at the end realize, my god,
this guy is a heavy dude, and he's more than
a little brilliant too. I wonder how things might have
(31:16):
gone for him if he had start putting out his
own records himself, or gone with an independent or something
who wanted to present him as he was, you know,
whether he might be more remembered or remembered differently and
more in depth. Today.
Speaker 13 (31:37):
I was delighted that there was some things out there,
but I wish that there were more. And I know that,
you know, some people, including my mom, have these old
VHS tapes and probably audio tapes and archives that they
don't really know what to do with.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
That's Violet remis Harold and Anne's daughter.
Speaker 13 (31:58):
You know, I would love to see all of his
archive out there and made public so people could not
only you know, understand and experience his music, but just
really see who he was as a person, because he
was involved and interested in so many things, and he
really you know, studied and just seemed passionate about, you know,
(32:22):
everything he was doing.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
If you're interested in exploring Peter's full artistic legacy to
an extent, you can. Lucy Fisher donated Peter's personal archive
to Harvard. It makes you wonder what would Peter think
of all this? Here's Mark mothersbaught again.
Speaker 15 (32:42):
I think if Peter was still here right now, you
would be looking back at him and saying, my god,
that guy blew don Hoe out of the water. He's
the best performer we've ever had here in Las Vegas.
And he would everything from circusole to the Prey.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This is right.
Speaker 11 (33:00):
He would have.
Speaker 15 (33:01):
Pulled in every piece of high end lower art and
exhibited them and celebrated them.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Some of Peter's biggest commercial successes have happened after his death.
Here's his songwriting partner, Franny Goldy.
Speaker 19 (33:17):
Every song that we wrote, maybe minus one or something,
something happened with it, whether it was recorded. I went
to two major song festivals, one in Korea and one
in Japan, and I won awards for both songs. I
sang them live. One of them I sang with a
(33:38):
fifty piece orchestra. He would have just been blown away
to hear his song, his words, and every you know
sung with this fifty piece orchestra in the Buddha Khan
in Japan. I mean, he would have been over the moon,
(34:00):
over the moon, and I remember, like instinctively. It didn't
even I didn't even have to think about it when
I finished the song, and here I was like, I
don't know how many thousands of people that place holds,
and it was for me an amazing experience that I
would never have had. I finished the song and I
(34:21):
looked up and I said, love.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
You, Pete.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I spend forty years wondering who killed Pete Rivas? And
I talked to everyone I could think of about it.
I was hoping there was something someone would say that
that would be the smoking gun. It's hard. David Jove
was such a big character and Penelope and I would
not have done this at all if he was still around.
(35:11):
It's one of the first conversations we had about this show.
You said to me, is David still alive? And I
said no, And you said, do you remember what you said?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I probably said good.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
You said, okay, I'll do it. Is that right, I'll
do the show? If when you knew he wasn't alive.
You said, you said, I'll do it. And do you
remember what you what you said about him that I do.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I know what I think about David, but you go
ahead and tell me what tell me you Tolmer, Well,
you told.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Me he was one of the scarce.
Speaker 20 (35:45):
First of all, you said, you know who I've met,
who I've been around where I grew up, and that
guy is one of the scariest fuckers I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I'm gonna say the scariest, the scariest. Yeah, that's that's
a good I'm scared.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
That's what I say.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I know, yeah, yeah, no, And you were scared of
him too, So it's pretty fucking crazy. I was too
close to all of this. I really cared about Peter,
and cared about Jove and about the scene. Maybe I
was too close to see what really happened. And maybe
I just like hanging out at the cave too much
guvasia and blow. After all these years, this mystery remains.
(36:25):
I think what this case needs is fresh eyes, fresh perspectives. Regardless,
I think Peter would just want people to appreciate his art,
So go out and listen to his music. I think
you'll like it. I know you'll like it. There's something
in there for everyone. Go watch New Wave Theater. It's
weird as hell, but it's a piece of history.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I mean, look, I'll just say it. For years, I've
been absolutely certain that David Jove killed Peter Ivers. Now
that I've learned all the availables, I'm not so sure anymore.
But maybe there's someone out there listening who does know
(37:06):
the truth. If you have information on Peter ivers homicide,
please reach out to the LAPD. The tip hotline is
one eight seven seven lawful. That's one eight seven seven
five two nine three eight five five. This is Peter
(37:28):
and the Acid King by Peter We Miss You. Peter
and the Acid King is based on interviews recorded and
researched by Alan Sachs. It's produced by Imagine Audio, Alan
Sachs Productions and Awfully Nice for iHeartMedia. I'm your host,
(37:53):
Penelope Speerris. The series is written by Caitlin Fontana. Peter
and the Acid King is produced by Amber von Schassen.
The senior producer is Caitlin Fontana and the supervising producer
is John Assanti. Our project manager is Katie Hodges. Our
executive producers are Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carra Welker, Nathan Kloke,
(38:20):
Alan Sachs, Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges. The associate producers
are Laura Schwartz, Dylan Cainrich and Chris Statue. Co producer
on behalf of Shout Studios Bob Emmer. Sound design and
mix by Evan Arnette, fact checking by Katherine Barner. Original
(38:43):
music composed by Alloy Trax, Music clearances by Barbara Hall.
Voiceover recording by Voice Tracks West Show artwork by Michael Dare.
Special thanks to Annette van Duren. Thank you for listening.
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