March 12 2003

By Will York

Anton Lavey pipe organ Lp church of satan !!!

Ebay item number: 2162419269

Starting bid: $18.00

Description: "This is the first record that Anton Lavey recorded!!! The title of the record is "A Hi-Fi fantasy in pipe organ and percussion". He recorded this album under his Stage name, 'Georges Montalba'. This is a must for the LaVey collector!!!!" [sic all]

Posted by hammerofantichrist on eBay

It's incongruous on the surface: The author of The Satanic Bible was also a fan of Tiny Tim and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure? Anton LaVey, one of the late 20th century's great icons of evil, was also a skilled pipe organist? –Yep, it's true. While LaVey's role as founder of the San Francisco-based Church of Satan is well known – and best left for discussion elsewhere – his past as a musician and champion of esoteric, old-fashioned forms of entertainment has taken a backseat in the history books. However, a pair of recent CD reissues have made it possible to take a new look at this odd musical legacy, the myths surrounding it, and how it relates to some of the S.F. music scene's more colorful fringe-walkers today.

In one corner is LaVey's Satan Takes a Holiday, originally released on now-defunct San Francisco label Amarillo and reissued by Baltimore's Adversary Records (which also reissued his 1968 LP, The Satanic Mass). In the other is George Montalba's Pipe Organ Favorites and Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion – a two-fer CD reissued by Hamburg, Germany, imprint Hit Thing in 2001 and just licensed for distribution in the United States last month.

So, was Anton LaVey really Georges Montalba, as our pal "hammerofantichrist" proclaims on eBay? It's not an easy question to answer. Like everything else about LaVey's life, the facts surrounding his musical career are shrouded by conflicting anecdotes and (apparent) embellishments. Part of what's known is that he played music from an early age – learning his way around several instruments including trombone, calliope, and oboe – and that he also performed professionally in San Francisco, holding down a steady gig at the Sunset's Lost Weekend nightclub prior to founding the Church of Satan in 1966.

Holding court

LaVey performed at a bunch of other venues around town during the '60s, too, including the Fox Theatre and the Castro Theatre. His oldest daughter, Karla, even remembers sitting with her grandparents and listening to her father play on the radio during basketball games. "The announcers would say, 'And that's Anton LaVey at the Mighty Wurlitzer!' " she recounts, proudly adding that her father "played every organ in town. And he played organs that people couldn't play, that had keys missing and broken stops."

Friends of LaVey also recall him holding court in his California Street home, long after he had stopped playing in public, and entertaining guests on his Hammond organ while challenging them to try to stump him with a request. He reportedly knew thousands of songs – from show tunes and Sousa marches to jazz standards and classical themes – though he knew little from after the 1960s, and he hated rock music.

Among the regulars at the house was a prominent San Francisco noise musician who, for this article, insists on being identified only as "Bonban – roadie for Spider Compass Good Crime Band, curator of 'Organ Spectacular' shows, and friend of the LaVeys of California Street." Bonban recounts LaVey saying, "The only way I can play any of that horrible rock music – the only way I can play anything by the Beatles – is if I imagine Mrs. Miller singing the lyrics," referring to the comically inept housewife turned Capitol recording artist from the 1960s. "I mean, he never had anything bad to say about Alice Cooper or King Diamond," he adds. "But he would be listening to Bernard Herrmann soundtracks and opera more than anything, I think. And Mrs. Miller."

Satan Takes a Holiday, originally released in 1995, reflects this pre-rock-era variety-show aesthetic, with faithful versions of chestnuts such as "Chloe" and Duke Ellington's "The Mooche" alongside obscurities such as the somber, surprisingly touching "Hello Central, Give Me No Man's Land." It's a fun album, although due to the circumstances of the recording, it's not all it could have been.

"He didn't want to go into a studio," Karla says. "He wanted to record it in his kitchen using a Portastudio and a keyboard. Once he got his first keyboard, you might as well have thrown the piano and the organ away." She recalls him spending hours programming various sounds onto his keyboard: saxophones, banjos, lions roaring, fireworks exploding, etc. (This pursuit is more evident on Strange Music, a still out-of-print 10-inch vinyl EP from 1994 that makes better use of the synth than Satan Takes a Holiday.)

Montalba mystery

The Georges Montalba albums, on the other hand, are another story. Originally recorded in the late '50s, these more archetypal theater-organ LPs have for years been rumored to be the work of LaVey. According to Bonban as well as Gregg Turkington, who put out Satan Takes a Holiday on his Amarillo label, LaVey told them both, on separate occasions, that he played on parts of at least one Montalba record.

Getting to the bottom of the Montalba story involves navigating a maze of details, one complicated by legal issues, conflicting firsthand accounts, and the simple passage of time. One popular theory among organ enthusiasts, though, is that there were actually multiple Montalbas, all of whom recorded under the French pseudonym for the record label. This claim doesn't seem all that unfounded once you listen to the records. At the very least, there is a stark contrast in the organ playing on the florid, light 'n' fluffy Pipe Organ Favorites and the darker, more dramatic Fantasy.

Blanche Barton, current High Priestess of the Church of Satan and the mother of LaVey's third son, Xerxes, supports this "multiple Montalba" theory. In an open letter to the Village Voice following a July 2002 piece on the question of Montalba's identity (posted on her organization's Web site, www.churchofsatan.com), she maintains that some of the songs on each album are "clearly LaVey playing." She adds, "Some of the songs are just as clearly not LaVey playing, and the styles are distinctly different." (Despite her adamancy on this issue, Barton did not respond to an interview request for this article.)

In the other camp, however, both Karla and her estranged half-sister Zeena Shreck (who are seldom in agreement with each other) agree that whoever Montalba was, he wasn't Anton LaVey. While she vehemently denies Zeena's claim in the Pipe Organ Favorites and Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion reissue's liner notes that her father was "one of history's greatest pathological liars," Karla was emphatic, after finally hearing the CD, that the playing on the album is "not my father's style. I mean, no way is this him!"

Hit Thing owner and reissue producer Toby Dammit says he can back her up. According to Dammit, the real Montalba was actually a classically trained Los Angeles native named Robert Hunter.

Originally unaware of the Montalba legend, the producer discovered the records while pet-sitting at a friend's house several years ago. He spent months researching the albums and claims he has documentation for Montalba's identity.

"Some aficionados have inquired if [popular theater organist] George Wright had even been involved (another prior rumor based on style comparisons)," he e-mails from Hamburg. "However, it just ends up with a simple situation: Robert made three albums as Georges Montalba, and I found the studios, tapes, and recording documents, and even the studio owners. Lorin Whitney is still alive and sharp in his 90s," he says of the then-Glendale, Calif.-based studio owner for the two Montalba recordings on the Hit Thing CD, "and he remembered Robert fondly and clearly."

Old-time relijun

Whatever the case, LaVey would probably be pleased to see an album like Pipe Organ Favorites and Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion getting some respectful attention – even though he wouldn't be too happy with daughter Zeena's derogatory liner notes. By all accounts, he disdained modern pop culture for its cookie-cutter aspects, and his aesthetic, much like his beloved Tiny Tim, represented a bygone era of entertainment. According to Karla, this variety show-circus sensibility even crept into some of the rituals and festivities that took place at the California Street house.

"If people could do something entertaining," Karla explains, "they'd get up there and do it – even if it was kind of silly." She says reviving this tradition is the point of the annual "Black Christmas" shows she organizes – "to show people [the First Satanic Church is] not some big evil thing." She also sees parallels to this tradition in some Day-Glo and costumed local artists including noise duo Rubber O Cement (whom she has guested with) and organ-grinders Spiders Compass. (The Montalba-worthy pseudonyms and invented personas of so many of these performers are a convenient tie-in as well.) Bonban's "Organ Spectacular" shows fit into a similar niche of oddball entertainment for our jaded, post-Ringling Bros. era, one that dovetails with the outlook of the now not-so-evil-seeming LaVey. "He was into fun. He gravitated toward fun, interesting, paranormal, esoteric stuff – you know, just like you, or anybody with half a brain who wants to look further than the drudgery of standard living." Amen to that.