Mill Valley Oral History Program A collaboration between the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Public Library PAUL LIBERATORE An Oral History Interview Conducted by Debra Schwartz in 2017 © 2017 by the Mill Valley Public Library TITLE: Oral History of Paul Liberatore INTERVIEWER: Debra Schwartz DESCRIPTION: Transcript, 44 pages INTERVIEW DATE: September 5th, 2017 In this oral history, Paul Liberatore recounts his life as a journalist, rock ‘n’ roll writer, and participant-observer in the Marin County music scene over the course of several decades. Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1945, Paul moved to Southern California with his mother and stepfather in the early 1950s, and grew up in Santa Clarita. After graduating from San Diego State University, Paul landed his first newspaper job with the San Diego Union-Tribune. In 1972, Paul moved with his then wife and children up to Marin, and began working for the Marin Independent Journal. He was originally assigned to the Mill Valley Bureau, from which he covered Southern and West Marin. Paul recounts his journalism career over the ensuing decades, which took him to the San Francisco Chronicle for a period, before he returned to the IJ, where he was still working at the time this oral history was recorded. Paul discusses how he became a rock journalist and recalls the various musicians he has written about and — as a guitar player and singer in his own right — played with over the years, evoking the rich history of rock music in Marin County. In 2017, Paul was involved in various events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, including a talk and musical performance sponsored by the Mill Valley Historical Society and held at the Library as well as a concert he produced with Jimmy Dillon at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco. After recalling some of the many famous songs that were written in Mill Valley and Marin County, Paul attests to the importance of preserving Marin’s musical history, a cultural project to which his oral history makes a valuable contribution. © All materials copyright Mill Valley Public Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Mill Valley Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Lucretia Little History Room Mill Valley Public Library 375 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 ii Oral History of Paul Liberatore Index Bell, Linda (ex-wife)…p.10 Stayner kidnapping…p.17-20 Cacciatore, James (brother)…p.3 Songs written in Marin County…p.40- Cacciatore, Margaret (mother)…p.2 41 Cacciatore, Rocco G. (stepfather)…p.2 Sterling, Robert…p.38 Caen, Herb…p.22 Summer of Love anniversary…p.32-35 California Farm Workers Strike…p.8 Sweetwater…p.43 Champlin, Bill…p.28-29 Vietnam Draft…p.5 Cipollina, John…p.27 Committee, The…p.13 Corea, Kathy Sanchez (sister)…p.3 Delaplane, Stanton…p.22 Dillon, Jimmy…p.27, 32-33 Duncan, Gary…p.27 Fariña, Mimi…p.13-17, 43 Bread and Roses…p.14-17 Illness…p.16 Fariña, Richard…p.13 Fierro, Martin…p.27 Geography of Hope…p.39 Goldstein, Sydney…p.34 Hinckle, Warren…p.22 Hoppe, Art…p.22 John Birch Society…p.8 Kent State shootings…p.7 Liberatore, Leslie (daughter)…p.6 Liberatore Sr., Paul (father)…p.1 Lobby Lounge…p.38 Marin County Fair…p.35 Marin Independent Journal…p.10, 26 Strike…p.10-11, 31 McCabe, Charles…p.22 Music scene…p.26-27 Nourse Theater…p.34-35 Patterson, Jeanie…p.43 Peterson, Karen (ex-wife)…p.15 Record Plant…p.35 Road to Hell, The…p.25 San Diego State University…p.5 San Diego Union Tribune…p.6 San Francisco Chronicle…p.17-19, 22 San Pedro News Pilot…p.7-9 Santa Clarita…p.4 iii Oral History of Paul Liberatore September 5th, 2017 Editor’s note: This transcript has been reviewed by Paul Liberatore, who made minor corrections and clarifications to the original. 0:00:00 Debra Schwartz: Today is September 5th, 2017. My name is Debra Schwartz, and I’m sitting here on behalf of the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Library and conducting an oral history with rock writer, musician, and all-around community person, Paul Liberatore. Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me and talk. We are sitting in the IJ offices right now at 4000 Civic Center — 0:00:32 Paul Liberatore: Drive. 0:00:33 Debra Schwartz: Drive. And these are offices in — 0:00:37 Paul Liberatore: San Rafael. 0:00:37 Debra Schwartz: In San Rafael. And so, it’s very nice to be in your work world. I know that so many people know you from your work, but before we begin, I’d love to learn a little bit about your family history, a little context to understand what brought you to Marin, and how long you’ve been here. Let’s start where you were born. 0:01:03 Paul Liberatore: I was born in Yonkers, New York in June 1945, and my biological father, who is a senior, Paul Liberatore Sr., died a month after I was born. He was a Marine, he was in the South Pacific, and he contracted cancer towards the end of the war, of all things. And they brought him back and he died at the naval hospital, I think, in Brooklyn. 0:01:35 Debra Schwartz: Oh my. 0:01:36 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, in July 1945. I was a month old. 0:01:38 Debra Schwartz: And how old was he? 0:01:40 Paul Liberatore: 27 years old. So I never knew my biological father. And my mother, several years later, three or four years later, remarried my biological father’s best friend. They grew up together in this Italian neighborhood in Yonkers, and he was in the Army, my father was in the Marines. After the war, my mother remarried him and we moved to Southern California. I grew up primarily in Santa Clarita Valley, which is about 30 miles northwest of LA. 0:02:18 Debra Schwartz: And your mother’s name? 0:02:20 Paul Liberatore: My mother’s name is Margaret Cacciatore, C-A-C-C-I-A-T- O-R-E. 1 0:02:27 Debra Schwartz: Wait. 0:02:28 Paul Liberatore: And my stepfather’s name was Rocco G. Cacciatore. Italian names there. 0:02:34 Debra Schwartz: Liberatore. 0:02:35 Paul Liberatore: Liberatore and Cacciatore. 0:02:36 Debra Schwartz: And Cacciatore. From the same region? 0:02:38 Paul Liberatore: They were in the same city, Yonkers, New York, right? They were first generation. Their parents were from Italy. Some of my father’s—my biological father’s—sisters and brothers were born in Italy actually. But he wasn’t. 0:02:56 Debra Schwartz: What part of Italy? 0:02:58 Paul Liberatore: They’re from — where are they from? I’ll have to think. My mother’s from Bari, but my father’s from — can’t recall at the moment, because I’ve only learned this fairly recently, so I don’t know. 0:03:12 Debra Schwartz: Well, that’s interesting. Just that the similarity of the name is a little — 0:03:17 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, well you know, Italian kids. They grew up together. They were friends. They were on the same football team in high school. I have a picture of both my fathers, my stepfather and my biological father, playing together. You can see them both tackling some guy. So they were pals. 0:03:33 Debra Schwartz: Do you suppose that — 0:03:34 Paul Liberatore: And they both dated my mother at the same time, so — 0:03:36 Debra Schwartz: Oh, wait. What? 0:03:37 Paul Liberatore: They both dated my mother. They were all friends and ran around with the same crowd. They always wondered which one my mother would marry and she ended up marrying them both. [chuckles] 0:03:47 Debra Schwartz: I wonder if that helped him to be more open, more available to you, knowing that it was his dear friend’s son. 0:03:54 Paul Liberatore: Who knows? I mean he had two other kids. I have a brother, actually, and a sister. Both live here in Marin County. 2 0:04:00 Debra Schwartz: And their names? 0:04:01 Paul Liberatore: James Cacciatore. He’s a photographer and sometimes works for the IJ. So he and I do stories together often, you know. We get paired to go out and do stories, which is really cool. And I have a sister who lives out in Bolinas — Cathy Sanchez Corea, her name is. And they’re kind of an old Marin family. 0:04:20 Debra Schwartz: And that’s from the stepfather? 0:04:24 Paul Liberatore: Yeah, they’re my half-brother and half-sister. 0:04:25 Debra Schwartz: So you’re the elder brother. 0:04:26 Paul Liberatore: They’re my half-brother and half-sister. Yeah, I’m the eldest. 0:04:29 Debra Schwartz: The elder, wiser brother. 0:04:31 Paul Liberatore: Older and wider — wiser I mean. [laughs] 0:04:34 Debra Schwartz: So you ended up in Southern California. How old were you when you moved there? 0:04:38 Paul Liberatore: Six or seven. I was in first grade, whatever that is.