Paradise Lost
Once it was the seventies and we were young and beautiful, much as you are now.
To me, it still felt like the sixties. Money and drugs flowed freely, there didn’t seem to be any price for unlimited sex and I was still looking for a party. Jerry Brandt came to LA promising to supply one.
Jerry was a hotshot wheeler-dealer out of New York. He’d been a star agent at William Morris, repping the biggest names in the music business before starting The Electric Circus, a seminal NY nightclub. Now he was in L.A. looking for something new to do.
Jerry had convinced a shady millionaire, a guy named Bernie Cornfeld, to invest in a new club called the Paradise Ballroom, an orgasmic dance hall, a vision uniquely suited for L.A. … even though his friends told him no one in L.A. danced. Regardless of scoffers, Jerry believed in his dreams. If you listened to him spinning the tale it was easy to believe Paradise was headed for success. So Jerry’s fantasy was taking shape in West Hollywood, in a large old factory building, originally the home of the Mitchell Camera company.
