Mazzeo

It was '75. Moved to Malibu. The Band was just down the road from where we were.

they had bought Elvis Presley's old place, Rancho Shangri la. Actually Presley

owned it, Johnny Carson owned it after Presley. All these famous people owned

this Rancho Shangri la and it was a really big old house on top of a hill and it had a

little corral down on the bottom when you first went in the road there's a little horse corral there, where they filmed Mr Ed.

So I was talking about Rancho Shangrilla. And Neil and i were living down the road

at Broadbeach road on a street called Sea Leaval Drive. It was this old Cape Cod

cottage, right on the beach at the end of Sea Level Drive so there was no one on right

side of us except sand dunes. Except down on the right side of us, about a quarter

mile, was Carol King and then next to her was Cheech, from Cheech and Chong.

On the beach in Malibu. It was a really cool house. Neill saw it when he was

recording the Zuma album. It wasnt' called Zuma in those days but he dreams of

making this album and it was actually up on BirdView Drive right above Zuma Beach

and he'd go down and he saw this house, right? And it's just this Cape Cod, just

romantic little Cape Cod cottage right at the end of the road all covered in red

Bouganvilla. it was two lots. The first lot was just a brick patio area so we had this

big social area and then this cute little two-bedroom Cape Cod cottage that

Catherine Ross lived in. So he started asking around the neighbors, who is it?

whoose there? He goes, "Oh ah Catherine lives there." He goes, "I wonder if she

would ever sell it?" He said, "Oh, no,no. She'd never sell, no way."

Turned out she didn't own it. She was just leasing. So Neil told his lawyers about it

in LA, big powerful lawyers, they checked. they found the property owner and they

said, "They have a client who is interested in your house." And he just low-balled this

really ridiculous price, when you consider $285,000 for it. This was like 1974-75. The

guy must have lived in Kansas or something. He said, "Yeah, sure!" he could have

probably bought it for sixty grand, and he said, "Yeah, sure, no problem." So Neil

bought it.

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