Replies

STEVE ALLEN PART 4

TWO OF STEVE ALLEN’S SONS

*texokie puts her cell phone back in her pocket and shivers. She sighs and puts on the light sweater. Mother of Dragons was right to caution her about the cold in the warrens. There is a small pocket of debris that needs to be removed before she can get to the next big area of digging. She gamely gets out one of the trowels she borrowed from TXnMA and begins scraping away at the small obstruction in front of her*

We learned that Gerald Heard had introduced Steve Allen to LSD. In the process of digging, the clever people at duckduckgo brought up another article with the name, Steve Allen Jr.

In this story, we find out that one of Steve Allen Sr.’s sons, Jr.’s brother, also had partaken of LSD. Jr. is clear that it is his opinion that there was not a good outcome from it. Perhaps Jr. really does have some kind of reason to be the unhappy soul we saw from his tweets examined previously. From this documentation, indications seem to be that Allen Sr. did not administer LSD to his son, but that the son sought it out and experienced it for himself.

“Steve Allen’s Son Brian Saw God on An Acid Trip: It Turned Him into Logic Israel”

https://people.com/archive/steve-allens-son-brian-saw-god-on-an-acid-trip-it-turned-him-into-logic-israel-vol-11-no-13/

In this piece by Cheryl McCall, April 2, 1979, we are informed that Brian Allen, Steve Allen’s son, is an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon in Seattle.

“He has been reborn under the name Logic Israel. He no longer reckons his age in years (“Our spirits have existed since the Creation”), and has become a humorless refugee from conventional values. Heeding the teachings of his mentor, Love Israel (né Paul Erdman), he does not smoke or eat meat, own any clocks, watches or mirrors, read magazines or books (except the Bible), practice birth control or indulge in unauthorized sexual relationships.

Logic’s family is both troubled and bewildered by his transformation. “What he has done is a rejection of all of us,” says his brother, Steve Allen Jr., 34, now a doctor in Elmira, N.Y. “Maybe we weren’t helping him enough.” (Steve Jr. adds: “We both stood in our father’s shadow, and it was a long one to climb away from because he was so good at so many things.”)

Brian, he says, gave little warning of his alienation. A cheerleader and a B-plus student in high school, he played off-key guitar and hung out with his brother. “My parents were separated when I was 6 and he was 3,” Steve Jr. recalls, “so we grew up away from show business, in the San Fernando Valley. My mother remarried a couple of times, and we visited my dad during the summers. When Brian finished high school, he decided to join the service. But that was the start of the Vietnam war, so my father and I talked him into college.”

Brian enrolled at little Yampa Valley College in Colorado but later transferred to California State at Hayward before dropping out of school and into Haight-Ashbury. There he encountered Erdman, a former real estate salesman. The two dropped acid together and then, to hear them tell it, saw God. “Our separation was over,” says Logic, recalling the moment. “We had conquered fear of each other, conquered death. We felt joy and celebration.”

He and Erdman rented a house and began to spread the word of their vision. Then, with the draft closing in, Brian decided to go back to school. “I made a real effort and I did good, but I didn’t feel good about it,” he says. He earned his degree and spent a year as a construction worker, but couldn’t reconcile his way of life with his values. “I felt I had been touched by God, but I didn’t know what to do,” he explains. “I couldn’t figure out how to live an unselfish life. I got down to eating just fruits and nuts, but then I thought, ‘What right do I have to eat a plant?’ And no matter what I did, I couldn’t please anybody—my father, my brother, my boss or my friends. Finally I just had to take off.” Brian went to Seattle to join Erdman in the sect.

Steve Jr. states that the group wanted those of Brian’s possessions “they could hock for cash.” Later, according to Jr., following two deaths in the commune from sniffing, supposedly in a religious ceremony, Steve Allen Sr. spent several days with them in Seattle, “and was convinced that people [in the community leadership] saw it [sniffing toluene] as a mistake,” says Steve Jr. “He felt that Brian was all right and reasonably sane.” Logic says the sniffing has been abandoned and the only drug used is marijuana, in moderation.”

Snip

According to the author, the community’s women are relegated to housekeeping chores, but apparently sleeping around is frowned on. The church leader must give approval as to who are to be mates. Logic states,
“Marriage is out of the question, he says, “because we are all married to each other.” The church leader, Love, says, “We’re building sex stereotypes here, making sure that ladies are ladies and men are men,” says Love. “We’ve eliminated the need for women’s liberation by being righteous with each other.”

Snip

“Logic’s mate, Simplicity, seems as dedicated to the church as he is and answers no questions about her life before joining. “It’s a point of honor that nobody here is going to dig into anyone’s past,” explains Logic. “We don’t try to figure you out by what you used to be because that’s not who you are anymore.”

“Such a cutting of all bonds with the past, Steve Allen Jr. realizes, is more than a matter of ritual—it is his brother’s way of saying goodbye. “I’m still upset,” says Allen, “partly because I wonder what he’s doing to himself, and partly because I’m one of the folks he left behind. He was a good friend—and it’s always sad to lose a friend.”

In another story about the organization Brian/Logic participated in, it states that Logic left the group:

“In July of 1983, some of the elders decided to express their concerns to Love in a letter. This letter stated that those who were writing felt that Love had alienated himself from the rest of Family members spiritually, socially, and economically. Upon reading the letter, Love gave members two options: accept his authority or leave the community. Logic and Strength chose to depart the community.”

*texokie dries and puts away TXnMA’s trowel, and contemplates the very difficult journeys made by different members of the Steve Allen family, who had so many forces and influences to deal with during those years, as, indeed, did many families in those turbulent times. Given the pressures, it is amazing what the man accomplished. She wonders what finally happened to Brian/Logic after he left the commune - but that is a dirt pile for another day’s dig. Also, what was the fermentation - or at least a locus of it causing such a breaking of social norms and family ties? She picks up the shovel and moves to the concern that attracted her attention earlier: Laurel Canyon. She sees a small pool and digs in her backpack for her waders*