#john conte

LYLE MENENDEZ ca. 1976

“I think his discussion of the stuffed animals uh… was really quite amazing… um…”

“Well let me stop you here, it goes to a larger issue and is that his overall credibility in terms of the psychological abuse and the physical abuse and the description of the family setting?”

“Yes.”

“What was the significance of the stuffed animals in that context?”

“Well, ya know… many survivors have stuffed animals, I believe Dr. Briere… I read his testimony about that and he said that and that is true I think many survivors do. Although I’ve never actually seen that described in the literature, it’s something that people who work with survivors tend to know, may be in the literature I’m just not aware of it. But what was phenomenal about Lyle’s use of the stuffed animals is that he really… first of all he had large numbers of them and he gave them personalities and he acted out scenarios uh… with those stuffed animals, kind of issues in his life and he had personalities in the animals or gave personalities that sort of represented issues in his life… he had nasty stuffed animals and he had weaker ones and he had stronger ones and he had sort of a judge who made decisions uh, about what was going on among the stuffed animals and in a sense that I’ve never… in a way that I’ve never heard from another victim he in a way was doing play therapy. When we see traumatized kids we often ask them to act out with animals uh… with puppets sometimes, sometimes with a dollhouse, sometimes in sand play, their bad experiences. The difference between Lyle’s acting out his issues with his stuffed animals and play therapy is that there was no therapist there to help guide the process and so there was no therapist there to help talk about the feelings the stuffed animals had or to maybe figure out ways that the stuffed animals could work out the scenario in a different way. So his description of how important the animals were and what he did with the animals, ya know he took them when he buried the rabbit for example, some of them were there and his collecting other animals that were kind of orphaned by his brother, this is a… sort of an over involvement or an excessive use of animals for a therapeutic need. He told me for example one point that his mom had thrown a stuffed animal out and the dogs had gotten it and ripped it up and he told me that he had been able to save the hat, they’re still important to him in a way. This was a very significant thing to him. He told me that he took ‘em to high school and it was okay because he was a popular kid, although I read elsewhere, I think in the school notes that he really was kind of teased about it but they were so important to him because they had this therapeutic coping purpose to him… that description was wholly believable to me and I don’t think a non victim would of known that therapeutic use and I talked to Stacy Feldman, his first girlfriend on my trip to New Jersey and she described, “oh yeah the animals.” So there’s confirmation just about how important these were in his life. So that’s one of a number of factors I think that I found to be important in sort of assessing his overall credibility.”

New York Dolls Live from Royal Festival Hall, 2004 2004 Attack ————————————————— Tracks: 01. Looking for a Kiss 02. Puss ‘n’ Boots 03. Subway Train 04. Bad Girl 05. You Can’t Put Your Arms around a Memory 06. Lonely Planet Boy 07. Private World 08. Vietnamese Baby 09. Dialogue 10. Frankenstein 11. Babylon 12. Dialogue 13. Trash 14. Jet Boy 15. Personality Crisis —————————————————

John Conte

Steve Conte

David Johansen

Brian Koonin

Gary Powell 

Sylvain Sylvain

The Seattle punk band The Living are having their debut album released this week...a full 39 years after they recorded it. Years and years before Seattle was on the map for grunge and alt-rock, the city had quite a punk scene in the early 80s. The Living featured vocalist John Conte, bassist Todd Fleischman, drummer Greg Gilmore and 17-year old guitarist Duff McKagan. The band’s 1982 recording The Living: 1982 is finally being released on Loosegroove Records, the label run by Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Brad’s Regan Hagar.

album cover

Duff McKagan has always been a fascinating musical figure in that he has had one foot in the alt-rock world from his Seattle roots in the early 80s and one foot in the metal world from the L.A. Sunset scene a few years later when he co-founded Guns N’ Roses. Prior to The Living, McKagan had already been in Seattle bands like Vains and Fastbacks. When he formed The Living, he penned several original songs for the band. During the short time they were together, they managed to open for bands like Husker Du and D.O.A. When you listen to The Living: 1982, you can hear a serious Germs and Clash influence. It is a burst of raw energetic fast punk rock, that even non-punk fans would appreciate and bop along to. The band recorded over the course of two sessions a few weeks apart. Gilmore says “For me, joining that band was the beginning of my whole life in Seattle, professionally and otherwise.”

The Living performing live in 1982

The band parted ways around 1982. Both McKagan and Gilmore, then, joined 10 Minute Warning. In 1984, both of them left Seattle for Los Angeles. McKagan joined GNR and is now one of the most famous bassist of all-time. For a great profile of McKagan check out the 2016 documentary It’s So Easy and Other Lies (read my interview with the doc director Christopher Duddy here). Gilmore moved back to Seattle and joined the now-legendary Seattle band Mother Love Bone (read my review of their 2016 compilation On Earth As It Is - The Complete Works). After the death of MLB singer Andrew Wood, they broke up. MLB’s guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament went on to form Pearl Jam. MLB have actually had partial reunions in 2010 and 2018.

The Living burst out of the basement in 1982

A few years ago, Gilmore met with his old bandmate Gossard and mentioned the recordings of The Living he had and wanted to release in some way (after a few years of talks with other labels that didn’t go anywhere). Gossard fully supported the recordings finally getting released. Gilmore says “I sent [Stone] some files, he loved it. He hooked us up with Mark Arm at Sub Pop.” After not hearing back from Sub Pop, Gossard reached out to Gilmore and said he and Hagar were interested. In 2020, Gossard and Hagar (who incidentally was the drummer for MLB before Gilmore) revived their indie label Loosegroove Records, which they ran in the 90s. Gossard says “It doesn’t matter what year this music was recorded cause it is undeniable...but the fact that Duff, Greg, Todd, and John created these fully realized songs in 1982 gives credence to the idea that this band, The Living, are ground zero for the Seattle sound.” Gilmore says “It turns out of all the options, Loosegroove is the best of all of them. Working with Stone and Regan is really great!”  What’s cool about this release is that there’s actually been very little information or recordings out there about The Living prior to this release. Gilmore says “For me I always just loved the recordings. It was a great memory and a great moment, from a personal perspective. But I had not thought of what it might mean in the grand scheme, what its historical significance might be. But now I see it could be important to some people in that way.” Singer John Conte says “It is historic because we are very central to a lot of what happened after we disbanded. It is a chance to have the story finally added and noted to Seattle history. l have never been so honored in all my life. This thing has come full circle and to be so well taken care of by LooseGroove Records. Together we are setting the record (the event) straight and letting the story be told.”

The Living (look how young Duff, on far, left is!)

When asked if he still stays in touch with his bandmates Conte says “Yes we have always remained in contact but it was more like when there were important shows to attend or a causal call just checking in.” 

The Living

With this release, could there be a reunion of The Living? Conte says “There sure should be. I understand Duff has to finish a GnR tour. I know the demand has already started and I know that people really want it to happen. I think it would be tons of fun. I think it would be good for Seattle Rock History. All I know is that the demand is quite high so I guess we have to wait and see.”

For info on The Living: 1982: https://orcd.co/theliving1982

“Dr. Conte, based on the information you have about Lyle Menendez and his relationship with his parents, do you believe that he hated them?”

“No I don’t think he did.”

“Did you see any evidence of hatred toward either of his parents in any of the material that you reviewed?”

“No.”

“Did you see any evidence of anger?”

“No.”

“He has described acts of physical and sexual abuse and of psychological maltreatment, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And have you evaluated other individuals who have experienced that type of trauma in their life?”

“Yes.”

“Would you expect that someone would be angry as a result of it? Is that always the result?”

“It’s not always the result, in fact, especially for younger people is a rare result.”

“Why is that?”

“Well it has to do with the abuse taking place in the context of a family, it has to do with the child’s need to have a parent, it has to do with the child being afraid to express anger, it has to do with the child trying desperately to conform to the parent’s expectation, the anger we see in survivors, adult survivors tends to be in adults who are considerably older, who have in fact broken away from the family, have reached some level of independence and are in the stage of beginning to process the experience that they have had. Ya know… so generally I would say you don’t see high levels of anger and hatred in younger victims, on occasion you do but generally you don’t.”

“Did you to the contrary see evidence that he loved his parents?”

“Yes.”

“And what evidence did you have of that?”

“Well I think most significant is his positive efforts… his positive comments about his parents, I think his efforts to protect them even during the evaluation and during the… his testimony when he’s telling the jury about the bad things there still was an effort to protect them.”

“What do you mean by an effort to protect them?”

“I think Lyle has a tendency which I noted in my contact with him and in the testimony that I saw uh… to minimize the significance of what was done to him, to try to excuse what was done to him uh… I think that effort to protect is a kind of love for his parents.”

“Have you seen in other victims an effort to protect their parents?”

“Yes.”

“Why does that occur?”

“Well again for the reasons I mentioned that parents are all important to development uh… to reject them even when they’re bad and horrible is to suffer a loss that’s far greater than many young people are willing or able to bare, there is always the hope that things will turn around, that they will stop being the way they were, that they’ll just love you.”

“But in this case, his parents are dead, so they’re not going to… things aren’t going to turn around. Why would he want to protect their memory?”

“Well, that’s an incredibly complex question, I think for some of the following reasons, first of all Lyle is an untreated victim of child abuse, so he has very little awareness about the full impact of his life experience on him and until he is older and hopefully in therapy I don’t think he’ll begin to develop that kind of understanding and so in the same way he protected them when they were alive, he didn’t tell… he kept the secret, I think he’s continuing to do that in my contact with him and in his testimony that I saw in a way. Ya know, it’s the sort of ultimate problem, to bare what was done and the level of harm and sickness that was in that family is to do an incredibly strong and revealing thing and it’s difficult. So he’s been trained all his life not to reveal and uh… he’s been trained all his life to keep the secret and protect and not tell people and he’s done it, umm… somewhat reluctantly, he’s done it um.. but I don’t… I still think he’s kind of trying to hold back and protect.”

“Battered women are afraid of being in confined spaces with their husbands and you related that testimony in regards to the boat, the fishing trip on Saturday night, do you remember your testimony in that regard?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, when a woman is alone in a confined space such as her home with a husband, she’s alone with him correct?”

“Yes.”

“They’re not two shipmates and a girlfriend present, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And in most cases that home is the site of prior batterings?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, a ship where you’ve never been before certainly cannot be construed as the site of prior beatings.”

“No, but if your entire life experience has given you the belief that your parents are all powerful, that they can kill you, that they can arrange with others to kill you, then being on a boat where you think that the crew and the captain may be in league with your father that hardly a secure place to be.”

“Well that’s assuming you were told the truth by Lyle Menendez about what he thought about the boat, correct?”

“Well of course it is. But I… in every way that is possible to me, over all the time that I have been with this young man I believe that he is essentially truthful in the critical factors. Now no human being can report every event that they ever had and he is an untreated victim and so he may in some ways behave as an untreated victim, but I find nothing that suggests that he was dishonest with me and was not trying to tell me as the best he could about his life experiences and about the week before his parents died.”

••••

“But in evaluating Lyle Menendez in terms of his credibility you looked at certain symptoms to see if they were corroborative of a pattern of abuse.”

“That’s correct.”

“So symptomatology was important?”

“Well not symptomatology as is used in that study which I think tended to be quite gross symptoms such as psychosis…”

“People reported they were hearing things, correct?”

“Right, right.”

“Alright, and the study seemed to show that people could be trained to make those reports in order to gain admission into psychiatric institutions.”

“Right, on very gross symptoms such as hearing voices but I’m talking about in my interaction with Lyle over all the hours and all the months are much more subtle kinds of processies, which I number one, don’t think you could train another person to do, um, and uh… two I don’t think you could train someone to do it in a believable way.”

“Have you ever diagnosed anyone as malingering?”

“Um… I’ve never given the diagnosis of malingering, I have suggested that victims have exaggerated the level of trauma and the level of symptomatology resulting from abuse, but those I think are exaggerations…”

“Versus total outright fabrications?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve never decided that someone was outright lying to you and fabricating things…”

“Oh I have sure. I’ve done evaluations of children and adults who claim abuse where I think abuse did not take place.”

“Now in your evaluation of Lyle Menendez did you consider the 911 tape recording that he made, did you listen to it?”

“Yes.”

“And you were aware of the fact that on that tape he was lying to the police?”

“Yes.”

“And you were aware on that tape he was conveying information to the police to mislead?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, you’re aware of the fact that shortly after being taken to the Beverly Hills police department on the morning of the 21st of august he again lied to the police?”

“Yes.”

“Now, it is not uncommon for someone caught in a crime to lie about their participation in the crime, is it?”

“I don’t think it’s uncommon for people who are caught in a crime and I don’t think its uncommon for people who are in a highly emotional state to be inaccurate in the information that they provide. I think that you really in this case have two different events that you’re trying to understand, you have the events leading up to Lyle’s parents deaths and then you have the post event activities. I don’t find that… what you’re calling the lies and the misstatements that I think take place largely in a state of great fear and confusion and anxiety in which the individual understandable might be trying to save themselves, I don’t think those are all that helpful in understanding pre-death events.”

“What about the fact that he lied to reporters who interviewed him? Did you consider that at all interesting in your evaluation of him?”

“Well again it is post event behavior.”

“But it’s behavior that occurred some period of time after the events which he says caused him to kill his parents.”

“Yes.”

“Ok and in talking to the reporters a month after the crime, he’s not acting under the same emotional state as he would have been during the 911 call.”

“No but I think he may well have been acting, in fact I think he was acting in a sense out of grief, out of confusion try to figure out how to live post this time, I think uh.. perhaps trying to get some kind of a life after the end of his life that he had known it.”

LYLE MENENDEZ in front of Chuck’s Spring Street Café, the restaurant he purchased in the fall of 1989.

“And did you consider hiring limousines and bodyguards to be part of the grief response?”

“Grief is a confusing time and it’s…”

“Did you consider buying a ten thousand dollar Rolex watch to be part of the grief response?”

“Oh, spending money is probably the most common thing that people do when they’re grieving and it’s a confusing time and buying suits, kind of like your dad would wear to kinda try to take on some of your dad’s power to deal with it or buying watches, I mean that’s quite consistent with grieving and confusion and trying to figure out what your life is gonna be like after this tragedy.”

“So consistent for someone who suffered the kind of abuse that you indicate Lyle Menendez has, who killed his parents, it’s consistent that four days after the crime that they would go out and buy three Rolex watches? You don’t find that at all troubling in your analysis?”

“I don’t find it at all troubling, first of all it’s consistent with how this family and this young man spent money throughout most of their lives and his life, it is an extremely confusing time there’s grieving, I mean he had the capacity that other people don’t to buy four Rolex watches or whatever but I don’t find that’s at all inconsistent and again it’s post event behavior and the principles for understanding that post event behavior may be very different than understanding the factors that lead up to that event but to go after the event and to take certain behaviors and then try to go back and describe or understand the lead up to the event I think is taking things out of sequence.”

“Dr. Conte, you said it was a confusing time for Lyle Menendez is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree that the minutes right after the shooting would have been more confusing than the shopping trip at the century city mall when the watches were purchased?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, and did you consider the fact that during this very confusing time right after the shootings he had the presence of mind to think about fingerprints on the shotgun shells?”

“I don’t know if that’s what he was thinking, I mean people after an incredibly traumatic horrible tragic event may do things that are difficult to understand. I tried to cut off my…accidentally my thumb with a saw one time and instantly put it into my mouth because that’s what you do often when you cut your finger, the problem was there was massive amounts of blood coming out. I mean people do strange things in traumatic situations.”

“But by going back and picking up the shotgun shells he eliminated fingerprints which could have led to his arrest.”

“Ma’am, Jackie Kennedy tried to get on the back of the limousine to get her husband’s skull, people do very strange things in extremely frightening traumatic events. I don’t know that he was going to get fingerprints, I mean if this was a premeditated bad thing he was doing I would assume he’d wipe the fingerprints off the shells before he put them in.”

“Do you consider collecting evidence to avoid apprehension to be something strange?”

“I don’t know that that’s what that behavior was, in the same way that I can’t understand what Mrs Kennedy was doing on the back of the limousine in that incredible horrible seconds after those shots, I don’t know that that’s what was being done, maybe he was… it was a horrible mess maybe it was an effort to clean up, it’s hard.”

“But Dr. Conte, Lyle Menendez testified that when he went out into the hallway he thought to himself I better go back and get those shells, there’s fingerprints on them. And if he’d wiped them off beforehand there was no guarantee that he would have gotten all of the fingerprints so as to leave the shells behind. Do you think that’s analogous? Jackie Kennedy grabbing the top of her husband’s head?”

“Well I think it is analogous to the kinds of… how trauma influences people’s ability to do things in traumatic events.”

“Do you think that Lyle Menendez was suffering from trauma when he returned to the scene of the crime, went through his car in the presence of a police officer and attempted to secrete further evidence which would link him to the crime, is that a traumatic response?”

“Well it depends on… I think that the behavior in that evening and the days following is a period of great confusion and great anxiety.”

“But actually a confused person might not have thought so clearly to get rid of the fingerprints on the shells and to go back to the car and get rid of the shells in the car, correct?”

“A confused person might think with great clarity on those matters or they may think with a lack of clarity on those factors.”