In Heaven Everything is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre [Hardcover]

Josh Frank (Author), Charlie Buckholtz (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2008

On March 3, 1983, Peter Ivers was found bludgeoned to death in his loft in downtown Los Angeles, ending a short-lived but essential pop cultural moment that has been all but lost to history. For the two years leading up to his murder, Ivers had hosted the underground but increasingly popular LA-based music and sketch-comedy cable show New Wave Theatre.

The late '70s through early '80s was an explosive time for pop culture: Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon were leading a comedy renaissance, while punk rock and new wave were turning the music world on its head. New Wave Theatre brought together for the first time comedians-turned-Hollywood players like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Harold Ramis with West Coast punk rockers Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, Fear, and others, thus transforming music and comedy forever. The show was a jubilant, chaotic punk-experimental-comedy cabaret, and Ivers was its charismatic leader and muse. He was, in fact, the only person with the vision, the generosity of spirit, and the myriad of talented friends to bring together these two very different but equally influential worlds, and with his death the improbable and electric union of punk and comedy came to an end.

The magnetic, impishly brilliant Ivers was a respected musician and composer (in addition to several albums, he wrote the music for the centerpiece song of David Lynch's cult classic Eraserhead) whose sublime and bizarre creativity was evident in everything he did. He was surrounded by people who loved him, many of them luminaries: his best friend from his Harvard days was Doug Kenney, founder of National Lampoon; he was also close to Harold Ramis and John Belushi. Upon his death, Ivers was just beginning to get mainstream recognition.

In Heaven Everything Is Fine is the first book to explore both the fertile, gritty scene that began and ended with New Wave Theatre and the life and death of its guiding spirit. Josh Frank, author of Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies, interviewed hundreds of people from Ivers's circle, including Jello Biafra, Stockard Channing, and David Lynch, and we hear in their own words about Ivers and the marvelous world he inhabited. He also spoke with the Los Angeles Police Department about Ivers's still-unsolved murder, and, as a result of his research, the Cold Case Unit has reopened the investigation. In Heaven Everything Is Fine is a riveting account of a gifted artist, his tragic death, and a little-known yet crucial chapter in American pop history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On March 3, 1983, Peter Ivers was found murdered in his loft on skid row in L.A. When Ivers died, much of the history of his experimental television show, New Wave Theatre, went with him. In this frustrating book that is part detective story and part pop history, screenwriter and producer Franks awkwardly weaves interviews with Ivers's many friends and associates—from Harold and Anne Ramis to Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky & Hutch)—into his chronicle of Ivers's life. Franks recreates the thriving theater and music scene in New York and L.A. in the late 1970s and early 1980s as he traces Ivers's move from the Harvard Lampoon to his work with David Lynch. Ivers's most brilliant moment came with the creation of New Wave Theatre, which brought together comedy and punk music in a new way, featuring acts from the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks alongside Beverly D'Angelo and John Belushi. Because it tries to cover so much material—Ivers's unsolved murder, the history of New Wave Theatre—it fails to cover any of it effectively; nevertheless, it provides a new look into a now mostly forgotten moment of pop culture. (Aug.) ""
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From Booklist

Peter Ivers never quite entered the pop-cultural mainstream, though he influenced such contemporaries and friends who did as National Lampoon cofounder Doug Kenney, John Belushi, and David Lynch, who called on Ivers to write “In Heaven (The Lady in the Radiator Song)” for his reputation-making cult-movie Eraserhead. Ivers presaged punk rock with his Peter Peter Ivers Band (later just the Peter Ivers Band), formed after drifting out of the fatally overhyped late-1960s rock group Beacon Street Union. He is probably best remembered as host of New Wave Theatre, a 1980s TV venture that progressed from an L.A.-based UHF channel to the USA cable network. On it he delivered zany stream-of-consciousness raps before and after clips of then-cutting-edge acts like Dead Kennedys and Circle Jerks. Proceeding via snippets from interviews with the likes of Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, Frank and Buckholtz describe Ivers’ appeal and try to illuminate his mysterious bludgeoning death in 1983, a murder still unsolved. An appreciative look at a figure peripheral to a clutch of now-aging major stars. --Mike Tribby

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416551204
• ISBN-13: 978-1416551201
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,095,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

'Josh Frank is a Writer, Producer, Director and Composer. He has penned numerous Plays (including an authorized adaptation of Werner Hergoz's 'Stroszek') Screenplays (including an adaptation of Mark Vonnegut's The Eden Express') and Musicals (including The Jonathan Richman Musical). He is also the Author of 'Fool The World', the definitive Oral History of the band the Pixies (St. Martins Press USA/Virgin Books U.K.)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial Connexion, November 4, 2008

By 

KIDrorschach (InterMountain West) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Heaven Everything is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre (Hardcover)

As the 1960s faded into the 1970s--and the war dragged on--our search to find things which really mattered became of utmost importance. Even though we did not realize it way back (when our route to current information was slow and inconsistent) many of these 'things which really mattered' (from wild'n'novative music through The National Lampoon through Saturday Night Live through Eraserhead to New Wave Theatre) were hinged upon Peter Ivers. His was the connexion shared by all these things.

Ivers was an original--instigating critical collaborations until his potential was stifled by a fatal bludgeoning in 1983. Josh Frank has meticulously researched the life and times of Peter Ivers and has composed a portrait of the artist which is vibrant with information, painstaking in its re-creations, beautiful through memories and heartbreaking with premature endings. Throughout, Josh Frank's episodic technique--followed by interview clips and 'casebook studies'--flesh out the person who was Ivers...an artist whose importance has largely been underestimated.

Hopefully--with the publishing of 'In Heaven Everything Is Fine'--Peter Ivers' work will gain renewed appreciation...and Josh Frank's work will achieve the recognition it deserves.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Touching and evocative..., September 1, 2009

By 

Ferrara Brain Pan (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Heaven Everything is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre (Hardcover)

I was pleased to learn that someone had written a book about the life of Peter Ivers, and even more pleased when I got around to reading it this past weekend. I was one of the few music fans who picked up on his 1970s LP releases and enjoyed his quirky, inventive musical sensibility. When I saw Eraserhead at its San Diego theatrical premiere in 1977 or '78, I instantly recognized his voice the first time I saw The Lady In The Radiator open her mouth to sing "In Heaven." And I remember being surprised to see him host New Wave Theater on Night Flight back in the early '80s. But I never knew much about the guy, and the fact he'd died such an awful and mysterious death made me want to know his story.

The author has done an excellent job researching his subject and I'd give the book five stars on that count. Speaking to scores of friends and associates from throughout Peter's adult life and career (there is scant attention paid to his childhood, though enough to form the basis of an understanding of what drove and challenged him as an artist and a man), this is a well fleshed out story. Moreover, the book is well crafted and structured, written in a prose that is clear, expressive and insightful. Five stars again. So often, when a famous pop (or cult) musician is given a posthumous biographical treatment in book form, one finds that the author is a longtime fan with a passionate appreciation of the artist's music, but little sense of objectivity and no gift for writing. Josh Frank and his co-author have written a book that is a touching and compelling read, which I had trouble putting down over the course of the two or three days I was engrossed in reading it. This is as much (or more so) a portrait of Peter the friend and human being as it is of Peter the musician and creative artist. The reader gets a strong sense of the atmosphere Peter lived in, whether it was the community of driven and gifted literati and creative types at Harvard University in the mid-1960s, laid-back Laurel Canyon living with hip musicians in the 70s, or the dark underbelly of LA in the 80s where Peter met his tragic demise. And this is a very suspenseful and gripping murder mystery, which the reader is left to solve. The rainy Los Angeles day on which Ivers' body was discovered left me with a sick, sad feeling, as I tossed around probable murder theories and suspects in my head and finished reading the book.

While the book is well put together and organized, there are a few things I would have liked to make it more complete. Though Josh Frank came up with a creative novelistic structure that works well in terms of presenting Ivers' life, choosing to explore personal relationships in favor of giving a detailed exposition of the events of his career, it would have been nice to include a biographical timeline section. The chapters in the book are sketchy when it comes to pinpointing the rough dates and time frames during which things happened. Nowhere in the book does it even give the fact that Peter was born in 1946 (surely any biography ought to give the year and date of birth of its subject, even if it doesn't play a major role in the narrative focus). Another drawback is that not enough effort is spent in putting Ivers' music into context and exploring how it developed over the years: from his bizarrely ingenious record debut in 1969 to his equally underappreciated 1974 Terminal Love album to the rather tawdry commercial efforts of his later life. I wish he'd given more time to interviewing some of the musicians who played with Peter on those few albums, including giving details such as names of players, session dates, etc (music fans like to know this kind of stuff). I also couldn't help noticing that no mention was made of Laurel Near, the famous Lady In The Radiator of Eraserhead who lip-synched Peter's most well-known song.

Still, it is a very worthwhile read. The stuff toward the end dealing with David Jove makes for some pretty creepy material, and you can see why some people compared that guy to Charles Manson (and why many suspected him of bearing some responsibility for Ivers' death).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling biography even if you're not familiar with Ivers' work, October 25, 2008

By 

Dale Gardner (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Heaven Everything is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre (Hardcover)

"In Heaven..." is a fascinating read as an in-depth biography of Peter Ivers, but it also makes for compelling murder mystery. Plus you get a unique look at those whose paths he crossed, including the National Lampoon founders, the early LA punk scene, David Lynch, Devo, and a seemingly endless and unrelated group of people from several different artistic communities and eras.

The book alternates between the story of Peter's life and career and the murder investigation, until the two stories sadly become one. Throughout the book you really get a sense of Peter's unbridled enthusiasm for life and his inspiring passion for all things creative. By the end of the book you'll understand why Peter touched so many people's lives so deeply.

Even if you only know him for his records, as the host of New Wave Theater, or as the guy that wrote the song from Eraserhead, the story is captivating enough for anyone with an interest in the arts to make this book reading.