In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre

By Josh Frank and Charlie Buckholtz

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Free Press
• Release date: Sep 4, 2008
• ISBN: 9781416579762

Josh Frank

Josh Frank is the author (with Caryn Ganz) of Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies and a screenwriter, composer, and director.

Book preview

ACT 1

WRESTLING WITH THE CLASSICS

chapter 1

I March Forth!

Brookline, Massachusetts, 1956, 4:15 p.m.

Merle Ivers finished up some household chores and turned to her real work of the day. Peter would be home from school soon; what music should she play for him today? She flipped through her record collection. A classical symphony, a selection of jazz standards, a Broadway show? Peter seemed to love them all as much as she did—and to appreciate them with an almost uncanny level of sophistication. In addition to music, his interests at this age included soccer and an intense preoccupation with the intricacies and nuances of human relationships. He was a small boy, but naturally active and athletic, charismatic and always well liked. And he liked the girls. It didn’t hurt that he had a devastating set of what Merle had always thought of as bedroom eyes.

Merle was open and encouraging of Peter and her daughter Ricki’s interests and quirky turns of mind. She was also disciplined, at times strict, about ensuring that their minds and bodies were consistently stimulated, challenged, and engaged. She believed that children needed structure, but not because she was invested in either of her children conforming to societal norms. In a way, it was just the opposite: from her love of music she knew that structure provided the possibility for creative exploration. She felt that the right musical education would enable her children to learn this, and so she put great care into planning Peter’s musical diet, carefully selecting just the right record to feed his mind and soul on any given day.

It was this core set of values, and her close relationships with her children, that had brought Merle’s young family relatively unscathed through a set of very difficult years. Her first husband, Jordan Rose, was a doctor who had developed a rare cancer two years after Peter was born. They’d lived in Chicago until 1948, when the disease attacked his lungs and forced the family to relocate to Arizona, where his lungs could benefit from the clean dry air. He died a year later, a few months after Ricki’s birth.

Ah, Guys and Dolls, Merle thought, sliding the show tune from the stack. Perfect. She held it, reconsidered, and returned it to its sleeve. Maybe today is a better day for jazz.

A widow at twenty-six with two young children in tow, Merle moved back in with her parents in Chicago. But she was an optimist, and she disciplined herself against despair. Only a few months after Jordan’s death, she took a trip to Florida, where she met thirty-one-year-old Paul Isenstein, a former Bostonian who had retired to the bachelor’s life after some early success in the textile business. Though perhaps not jazz’s biggest fan—he played the reserved, conservative straight man to Merle’s free spirit—Isenstein was a good man. And, most important, he was instantly and fervently Merle’s biggest fan. Paul wanted to marry her immediately. And after getting to know him better, she was crazy for him, too. (The only thing she was not crazy for was his last name, which she found too provincial. She picked Ivers out of a phone book, and Paul, in his zealotry to win her over, took it on as his own.)

Nineteen-fifty—a good year for jazz, Merle thought, flipping through her records. She still had not decided what to play for Peter today.

Merle and the kids moved to Paul’s apartment in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. A few years after they married, he set up his own successful business and soon moved the family into a proper house. Like his new wife, the children’s education was always Paul’s topmost concern.

Merle could not have been happier. Within this bubble of upper-middle-class safety and comfort, her maternal instincts took flight. She sent eight-year-old Peter and six-year-old Ricki to sleepaway camp in Maine. When Peter lost interest in recreational camping, Merle insisted he find another productive use of his time. He chose a lab-science camp. Later, when he tired of that, Merle insisted he find a job. That summer, at age fourteen, he worked at the zoo.

Paul Ivers, though by nature less demonstrative than Merle and by necessity less involved in the day-to-day parenting, was nonetheless a loving, attentive, and above all dependable father throughout Peter and Ricki’s childhood years. No matter what professional responsibilities vied for his attention, he could be counted on to appear in the cheering section of any soccer game or school play.

Or, Merle mused, maybe today is a classical day? Mendelssohn or Mozart? Symphony or sonata?

Usually, choosing Peter’s music was an almost meditative time for Merle. But today her mind was not totally at ease. A few weeks ago his fifth-grade teacher had called her in for a private conference. Swearing Merle to secrecy, the teacher pleaded with her to take Peter out of the public school system. If her advice were discovered it could mean losing her job, but she felt it would be the best thing Merle could ever do for her son. There is no way I’m going to be able to keep him focused, she had said, "there is just not enough here to satisfy his thirst for