Not Given by China Tamblyn

Excerpts from a memoir in the making

My Mama pregnant with me in Topanga, Ca. 1969. Photo, Kenny Merril (from the archives of Rory White)

I am California born and raised, a 60’s love child, blessed to a band of hippies who left Hollywood to make love and art. A Topanga Canyon bastard, my birth certificate reads “Not Given” where a father’s name should be.

When I was a suckling, my mama found Jesus on an acid trip on the Sunset Strip. The neon signs were swirling and heaving, “I’ll satisfy you, I’ll satisfy you.” She saw the light, I screamed all night, but still she refused to feed me psychedelic milk.

Soon after the revelation of Christ, we left the stone cottage on Red Rock Road in Topanga and walked through our magical green door into a land of lawns. We were born again in Anaheim. A guitar-playing, harmony-singing church that loved folk songs re-written to Jesus. Beautiful Betsy snagged a church man. A real winner. David was bipolar, a cheater, and an abuser. The church said she was lucky, seeing as she already had two kids. My brother Dondi had been hit by a truck a few years earlier, was in a wheelchair and severely brain damaged, and me, well I was born out of wedlock and all.

In 1972, the Church told Mama and David they should preach the gospel to the protesters at People’s Park, so we packed our lives into the maroon Volvo and left Anaheim behind. We drove all night into the foggy dawn of Berkeley with Dondi’s wheelchair strapped to the top. I ate yogurt in the dark.

The Church’s hospitality house in North Berkeley was designed by Julia Morgan. Russell Street, my father’s name. The name not given. Mama was making eggs one morning and decided to take a walk around the block. She got distracted talking to someone about Jesus. There was a fire in the kitchen. I stood outside in my underwear, Dondi stuck inside. The firemen came and fantasies morphed into memories I can no longer distinguish. It turned into a song 20 years later.

We moved into a huge apartment complex on Hillegas, a block from People’s Park where dozens of church families lived. I creamed butter and brown sugar and ate it by the spoonful. Holly, my childhood church bestie and I rode the elevator up and down from the roof to the basement. When he couldn’t keep the fish alive, David threw the tank out the window from the 4th floor. It fell, smashing into the alley between the apartments where we buried our hamsters. I was 4 and I ran feral and free, jumping over hedges, and eating crab apples at the Seminary.

I grew up in the East Bay and only ventured to San Francisco for Church functions. We bounced around a bunch. By the time I was 10, I had moved at least 15 times and attended 5 different elementary schools from Richmond to Albany. One afternoon David lunged across the living room and attacked one of my Mom’s friends. The church decided that was too far. Later that day she took me to Sizzler on San Pablo in Albany. I ate Malibu chicken and cheese toast and she told me she was leaving him. In 1981, after several months living in the Villa Motel, we found a house that took Section 8 and landed in Hayward on Sunset Blvd. There was a local church there. Situated along the BART line, I rode back and forth to El Cerrito to see Nana and my orthodontist. Hayward had Low-riders. I bought China Flats at Woolworths, wore pantyhose, and wished I was Mexican.

I met my best friend Cori on the tetherball court at Cherryland Elementary in the 5th grade. She changed my life. She was smart and imaginative and LOVED music. I was sheltered and naive. My record collection consisted of Doris Day, Leslie Gore, The Archies, the Grease Soundtrack, and John Philip Sousa.

I learned to play guitar and wrote my first song for Jesus. The church was my life. It gave me a sense of community and belonging. One summer evening a couple of brothers came over to the house to gift me my own guitar and a church song book. That gift came with a warning that Queen and Led Zeppelin were worshiping the Devil and I could get infected. I had recently purchased a 45” of Another one Bites The Dust and like every guitar player at the time I was trying to learn Stairway to Heaven. Apparently if you played Another one Bites the Dust backwards it said “It’s fun to smoke marijuana”. Which is why to this day I’m such a stoner (and devil worshiper). Damn subliminal messaging.

I started to have my doubts about this born again thing but I stuck it out a little longer. There were lots of cute boys in the church, especially when the whole Bay Area would get together for a conference. The San Jose boys were especially hot. All pent up with forbidden lust and here I was busting at the seams. I would sit and stare longingly across the room while some elder blathered on about a bunch of biblical myth and fantasy. We wrote letters, developed our own code language. “Sister, I really have a burden for you”. On youth camping trips we snuck out of our cabins, smoked cigarettes, and skipped rocks. I came to the young people’s meeting one Saturday night with pink lace gloves, a bow in my hair and a fake mole above my lip. “Missy, that’s not you” they said. That was the last time I ever attended church. Little did they know, That was me. That is still me. “Bitch, I’m Madonna!”

In the late 80’s Cori and I started venturing to San Francisco to go dancing. We would spend Wednesday-Sunday in North Beach or South of Market at the Palladium, Club X, DV8, DNA, or wherever there was a pop up dance party. Sliding into fishnets and miniskirts in the back of her Dodge Dart, we would paint our faces and head to the club. Sweating and shaking our asses, we smoked menthol cigarettes and danced all night.

Cori was the musician. We wrote a few songs together but she was the one going on band auditions and pursuing the rock n roll dream. By the early 90’s she was playing in small clubs with her band The Water Signs. I was exploring architecture, photography, poetry, and boys. I got myself a musician boyfriend and started tagging along to all his shows. Curtis introduced me to a lot of the culture I had been sheltered from growing up. It was a crash course in art, music, literature, and film. It’s all we did, all we consumed. Berkeley bookstores, art openings, films at the UC, and CCAC parties. We would have late night jams writing songs and playing and singing together. “Starburst Jamboree” we called it. I wrote a couple of cheesy love songs. It was the ending of the innocent years, we all learned to bend and break. Through him I met Liz who I would eventually form The Kirby Grips with.

Kirby Grips at The Stork Club 1996. Photo Sam Bortnik

I was a late bloomer. When it came to rock n roll, I was the groupie and the roadie. I was the singer’s best friend, the drummer’s girlfriend. Liz too. One day we were at an art opening in North Oakland and she started bugging me. “China, you play guitar, you sing, let’s do something, I know a drummer, Michele. Let’s start a band”. Ok, I thought, why not. And so a few weeks or months later we booked a rehearsal room at Secret Studios in SF, and started making music. It was rough. None of us knew what the hell we were doing. Out of key and out of time, we didn’t care. We needed to play. We had to play. I learned, Going to The Chapel and I Wanna Be Your Dog. I wrote, Midol and Metric Man. We had four songs! Some friends of Michele asked us to play a party so we had a show at our rehearsal space. I met Sandra, host of this here blog, and author of Swollen Appetite, at our very first show. A beautiful curly headed blonde approached me as soon as our set ended. I can’t remember exactly what she said but I remember sitting on the steps outside of Secret, smoking Export A’s and having a great conversation. She told me she loved our music and the way I sang, she encouraged me to keep writing and playing. And I did. For the next 7 years, The Kirby Grips played the small clubs in SF and Berkeley and toured up and down the California coast. We put out a few records on Sympathy for The Record Industry. In the beginning I thought I would be the next Courtney Love, minus the stripping and the drugs, but I soon realized that the purpose was the process and fame was a long shot.

I met Elton at the Boomerang on Haight street. in 1997. His bandmates brought him to a Kirby Grips show. A few months later after playing some shows together he sent me a poem in the mail. At the bottom he wrote, “you should come to my studio and record a 45”. I did. We fell in love laying down tracks. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary.

In the early 2000’s I put down my Gretch and decided to return to my first love, making art. I completed my sculpture degree at SF State and dedicated my time to raising my kids. I wasn’t writing as much and band practice had become a drag. With the new family life I needed time completely alone. When you’re fabricating metal people can’t really talk to you. Welding was like meditation. My Dad always said, “In the performing arts you are trying to make the audience’s head spin, with fine art you are trying to make your own head spin”.

Amen

You can see more of China’s sculptures and other artwork and music here. A story about China and her father, actor Russ Tamblyn, was published in People Magazine in 2024. Here’s a video of the song "Liar" performed by the Kirby Grips at a 2008 reunion show at the Rodent Records studio in San Francisco, CA.

Just a Fan by Janet Flemer