Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

“There’s no line here.”

“Honestly, I don’t know. There’s a lot of dope where I live. People put it in brownies and shit, but I don’t know. What should we do?”

“Well, I suppose we can look at it a while longer.”

“Is this wishful thinking, or are my eyes deceiving me?”

“Actually, I do see the beginnings of a line here.”

The three other lines shouted “Negative.” The THC line they were staring down, it was a pretend line.

The test man looked over his glasses.

Lefebvre was grasping at this point. “What do we have to do?”

The man turned back. He squinted a little harder.

“I promise,” Lefebvre said, “I’ll be really, really careful when I’m out at bars.”

Pause. The guy kept looking.

“This is really scary.”

In the end, the tester let Lefebvre walk out the door. Well, look, he had been a stellar bailee otherwise, right? Followed all the rules, cooperated fully. And anyway, wasn’t it California, the state of Mary Louise Parker’s Weeds , the place where you go to your GP and say, Look Doc, I got anxiety issues, can you prescribe me some marijuana? Doc asks what the anxiety attacks are about, and you say, Doc, I’m anxious I’m going to run out of marijuana.

Lefebvre looked over his shoulder on the way out the door. He felt like sprinting. The limo was waiting. He was supposed to have lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air — eighteen acres in the middle of Bel Air with swans in the pond — but who cared about that right now? Forget lunch with Hilary and her mom and dad visiting from Palm Springs. Just go!

But no, he kept a lid on it. He was supposed to see his lawyer first, before lunch. On the way over, he tortured himself: Drop everything, go see Dale at the airport and get the fuck out of this country. Right now!

Dale Kirkwood had flown Lefebvre into L.A. on the Cessna Citation II, so his pilot was waiting for him. He could have bolted, a move that would have been catastrophic, but Lefebvre quelled his anxiety attack and made it to the lawyer’s office. A little pot would be useful right about now . When he explained what just happened there was a wail: “J-O-H-H-H-N-N-N-N!”

One of the problems with the two-weeks-and-you’re-clear theory is that it doesn’t account for differing metabolisms. It also doesn’t factor in fat cells. If a guy has a lot of fat cells it might take longer to get rid of the lingering THC. Lefebvre, already a sizable man, had put on some weight since the bust. Also, by his own reckoning, he’d been really “letting her rip” before shutting it down.

Now we’re into the next summer. We’ve crossed the halfway point of 2010 and still no word from the DOJ about a sentencing date. We’re sitting on the front lawn of Lefebvre’s Sunset Drive property, looking at the boats and the seals and the mermaid sculpture in the shallow water. He chats amiably about his crazy life while taking calls from his album cover designer, his contractor, his girlfriend, his pals, his lawyer, and so on. He’s been working on his second recording, which he’s decided to call Initial Album . He wants to put a band together for a tour.

In among all of these discussions, right there, on the front lawn, is how he finds out from his lawyer that Gordon Herman, the now-former CEO of Neteller, has told the DOJ to take a hike. Herman has thought about it, and he’s talked to his lawyers about it, and he’s decided, thanks for the offer, but he’s not coming in to talk to them. If they want him, they’ll have to come up and get him. The DOJ is one powerful entity, but it isn’t generally in the business of extraditing people they haven’t charged but just want to talk to about online gambling. Herman won’t be able to set foot in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, but he probably wasn’t going to anyway.

Lefebvre wears some heavy, powerful emotions on his face. He looks proud of Herman for telling the DOJ to shove it. He looks peeved at him, too, and maybe jealous, because he wishes he could have somehow done the same. And he looks a bit awestruck at the news. All the what-ifs buzz, beep, and pinball through his head, not just being pursued in a criminal indictment but also losing most of his fortune. And then he says, “Gord’s a sharp guy, so you know he would surround himself with the best legal advice available. So if he says he’s not coming in, that probably means he’s on solid ground.”

Music Is the Healing Force

The guys who planned the Don Felder — John Lefebvre tour of Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver over February 6, 7, and 9, 2011, ought to buy a calendar. Lefebvre’s Calgary start time, 7:30 p.m., conflicts with the second quarter and halftime of Super Bowl Sunday. My friend Grant, for instance, can’t go to the show because he’s too busy focusing on his annual Stupor Bowl. Lefebvre invited both Grant and Kevin Brooker when he did a guest turn on their Friday afternoon CJSW radio program, The Road Pops , but they both begged off. Understandable.

Then again, I can’t imagine many of my Calgary friends sitting in the audience taking in Lefebvre’s music, even if it is performed by a great band of hired guns in a soft-seat environment with excellent acoustics. It’s in the heart of downtown, on the Eighth Avenue Mall, and is a nice place to listen to music. Philip Glass, Emmylou Harris, David Lindley, and similar acts played there in the mid-eighties, when I was living in Calgary.

They might think it’s a bit of a laugh, Lefebvre trying to be a big-time professional rock musician, renting the best studio in L.A., hiring the best musicians, pretending he’s some big shot. Putting on airs can be costly, at least a couple of hundred thou for this tour alone.

And I’m sure it’s the same feeling my friend Al expressed about Lefebvre’s first double CD, Psalngs , when he quipped, “Gilding the turd.” In other words, dressing up mediocre songs with fancy musicianship. Or the initial verdict my friend Shelley expressed about the second double CD, Initial Album : “Some of it’s awful … don’t you think?”

Well, no, I don’t think it’s awful. I don’t necessarily think it’s great, either. Too many songs, as in, the man does not have to put every song he records on the CD. Lefebvre could use an editor. Problem is, either he listens to people who provide advice that costs a lot of money, or he doesn’t listen to people because, ultimately, he never listens to any voice but his own anyway. And why would he listen to anyone else? For example, in Edmonton, in Lefebvre’s dressing room, around 5:30, tour manager Barry Bookin, Lefebvre, and I sit around chatting. Lefebvre opens a bottle of expensive wine. He decides to have a glass after sound check. I suggest, “Hey John, why don’t you hold off on the wine till after the show? Alcohol isn’t great for the voice.” The reason I say this is out of concern — last night his voice sounded weak in spots, but I was trying to be tactful.

“Bill, I hired the most expensive instructor in L.A., an opera singer who worked in Europe, to be my coach. He gave me lots of advice about singing. He said, ‘A lot of people think they know how to sing, and the one thing those people are going to do is give me advice about singing, and I want you to know that the only person you need to listen to is me.’”

What an argument. The guy might be an opera singer, but he’s not too smart. This is the sort of thing Lefebvre falls for. He pays the earth for the best recording studio, but then the results are middling. He pays a heavy price for Brian Ahern’s production experience even though Ahern wouldn’t know a rock song if it clubbed him in the head with a ’63 Fender Mustang. He pays a guy at Oceanside Studios top dollar to get his first album remixed, but then he decides he and his friend Danny Patton can do it better themselves. And they’re right. Money talks and people listen … More money than brains … People lining up for the gravy train … It’s all trial and error … Learning on the job … Growing up in public … All of these clichés apply to Lefebvre’s situation. It’s the banality of money in action.