But an incidental screening of the Sandra Dee schmaltz-fest A Summer Place was enough to convince him that California was where he belonged. So in the summer of 1960, a 19-year-old Heller left home. It was on the West Coast that he lost his virginity, and soon after, stumbled into rock and roll in its infancy. Through a cousin who sang in a Las Vegas lounge act, he got a job with a corrosive drunk of a talent manager who represented once-famous Hollywood acts on the inexorable downward slide of their careers.

In the next few years, working for a remarkable litany of stars, he claims to have cleaved right through the center of the industry. As a road manager. As a booker. As a kind of catchall consigliere. Heller did it all.

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