On this day in 1968, the presumed next President of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down minutes after winning the California Primary. Cut that time in half and transport your humble narrator to the scene of the crime, The Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. What am I doing there? I was invited to a video shoot. The band was Guns N’ Roses, the song, “Patience” from an EP called Lies. Peter Baron from Geffen Records video department extended the opportunity to hang out on the set. RIP’s Del james was going to be there anyway. “Dude, I’m bringing Axl a RIP tee shirt,” reported my senior editor. “Ax said he’d wear it in the clip.”

Video shoots are, for the most part, arduous and extremely boring. Unless of course, you’re shooting GN’R. Back then, nothing that involved this band was boring. The first hour on the set was spent saying hey to the guys, all content sipping their particular elixirs and entertaining the cache of ladies scattered about the abandoned hotel until director Nigel Dick was ready to roll. While Slash was preparing for his ‘solo’ sequence, I grabbed Duff and pulled him aside. “Dude, do you know where we are?” I asked. “Yeah, man,” he replied. “This is where Bobby Kennedy was shot.” No one needed Duff for a spell so I grabbed him and Peter and suggested a short walk…to the kitchen.

Kennedy’s entourage took him through the kitchen to the podium. It was not originally scripted that way. Plans were changed at the last minute. Conspiracy theorists believe that alteration in path somehow explains Sirhan Sirhan’s intimate proximity to the senator. And of course, there are those convinced that the Palestinian with tepid at best connection to the Kennedys was not the only shooter. But you see, we’ll never really know because assassinations are not meant to be solved. They ARE scripted that way.

Peter, Duff and I walked into the empty kitchen. It was eerie quiet. No cables or filmmaking gear had penetrated this area of the building. There we stood in this huge, vacant room where meals were once prepared en masse for upper crust Angelinos out on the town or tourists swaddling themselves in angel city opulence. Long before my head, heart and spirit entered the Twilight Zone of mid life, I recall ‘feeling’ something, a presence, an energy. “Dude, this is the door he walked through to his death.” Bring back a sacred moment in a scared place and you reignite the molecular sparks present back there. Back then.

A production assistant comes looking for Duff. The ‘counter’ shot was coming up, where the bassist lays a tray down on the front desk and disappears. “Hey, Lonn, you wanna do a cameo?” chants Nigel, his British twang, confident, playful. “Uh, fuck yeah!” Some time later, I’m walking down a hallway with a tall blond on one arm, petite brunette on the other. In the clip, the frames of my virtually anonymous five seconds of fame follow Duff and the tray. On film, everyone disappears. On the set, our corporeal bodies did the to and fro to accommodate the director and his vision. There was no audience, except for the crew, a smattering of friends and the ghosts looking on from beyond the beyond.

True to his word, Axl wore the RIP tee AND a RIP button his hat during the phone smashing sequence. That single image vaulted RIP ahead of its pulp competitors. We never looked back. Relationship and passionate dedication to editorial excellence built that magazine. With a little help from a few musical miracles that altered the axis of Planet Rock.

The video for “Patience” was ubiquitous on MTV and the brilliant ballad became one of the most played GN’R tracks radio ever embraced. The band honored me and the mag with a platinum disc for Lies, which I gave to the metal DJ, The Rack, when I left KNAC.COM in the summer of ’01 and she left L.A. Pass it on, be it thing, thought or tale, and you help hold taught the threads that make up this connective quilt called US.

So here we are, time travelers, election season 2008 off the starboard bow and we have an opportunity to right the ship that’s been slamming that ice berg on and off for almost four decades. It’s a wonder we still have any rudder power left after the last seven civilization sinking years.

Like the courageous Robert F, a change agent has emerged from the fog of war and unconsciousness. This strange, fascinating man makes great speeches and puts words together like someone who truly cares about more than furthering mindless, imperialistic, neocon agendas that serve no higher purpose. No human purpose. Forty years on and five bucks a gallon, we have exercised great patience. We deserve another chance to ….see.