TO: BOTH OF MY MANY READERS (Shirley I Jest) (I hope)
FROM: JANEY MILSTEAD
RE: ROBIN'S HISTORY & ABOUT THE "AUTHOR"

"Almost Famous" was almost the story of my life, except my experience pre-dates Cameron Crowe's adventure. (Which he might not have had if the some events I'm going to tell you about hadn't taken place.)

Here's how a number of feindish thingies went down in the 60's, including the Beatles, the emerging rock press, the ever-changing teenmag business, and Robin Boyd. This whole topic is so complicated, I'm writing a book about it. But don't panic. I promise not to write it here.

I was a teenager in middle America when I picked up the first issue of DIG Magazine. It was the original teenmag, and I dug it so much, I managed to talk (okay, whine) the publisher into giving me a job as soon as I graduated from high school. (Lou Kimzey later went on to found Easyriders Magazine, which I wrote for occasionally under various weird aliases.)

Back to my story. Within a few years, I'd become the editor of DIG. That meant moving to California, then New York City, then back to Hollywood, which was all very cool. But, unfortunately, by then, Dig was begining to flounder. The mag had been a true wild card, featuring early rock scene info, R&B, uncensored humor, real stuff. But, by the end of 1963, it had been tamed, mostly by the times. ("Bor-ing," as we used to say back in the day.)

More teen titles had sprung up by then and we were all in the same boat and sinking. Contents-wise, anyway.

Then there they came. John, Paul, George and Ringo blew into our world, bringing with them a badly needed breath of fresh air, not to mention the wind of change. (Cliches both, but so true.) And they they didn't get here a moment too soon.

I hate to admit that it took awhile for their impact to hit me. Although, as editor of DIG, I was also editor on two of the first three Beatle books (one-shot magazines, actually) published in America (info about the other one later on in this weirdness), and wrote a lot of the content, I was still somewhat clueless. At that point, I just thought the Beatles were cute, that their music was fun and that anything fun to write about was a huge relief even if it did mean more work for the same salary.

(The Beatle magazines I did were titled "Beatles Talk" - it was supposed to contain a record but that part of the deal fell through - and "Beatle Fun Kit," a crazy collection of Fab Four cut-ups and cut-outs.)

My personal encounter with the magic didn't happen until I saw the Beatles in person for the first time. That happened at the Las Vegas Convention Center just a few days prior to their 1964 Hollywood Bowl debut. That's when it swept me away, the feeling they were able to evoke in their fans, and blew my tidy little mind. I suddenly understood what all the hubub was about, and it went on to alter the course of my life, and my heart, forever. (Make that 4-ever.)

In those days I was passing myself off as a young professional, capable of editing whole magazines (and often writing every word in them) at a single bound. But inside I was still a kid. Thankfully, I still am and I believe most of those thanks go to the Beatles and the changes they set in motion. The way we felt about them - and the way they made us feel about ourselves and the world around us - gave me the chance to let the kook inside me out of mothballs and put her to work.

And believe me, I needed the work. In those days, publishing was pretty brutal, with impossible workloads, lousy salaries and near-nonexistent budgets. (It hasn't changed all that much. Not enough, anyway.)

In my book, I'm going to explain how the following came about, but for brevity's sake (not to mention for cripes sake), let's just say that I ended up being a part of two new publications. One was The Beat, the original rock newspaper, circa 1965, brainchild of Bonnie Golden who evolved into writer/commentator Wina Sturgeon. She started the paper when she was working in local radio, and she also produced the first of the Beatle mags in December, 1963; it was titled simply "The Beatles.". In fact, she was the one who called me at Dig around that time and said "Do something on the Beatles!" ("Whooo?" I asked, as in famous last words.)

The other publication was TeenSet Magazine, owned by Capitol Records and I became Consulting Editor and feature writer for both. But I couldn't do either under my own name. By then I was the full-time editor of Teen Screen Magazine (dumb name but a pretty good mag at the time) and my boss (a good guy in his own way) would have plotzed if he'd known I was writing for the competition. But the emerging rock press didn't think of each other in those terms. We were so caught up in the excitement of the great new music and the new awareness, we felt we were all in something wonderful together. (And we were, we were...)

Since I was lucky enough to have a knack for putting Beatle feelings on paper I was thrilled with these opportunities. It was a chance to be even more involved in what was happening and to have more places to share it. Besides, for someone so young, I had some heavy-duty personal responsbilities at the time and needed the money. (Such as it was - I made $25 an article at The Beat and up to a whopping $50 per at TeenSet.)

At the Beat, I used the name Shirley Poston (we made that one up one dark, deadline night) plus a few others I've forgotten. (Garrett North was one of them, a pen name I still use.)

This is nuts, I suppose, but Shirley was more the real me than any of my other bylines, my own included, and she still is. Shirley started off with a column, and when that caught on with readers, I talked the bosses into into letting me do a fiction piece (my real love as a writer).

"The Adventures Of Robin Boyd" was born, and she was an instant hit. What had started out to be an mini-serial went on (and on and on, ha) for more than 60 chapters, until The Beat was sold.

Robin was never deliberately geared to a teenage audience (fabbed, maybe). She just came flying out of me intact. I've never had as much fun writing anything in my entire career, and I've never again had such an overwhelming reader response.

Mail began pouring in immediately, often more than 500 letters a week! Elvis got 500 letters a week, but we sure didn't. I'd never seen anything like it and still haven't after a lifetime in publishing. The mail was funny, intelligent, and one big love letter to a kook named Robin Boyd.

The illustration that accompanied her adventures was an adorable drawing of a real bird (in Byrd glasses) perched on the finger of a George Harrison-look-alike genie. Readers had their own idea of how Robin looked and began sending me fantastic drawings of the character as they saw her.

The artwork on this website is from a painting I received in 1965 from a teenager named Allison. (Allison, where are you?) I can't believe I was actually able to find it all these years later, but it somehow survived my filing system (read: piles). My other favorite was an entire storyboard, in color, of one of the chapters (one that featured Robin's zany meeting with all four look-alike genies). I'm still searching for that. I'm also on the trail of the original George The Genie Christmas cards I received every holiday season for years, hand-painted by two Robin fans who'd somehow found out that I was Shirley.

(Another part of the fun was the element of mystery. People in the entertainment industry also got a kick out of Robin and some of my other pieces, but no one was able to find out who Shirley was. This just added to the interest level. My publisher at Teen Screen even once asked if we could get this Shirley Poston to write for us. After I finished my coughing fit, I said I'd try to reach her.)

At TeenSet, I wrote under various names, my favorite being Afan, borrowed from John. TeenSet went on to become the hippest of the teenmags, under the guidance of my dear late friend Judy Sims. And writing for it was a blast. Besides writing a lot of their Beatle stufff (including the Afan articles), I also had the fun of doing their movie reviews and humor section.

As Shirley I was free to blither, let my imagination run wild and revel in my Beatlemania. As Afan, I could express deeper feelings about those four incredible people. (They were just people, we knew that, but oh God, the way they made us feel...)

When I decided to do this website, I entered both the Shirley and Afan names into a search engine out of curiousity. I was amazed to find that, among other things, the title of the bootleg album of Bob Dylan's famous Hollywood Bowl concert (where his acoustic fans booed and some even walked out when he dared to go electric in the second half) was taken from the last line of Shirley's review in The Beat. (I wrote some serious thingies by her as well.) The album is called We Had Known A Lion, and the title is actually credited to me/her/us. It's a CD now and I finally got a copy, thanks to a dear pal. I was thrilled to find that my review is printed in its entirity on the fold-out.

I haven't had time to go through all the Afan listings (there's about a zillion, this also being the name of several large organizations), but I did discover that some of what I wrote about John (my favorite Beatles, my favorite man, my favorite everything) has been reprinted by Yoko on www.instantkarma.com.

Regarding Robinboyd.com, I always wanted to do something with Robin (like maybe keep writing her for the rest of my days - it was such a trip). I copyrighted the material early in the game, and when the Beat was sold in 1967 (and never again published), another teenmag bought a six-month option on Robin. But by the end of that period, things were changing drastically in the youth market.

The teenmag readership was getting younger and younger, wanting less Beatles and Stones and more Monkees and other bopper-slanted groups and personalities. The teenmags that survived the change had to become pre-teen instead. Teenagers into more complex sounds and artists gravitated toward publications like Circus and Rolling Stone (co-founded that same year, '67, by Ben Fong Torres, one of my former readers), a genre that picked up a lot of twentysomething readers too.

By the time the six-month option on Robin was up, the publisher who'd bought it was out of business. In 1968, I was contacted by FAB 208 in London, an entertainment mag that also ran the weekly guide for Radio Luxembourg . Thus I began my 12-year run as Fab's West Coast editor, doing a column and two features a week about Hollywood and teenage life in America. (For ten of those years, I was also West Coast rep for Reese Publishing's surviving teenmags, now catering to pre-teens: TeenLife, Teen World, Teen Pinups. Let's just say I needed the work. (I can say no more.) (But I was not what I seemed.) (Down, girl.)

I wanted to do somehing with Robin, but I was so busy with other endeavors, like making a living as a writer. (I always managed to and never did have to get an honest job.) Anyroad, a lot happened during those years, including interviews with a lot of famous people. If you care to know more about my adventures you can click on my resume above. After Fab slid down the tube in the early 80's, I tripped and fell into the women's market and ended up Editor in Chief of BBW Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle publication for the fuller figured.

Currently, I'm writing several books (as you may have guessed), but right now, this website is taking precendence over everything. Here's how (and why) it's happening.

Down through the years, some of Shirley's fans have stayed in touch with me, those who knew she was one of my noms de plume. I've heard from even more since I went on the net. (There's an article by Shirley on my other website- www.janeymilstead.com - as we speak.)

Shortly after dear George's death, another former reader found me. (Click on A Day In The Life to read her email and other memories.) I'd already decided I had to do something in his honor. I'd made that decision when friends and I went to his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame the night after he left us. As I stood there, surrounded by flowers and flickering candles and grieving fans, I gazed up the street toward the old Warner Cinerama Building. The TeenScreen offices had been just above the marquee, on the third floor. And who would have ever dreamed in those magic times that I would someday find myself a few blocks up the Boulevard, on a cold, damp California night, mourning the death of one of those Beatles and still hurting from the loss of another.

In that awful moment, I knew I had to do something to get a little of the old feeling back. I'd figured out what it was by then - a combination of joy and hope - and have any of us have ever needed that more than we do right now?

At first I couldn't think of a way to accomplish this except to write a book about that, too. Then, when I got the most recent email, I realized I'd already written one.

What better way to bring back it all back home than to let George-loving, Beatle-blithering Robin Boyd loose on the world again. It wouldn't cost me a lot to produce this website (thanks largely to the wonderous Francesca Scalpi at Blue Ocean Designs - www.blueoceandesigns.com) and it would be available to everyone who wanted to have a look.

Robin is the best way I can think of to share the the magic, that nearly unbearable lightness of being in tune with the Beatles when they, and we, was fab.

Still crazy after all these years,
JM