BY BETTY NGUYEN SHOW POSTER “THE OTHER HALF”
By day, Tom worked in the mailroom at MGM studios, where he and his fellow co-workers started a rock n’ roll cover band called, “The Other Half.” They opened for the lesser known band (at the time) called the Doors. Tom’s band rode the wave of American music culture and were getting their own following and press, but then he was drafted for the “War” (Vietnam), and got replaced on guitar by Randy Holden, who later played in the psych band Blue Cheer (which I love, and saw later in Brooklyn). With him, they made original albums but later disbanded soon after Tom’s return. When Venice started to commercialize, Tom, who worked at a sourdough bakery then, took the opportunity to transfer up to Oxnard to break upwards and onwards. He envisioned baking bread alongside clam diggers and crabbers in northern California but made it only so far as Ojai.
The Lennons’ first came to the Valley of the Moon in the 1930s to visit their great uncle, who owned an apricot orchard in upper Ojai, before settling down here permanently in the 1970s. When Tom moved his family here, his cousins, “The Lennon Sisters,” became household names due to their singing appearances on the popular television show, “The Lawrence Welk Show.”
OQ / SPRING 2021
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