My Band Solved a Crime!
Monday, August 11th, 2008
Five years ago, one of my previous bands, Beat & Path, was approached by someone claiming to be Stan Lynch who was the drummer and founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
My first cousins are jewelers who work in Downtown, L.A. After one of my concerts, my cousin Vic asked me if I was interested in working with Tom Petty’s drummer, Stan Lynch.
I said, “Of course! How do you know him?”
“He’s been buying jewelry from us for the past 2 years and I gave him a copy of your CD. He’s very interested.”
Intrigued, I went to their booth in downtown to meet with “Stan Lynch.” He was a short, strange-looking man who claimed that our song “Poor You” was one of the best he had heard. He wanted to get us a record deal and talked our ears off about his industry contacts.
He said that he would invest $50,000 to take the band to the next level if my cousins would be willing to match his investment.
We said that we were interested but wanted to take some time to think it through. We went home that night and researched everything we could about Stan Lynch on the web.
Everything he said seemed to be true except for one small issue: there was a recent picture of Stan Lynch online and this guy looked 20 years older and 2 feet shorter than the man in the picture.
When we met with him again, my cousin brought up the discrepancy. “Stan” got teary eyed and said, “I can’t believe you guys are implying that I am a liar. I have been battling cancer for the past 5 years. That’s why I look much older than I did in those pictures.”
We left the meeting more confused than we were when we came in. We felt guilty, uncertain, excited and perplexed, all at the same time.
The next day, we decided to call Stan Lynch’s publishing company, Sony/ATV Tree, to try to get more information. When we told them the story, they said that Stan Lynch hadn’t been to L.A. in 15 years!
A few hours later, Stan Lynch called us from Florida to ask for our help and said that the Police were after a guy who had been stealing money from artists and investors, claiming to be Stan Lynch.
Immediately after the conversation, we called the cops and gave them an address that “Stan” had given my cousins months before.
The address turned out to be a hotel room where he was staying and they busted him there the following day!
“Stan’s” real name was Ralph and he was a convicted felon who had stolen and fled with almost half a million dollars from other bands, claiming he was Stan Lynch.
When they arrested him, they found a box full of Stan Lynch CD’s, biographical information, and pictures…
Moral of the story: Do your research…often, people in our industry aren’t who they claim to be!
Here’s a link to the re-post of the newspaper article published in 2003:
http://tompetty.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1176042321/m/5216051903