The Godz were also taken under the wing of Michael Soldan and Judy Parker, who published the legendary Eye Magazine (original copies of which now fetch fairly large sums on Ebay), designed and photographed their second album cover (and went criminally uncredited for it), and added a light show to the band's live act. Says Larry, "He was a photographer from England and she was from Rhode Island, and Jay was very close to them -- he started working at Eye Magazine. We used to rehearse at their loft, and they loved us. We were really getting good by then. They had 50 or 60 of our practice tapes." Larry recalls that The Godz' music also had an unusual influence of sorts on Soldan's photographs of British rock stars: aiming to get the wildest facial expressions imaginable out of his subjects, "they used to play our tapes for the English bands and the guys would freak out while they took the pictures! They never heard this sort of music before, and they would act nuts!"

But tragedy struck in '68 as Soldan and Parker set out on a fateful boat ride off Long Island, went missing and were presumed drowned, their bodies never recovered. "Their deaths were devastating to us, because they were our mentors," says Larry. Jay took the loss hardest, and this surely played at least a partial role in his decision to leave the Godz. But additionally, says Larry, "he'd grown disgusted with our lifestyle. He was much more of an intellectual than the three of us." Jim agrees: "Jay was the one who wanted us to get intellectual with the Godz. He wanted us to go to schools and teach kids how to play music!" Without Jay, the remaining three Godz cut The Third Testament, inviting several friends to invade the studio and freak out on a few numbers (a concept borrowed from the Red Crayola's Parable of Arable Land), then filling in the rest with solo numbers by each of the three remaining members. Despite the band being in its final stages by this point, Larry proclaims it his favorite Godz album: "I really liked where that one went." He broke his neck in a diving accident the following year, and that was the end of the Godz... almost.

Once out of the hospital, Larry successfully persuaded Bernard Stollman to give him back his salesman gig at ESP. He also started singing for a more conventional rock band called Seventh Street, while at the same time Paul was forming a new outfit of his own with Leslie Fradkin. In late 1971, the legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs published a major analysis of the Godz' music in Creem Magazine. Says Jim, "Lester's was the definitive thing on the Godz. He really knew where we were coming from." With the Creem article generating new interest in the Godz' back catalogue, ESP was eager to capitalize on the situation. Stollman suggested that Larry try to reform the Godz, but the others weren't so sure they wanted to do it, so a compromise of sorts was reached. "Godzundheit was Paul's band and some of my band members," says Larry of their rather nondescript final album. "Bernard thought it might be a good idea if we try to pull together, but we just did our stuff with our own bands. 'Whiffenpoof Song' was added to give the album some authenticity. It really wasn't us, it was just something that proved that we could sound just like any other band if we chose to" -- ironic, considering Stollman's earlier disdain for anything in that realm.

And with the singer-songwriter formula being all the rage in the early '70s, Stollman finally gave in to Jim's solo aspirations and invited him to follow Godzundheit with a somewhat underrated (though still distinctly un-Godz-like) effort of his own, Alien, in 1973. Jim admits he was reluctant at first: "Bernard was begging me to do a solo record and I didn't want to record for ESP anymore. I wanted to record for a label with a good budget. Finally, though, I gave in and did it. We did an acoustic session first and I didn't like that, so I talked Bernard into getting some guys together. The band on Alien was basically a pick-up band. There were a few guys from the Left Banke (Steve Martin and George Cameron) on there. We ran through the songs once and all the songs on the record were done in the first or second takes." Meanwhile, Paul joined forces with Leslie Fradkin, veteran East Village eccentric David Peel, and (supposedly) even Paul & Linda McCartney to record the forgettable Pass On This Side album, on which "Walking Guitar Blues" from The Third Testament reappeared in a new, more polished version. ESP went under in the mid-seventies, and Stollman gave the original master tapes of all four Godz albums to Larry and the master of Alien to Jim. The tapes remain with their respective owners to this day.

But we're still not quite finished with our story. In 1992, Stollman, after laying low for many years (perhaps to avoid facing down all the artists he ripped off?), resurfaced in Europe through the ZYX label in Germany. Suddenly the entire ESP catalogue began reappearing in CD form. Unfortunately, the quality of these reissues was abominable. The original Godz albums were carelessly remastered from vinyl copies and the fidelity was quite low, to say the least. Additionally, the cover art was altered on Contact High and Godzundheit, and -- perhaps most obscenely -- McCarthy's Alien and Thornton & Fradkin's Pass On This Side were reissued in Godz' name.

Larry Kessler was infuriated when he learned of the new reissues. So mad, in fact, that he took drastic measures. "I was really pissed when someone changed the names of those albums and put them out as by the Godz, so I made sure I got the name. I put an end to all that, I have it in my own little corporation now. Even Stollman can't do anything." Though he unfortunately has no control over the European reissues currently available, Larry now has the power to sue anyone who infringes upon the name in the US, including Stollman and the heavy metal band who swiped it in the seventies. "Stollman would like to release a Godz album here (in the States) but I don't think I'm gonna let him," says Larry. He and Jim both insist the band never received a cent in royalties from ESP: "As far as he was concerned," says Larry, "we never sold any records, but I know for a fact that we did, because I worked there!" Jim adds, "Bernard was a musicians' lawyer and he had clients coming in complaining about record labels ripping them off, so he thought, 'Hey, why don't I rip them (his artists) off?' "

Leslie Fradkin stepped into the picture again and suggested that the Godz at least capitalize on the new interest generated by the reissues by attempting a reformation. He put Paul and Jim back together and the three played a gig at New York's famous Bitter End. Jim left immediately afterward and thus ended this very brief partial reunion. A few years later, Les and Paul managed to talk Larry into joining them for a new CD. Larry flew to California, tried to get something going, realized quickly things weren't jelling, and bailed out as quickly as Jim had earlier, leaving Fradkin and Thornton to finish it without him and release it as Godzology, a disc which made the cutout bins in near-record time, in 2000. "It's horrible, just a horrible record," says Larry. "It's as far away from Godz music as you can possibly get. Leslie's a real good musician, I won't say he's not, but he's just all for Leslie Fradkin. He was never a part of the Godz and he never will be."

Upon sealing the rights to the band name, Larry exacted some musical revenge of his own against Stollman with the Godz Revival 5-track EP he released in 1996. He originally assembled a band to back him up in the studio, but when the time came to record, he says, "the (producer) guy said, 'You know, you have all these people' -- I had 7 or 8 people -- 'I can do all this for you and you don't have to worry about them.' " One of the more unusual moments on the disc is a 5-minute "Godz techno mix" incorporating samples from their first three albums, which he says was the icing on his bitter cake: "I'm glad I did it and infuriated a lot of people with it. I didn't feel like I was breaking any new musical ground with it, but I did feel like it fit together and felt that it would raise an eyebrow or four." The CD is now out of print, but Larry hopes to reissue it at some point as a full, 12-song album called Liberty Road, adding several songs he's recorded since then.

These days, alas, the ex-Godz don't get along. Jim has said he can't stand to be around Larry anymore, and Larry hasn't talked to Paul since the Godzology fiasco. Jay disappeared after Godz 2 and the Soldan-Parker tragedy, and nobody's seen or heard from him since. Jim still lives in New York and has won acclaim for his photography, which has appeared everywhere from rock fanzines to the New York Times. Larry lives in Baltimore, driving a cab and running a record stand at a local flea market, and is well-known locally for being "the father of wrestling champions," having seen several of his sons lead Owings Mills High School to eight state championships. But he doesn't regret being one of the Godz, and many times he's been reminded of it along the way: "I moved to Pittsburgh once, and my babysitter saw my record and she said to me, 'You know, my parents have that record, that's a freaky record!' And people all over the country I've run into say, 'Oh, my friend used to have that record,' or 'my roommate in college had it.' "

The thought certainly never occurred to Jim and Larry back in '66 that the music of the Godz would still strike chords with listeners more than 35 years after Contact High, but in light of all of the experimental sounds which have followed since its release, they're not surprised. There was even a Godz tribute album in the late 90s, Godz is Not a Put-On, with interpretations of various Godz pieces by the likes of Sonic Youth, Stereolab, and Royal Trux. "The Godz were just about being there for the time and we were being as honest as we could be," says Larry. "It might not have been pretty, but it was art. I knew that we were doing something artistically correct because there were so many people who didn't understand us, and if they would have understood us, then I would've felt that we were wrong. Our music needed to grow in people's minds. There are so many things we did that broke new ground, and I'm proud of it."

"We certainly let mistakes work in our favor," says Jim. "Art is about taking things that occur and letting them go and seeing what happens, and that goes for any art form. All we did was try to express our feelings honestly. We wanted to show that you didn't have to be a music student to express yourself."