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 The title of St. John's autobiography It Ain't Gonna Work was inspired by a stint he spent working in a welding shop. The owner would repeatedly comment on St. John's jobs, saying, "It Ain't Gonna Work." It would become a recurring theme in his life. His autobiography starts with St. John's troubled youth, where he was shifted around to different foster homes. Much to everyone's alarm, St. John got bitten by the tattoo bug at an early age, learning how to give tattoos and even how to make his own electric tattooing machines. He also began to work doing custom paint and body work while still a teenager. This book recounts St. John's days in the early Bay Area hot rod and beatnik scenes. He talks about his dealings with such "name" people as Von Dutch, Ed Roth, Dean Jeffries and the early days of the Oakland roadster show. St. John often worked as a paint chemist and formulator, constantly working on developing pearlescent, candy apple and metal flake paints. He ultimately decided to develop his own line of "candy apple" paints in the early 1960s. He would sell his own paints in local shops and through ads in Car Craft magazine. At one point, St. John even went so far as to develop his own operational, three-wheeled car. The success of the car was doomed, however, when Morton figured out what other would-be entrepreneur car manufacturers like Tucker, Bricklin and DeLorean had found out before him. It's not the design that's really a problem, it's access to a supply of parts and a power plant that is the real nut to crack. This book is also rife with tales of St. John's dealings with brutal alcoholics--not Foster Brooks, comedic alcoholics, not Dean Martin bon vivant, life of the party alcoholics. This is scary as all hell, rotgut, slow suicide, walking dead, flop house alcoholics. Unlike writers so many other writers, St. John never tries to make these addicts look appealing. In this book, there is no upside to this brutal aspect of his life. Throughout the book, St. John survives a seemingly endless number of personal, financial and professional calamities, and amazingly keeps coming back for more. There are dicey landlords, shifty business partners, disastrous personal relationships that he can't seem to get away from and woeful medical problems. You read this book waiting for St. John's ship to come in. You wait for St. John to finally strike it rich in the end or garner some huge acclaim for his contributions to paint chemistry and the hot rod scene, but it never comes--as such. There is no saccharin-sweet, "fairy-tale" ending to this book. St. John somehow survives it all and finally reaches a point in his life where he can "give back" by supporting foster children and enjoying life as somewhat of an elder statesman of the hot rod scene. That's more than enough to have made it all worth his while. It Ain't Gonna Work is fast and loose with grammar, punctuation and spelling, and this certainly takes a little getting used to. The reader almost needs to learn to read english in St. John's unique syntax in order for the book to flow smoothly. But it's well worth the effort and ultimately, it fits in with the theme of the book. St. John's got his story to tell and he gets it all across in the best way he knows how--in a "beat poetry" style. Like jazz music, convention and rules are not necessarily a part of the process. St. John Morton is a self-described "known unknown," but whether or not this is true depends on who you ask. Hot rod artist Von Franco speaks highly of St. John, remembering his ads from Car Craft. Franco probably owns the largest collection of St. John art and memorabilia. "St. John and all those guys were beatniks going against the norm at the time," says Franco, "When you turn on the TV and it's Lawrence Welk and Howdy Doody, how do you make a living as a blue collar artist? It's impossible. He was on that dark side and no one would understand him." The self-published autobiography It Ain't Gonna Work is available for $25 postpaid from the author. For more info contact: St. John Morton / P.O. Box 1839 / Aptos, CA / 95001 Phone/fax: 831-684-2026 email: JohnandLindaM@msn.com
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