When some artists face a radio station’s refusal to play their songs, they’ll sulk or try again elsewhere; when Gary S. Paxton faced a radio station refusing to play a song he produced, he orchestrated a massive protest parade with cheerleaders, elephants, and a run-in with the police.

Because if you’re going to express your discontent toward the greater industry machine that is the music business, you might as well make your point memorable.

The Protest Parade Prompted By Radio Station Rejection

Gary S. Paxton was a producer for novelty hits like Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” and the Hollywood Argyles’ “Alley Oop.” And as one might expect from somebody whose career cornerstones rested on the unpredictable and wacky, Paxton had a similar response when radio stations refused to play a song he had cut under the artist name Renfro & Jackson. The song in question was another novelty track, “Elephant Game (Part One).” Paxton credited Jesse Sailes as the drummer, Chuck Hamilton as the bassist, and the songwriter as Paul Nuckles, a Hollywood stuntman for Paul Newman.

“It was a pretty weird record,” Paxton later admitted. “I took it up to KFWB, and they told me, ‘That’s too Black. We don’t play Black records.’ So, we went and got a Volkswagen convertible, rented an elephant, got about fifteen pom-pom girls, and did a parade down Hollywood Boulevard, starting up by La Brea. We had the elephant pulling the VW and all these pom-pom girls dancing in front and the sides.”

The protest parade outfitted the elephant with its own signs of resistance that read, “KFWB Unfair to Elephants” and “KFWB Unfair to Renfro & Jackson.” Paxton continued, “We’re going down Hollywood, we had crowds gathering in front of the radio station, but then the elephant got nervous and started crapping in the street. They called a SWAT team, who arrested us and later made us go and clean up all the crap from the elephant. They actually took us to jail for a record promotion.”

That’s Not Even The Wildest Part Of Paxton’s Career

Police arrested Gary S. Paxton for bringing a pooping elephant to the front door of KFWB might sound like the peak of chaos in the producer and musician’s career. But it isn’t. From his early days as one-half of the 1950s pop duo Skip & Flip to his prolific producer career that received praises from the likes of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector to his sudden shift toward zealous Christianity in the 1970s, Paxton had no small shortage of interesting stories to come from his time in the music business.

But perhaps the most harrowing instance occurred two days before New Year’s Eve 1980, when three men attacked Paxton after pretending to need a jump-start to their car. The men shot Paxton several times, and the musician believed the attackers were hitmen hired by a singer who wanted to dissolve his contract with Paxton. “All the while during the attack, I continued to yell, ‘In the name of Jesus, you can’t kill me!’” He recalled, per the New York Times obituary for Paxton from 2016.

Indeed, whether armed assailants or a nervously defecating elephant shutting down a protest parade, Gary S. Paxton has one of the most unique musical careers, if not the most enduringly ubiquitous.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images