Hi there! We are David GoWell and Kent Davis.
We met in High School in 1970. Dave was a junior and Kent was a freshman, and Kent and his parents had just moved to New Jersey from Brussels, Belgium where Kent’s father had worked for several years as a representative of the Philadelphia Port Authority.
We met during a wild period in American history, especially for people our age. The Woodstock Festival was held just 19 months earlier, and though neither of us attended, some of our friends did, and we feel like it was a huge accomplishment of our generation. Psychedelic art & music were everywhere. The Moody Blues had released Days of Future Passed in 1967. Peter Max was producing psychedelic posters. Lots of people were talking about ‘Expanding Consciousness’. In 1970 George Harrison released My Sweet Lord which was about the Hindu god Krishna. It was an international #1 hit and the first solo single by a Beatle to do that. Nehru jackets became popular. We all started burning incense, whether we needed to or not. There was a vast upswelling of interest in Indian music, art, dress and religion.
In 1972 we enrolled in a class to learn Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Do you remember the Maharishi? He was the Guru of The Beach Boys, Mia Farrow, David Lynch, The Beatles…and us.
In 1968 Erich von Däniken had published Chariots of the Gods?, which postulated that many of the most mysterious places on Earth, including The Great Pyramid, were too advanced to be constructed by ancient people with primitive tools, and were more likely built by aliens with advanced technology. We both read this book and were fascinated by his descriptions of The Great Pyramid. This might have been the original spark that ignited our interest in ancient Egypt.
In 1973 David went to Switzerland to be trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation (TM).
In 1974, after Kent graduated from high school, we both went to Maharishi International University (MIU). We were there until July 1975, then we taught TM in Ocean City, NJ.
In 1976 Kent went to France to be trained as a teacher of TM and Dave went back to MIU for another 5 months. In one of the amazing coincidences that seem to be liberally scattered throughout our lives, Dave had just begun to study the art of magic. A week LATER he learned that Doug Henning, the most famous professional magician at the time, had recently donated a large library of books about magic to the school. Some of these were very rare, and/or very expensive, and between them all they contained just about every secret of professional magic, from obscure card slights to large, elaborate stage illusions. Dave studied these books obsessively and soon became President of the school’s Magic Club. In another of those coincidences, Doug Henning himself came to MIU and performed a show for the students.
Paula & Sandy Van Pelt & Susie Chow
In 1977 Dave & Doug Henning both attended a 6-Month advanced TM course in France. This was NOT a coincidence – Dave heard Doug was going and immediately signed up for the same course (‘Stalk’ much, Dave?!). During that period they had lots of time to talk about Magic and Dave began designing illusions for Doug’s next NBC TV Special. (DG: “Walking through a brick wall was MY idea!”)
When the course was over Doug hired Dave to be one of his ‘Illusion Engineers’ who were the team that designed, created (and sometimes operated) the major illusions on the show. Doug needed someone to help with purchasing and Dave ‘knew a guy’, so Kent came out to join Doug’s team in Van Nuys, CA. While Dave was busy in the shop building illusions, Kent spent his days driving all over the Los Angelos area purchasing anything Doug needed for the TV Special: bolts of glittery fabric, panels of two-way mirror, rolls of diffraction tape, spools of webbing, a pair of identical motorcycles…whatever Doug needed.
After the TV Special aired Doug got married and went on a long honeymoon – and we went back to New Jersey to start our company, ‘GoWell & Kent, The Illusion Engineers’.
We designed and built illusions for other magicians and began performing ourselves.
In the fall of 1978, we designed an entertainment robot and called him FUBAR, or Foobie. FUBAR did promotional appearances in shopping malls and trade shows. We built more robots and found funny people to help us run them
And THAT’s what we were doing in Brighton, England in December of 1981 before our insane dash along the coast, trying to get to Egypt as soon as we possibly could!
To get back to the story of our climb click HERE.
