MAITREYA KALI
Craig Smith (April 25, 1945 – March 16, 2012) was an American musician, songwriter and actor. He began his career in the 1960s playing pop and folk music and appearing on The Andy Williams Show. After experimenting with drugs while travelling on the hippie trail, he suffered mental health problems which worsened over time. He released two solo albums, Apache and Inca, in the early 1970s under the names Maitreya Kali and Satya Sai Maitreya Kali. After spending nearly three years in prison for assaulting his mother, he spent the majority of the next 35 years homeless. (More from Wikipedia)
More recently, and representing 15 years of research, Mike Stax published another acclaimed book called Swim Through the Darkness: My Search for Craig Smith and the Mystery of Maitreya Kali, about a pop and folk musician named Craig Smith who worked with Andy Williams, Glen Campbell and the Monkees and later descended into mental illness and became a “psychedelic messiah” called Maitreya Kali, who released two albums in the early 1970’s.
(September 2017)
