Craig Smith Returns as the Messiah Maitreya Kali

You may not know his name, but once upon a time in the 1960s, Craig Smith seemed destined to be a household word. He wrote for Andy Williams, rubbed shoulders with the Monkees, and stepped onto stages where rising stars became icons. Then, as quickly as he rose, he vanished. The man who returned wasn’t Craig Smith anymore—at least not in his own words. He called himself Matraea, claimed mystical powers, and said he would be crowned king of the world. What happened between the spotlight and the shadows is a story of shimmering talent, a perilous detour along the Hippie Trail, and the brutal realities of mental illness and neglect. It’s a Hollywood story, yes, but also a human one—achingly familiar to anyone who has watched promise collide with fragility.

Craig’s ascent was dazzling and fast. He was the kind of songwriter who attracted the attention of giants. The Monkees were in his corner, he was appearing on television, and the industry treated him like a young demigod—because that’s what pop stars were in the mid-1960s.

But the momentum faltered when he set out in search of something more. Like thousands of young dreamers of his day, he headed east along the Hippie Trail—from Europe to Istanbul, then on through Iran to Afghanistan—fueled by hashish and near-daily doses of LSD. In Kandahar, something terrible happened that shattered him.

He returned to the United States in early 1969 as a different person: volatile, grandiose, and convinced he’d been chosen by unseen beings. Friends and family tried to help. Music steadied him—for a time. He poured himself into songs and two extraordinary private-press albums, Apache and Inca. But the center didn’t hold. Violence, prison, homelessness, and decades of isolation followed, ending with his death alone in a park in 2013.

The Meteoric Rise of a 1960s Prodigy

Before the fall, there was a young man doing everything right. Craig Smith’s early career checked all the boxes for 1960s success. He wrote songs that landed with established stars, performed on television, and built momentum with boosters in high places. The Monkees—cultural juggernauts at the time—promoted him as an act to watch. Doors swung open. In the era of Top 40 radio and TV variety shows, a smile, a tune, and a little luck could carry you far, and Craig had more than a little of each.

What made Craig compelling wasn’t just his proximity to fame, but the depth of his musicality. Friends remembered that the moment he picked up a guitar, his entire demeanor softened. He could be playful, focused, and startlingly present. The promise in his writing was obvious, and for a few bright years, it looked like he would convert that potential into enduring stardom.

The Hippie Trail and a Breaking Point

Then came the journey—part pilgrimage, part escape—that drew so many in the late ’60s. Craig went from Europe to Istanbul and fell in with fellow travelers. Together they drifted across borders, hitchhiking, taking trains, living on a few dollars, chasing experience and meaning. Through Iran and into Afghanistan they went, settling for a time in Kandahar, where Craig was entranced by local musicians.

This is where the story turns. Accounts say he spent those weeks smoking hash and dosing himself with LSD almost daily. One day in the Kandahar bazaar, he grabbed a knife—perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of confusion—and was chased by a group of men. What followed, according to Craig’s own later account, was robbery, a beating, and rape. He awoke in a mental asylum in Kandahar, stripped of everything including his passport, money, and guitar. The young artist who’d once glided through Hollywood’s doors navigated a hellish labyrinth just to get home.

A New Persona Emerges

When Craig finally returned to the U.S. in early 1969, those who loved him barely recognized the person they met. He said he was no longer Craig Smith; his name was Matraea (sometimes rendered Matraea Khali). He believed mystical beings had spoken to him in meditation, declaring he would be crowned king of the world in the year 2000. He fixated on reincarnation, claimed lineage with Buddha and Jesus, and sought meaning in every breeze, glance, and coincidence. If someone bent down to pick something up near him, he read it as a bow. A gust of wind through the leaves? He’d say he caused it.

Even as friends saw him unravel, they tried to remain patient, to help. But his moods swung hard and dark. He mumbled about knives and death. He could be physically intimidating. He attacked his father on one occasion and was committed to a hospital’s psychiatric ward more than once. This was a time when the culture still interpreted mental illness through a simplistic “drug burnout” lens, and while continued LSD use certainly didn’t help, something deeper had shifted. Whatever happened on that trip, whether it triggered a latent condition or compounded his trauma, the Craig who came back from the Hippie Trail struggled with severe, persistent mental illness for the rest of his life.

Friends, Fame, and Fear: Hollywood Turns Away

In the background, the late 1960s and early ’70s turned darker. The Manson Family murders cast a long, eerie shadow over Los Angeles. Craig had earlier crossed paths with that scene at parties in the orbit of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, where he and a friend found the vibe off-putting and left. But after his return, he seemed to absorb the era’s paranoid energy. He marked his forehead with a black widow spider tattoo—highly unusual in 1969—and adopted a persona that disturbed those around him. Friends drew their curtains to find him standing outside in the morning, staring at the house. Some felt hunted by coincidence: he always seemed to know where to find them.

People pulled back—friends, collaborators, even early champions in the industry. The message was quiet but decisive: they couldn’t have him around. It’s an old story in Hollywood. Talent opens doors, but unpredictability—especially of the frightening kind—closes them.

Music as Lifeline: The Apache/Inca Testament

Through it all, music remained the lifeline. When Craig played, he became calm, grounded, almost himself again. He wrote prolifically and, with a clarity that’s heartbreaking in hindsight, set about preserving his legacy. He assembled two private-press albums—Apache and Inca—gathering what he considered his finest work. He included earlier tracks recorded with his bandmates and songs produced in association with figures like Michael Nesmith. Between the tunes, he wove snippets of street conversations from his travels and photographs from South and Central America, Peru, Argentina, Brazil—breadcrumbs of a life he feared he was losing to the haze.

He pressed a small number of copies—no one knows how many—and distributed them by hand: sold on the street, given to friends. They were never stocked in record stores. Today, only a handful of originals are known to exist. On the album art he scrawled a stark plea: “I die for this album, so bless it.” It reads like an artist’s last testimony.

Collapse, Prison, and the Long Road of Homelessness

Within months of finishing Apache/Inca, everything collapsed. Craig suffered a complete breakdown, attacked his mother, shattered every pane of glass in the family home, fled, and was arrested. He was tried for attempted murder—a charge later reduced to assault—and given an indeterminate sentence of six months to life in 1973. In prison, his brother later recalled, he was heavily medicated, a common practice of the time to maintain control rather than provide care.

When he was released, there was no net to catch him. He became homeless and remained so for decades—thirty years and more on the streets of Studio City and North Hollywood, the same neighborhoods where he’d grown up and chased success. He avoided shelters and the informal social world many unhoused people create to survive. Police and neighbors knew him by sight. He kept to himself, rarely speaking.

Years later, writer and researcher Mike Stax, author of Swim Through the Darkness, tried tirelessly to find Craig and connect him with the royalties his songs were still earning. People would spot him: outside a Starbucks, near a pizza place, sitting quietly on a sidewalk. Stax would drive hours to meet him, only to miss him by minutes. Messages reached Craig—someone wants to help you—but that connection never clicked. In 2013, Craig died in a sleeping bag in a park. His remains sat unclaimed in the morgue. A life once lit by stage lights faded in near-total solitude.

Why Craig Smith’s Story Matters Today

Craig Smith’s journey is many things at once: a cautionary tale about fame’s fragility, a time capsule of the 1960s counterculture, and a stark illustration of how trauma and untreated mental illness can derail a brilliant life. It is also uncomfortably universal. As Stax notes, any of us can turn left instead of right and find our lives forever altered. The Hippie Trail isn’t what breaks people today, but the hinges are the same: an accident, an assault, a bad mix of chemicals, a system that can’t catch you when you fall.

There’s a creative paradox here, too. Even as Craig unraveled, his music held him together—if only for the length of a song. That’s true for many people living with schizophrenia or other severe mental illnesses: structured tasks, art, and routine can bring focus and quiet the mental noise. It’s not a cure, but it can be a lifeline. Craig’s Apache/Inca albums aren’t just artifacts; they’re evidence of that lifeline at work.

We also have to talk about stigma and systems. Craig’s era conflated “drug burnout” with mental illness, which meant empathy often came second to judgment. We know better now—but our systems still fail people who need intensive, sustained support. Family and friends alone aren’t a substitute for accessible, trauma-informed care, safe housing, and paths back into community.

How to Explore His Work and Support the Living

If Craig Smith’s story moves you, there are a few meaningful next steps. First, learn more. Mike Stax’s book, Swim Through the Darkness (Process Media/Feral House), is the most carefully researched account of Craig’s life and music. It’s available online and in bookstores, and Stax’s magazine, Ugly Things, offers further context on overlooked artists and scenes. If you’re curious about the music itself, keep an eye out for references to Apache and Inca in collector circles; though the original pressings are scarce, discussion and analysis of the songs can be found online.

Second, consider the living echoes of Craig’s story around you. The person sitting quietly on a park bench might be carrying a whole album’s worth of brilliance and pain you can’t see. Supporting local mental health organizations, advocating for housing-first initiatives, and learning basic strategies for compassionate engagement with people in crisis are tangible ways to make a difference. If someone in your life is struggling, encourage professional help and, when possible, show up consistently; sometimes, presence is the strongest bridge.

Finally, if the mysterious and the forgotten call to you, explore projects like Things Visible and Invisible, which seek out histories that don’t fit neatly into mainstream narratives. Stories like Craig Smith’s aren’t just niche curiosities—they’re mirrors we hold up to our culture to ask what we value and whom we’re willing to leave behind.

The Takeaway

Craig Smith’s life was a comet: bright, brief, and hard to track once it slipped beyond the horizon. He was a handsome kid with a guitar and a grin who caught the ear of the Monkees and Andy Williams, then a traveler searching for expansion who met horror on a dusty trail, then a man tethered to music as the rest of his world fell away. He was also a neighbor, a brother, a boyfriend who loved and frightened and couldn’t always tell which was which. He deserved better. Most people do.

Remember him not just for the tragedy, but for the songs, for the courage it took to press those records and scrawl that raw, prophetic line—“I die for this album, so bless it.” Bless the album, yes. But more than that, let his story nudge you toward compassion—in how you listen, how you judge, and how you act. If a wrong turn can change a life, so can a right one made at the right moment. Be the person who chooses it.

📕 Guest: Mike Stax

Mike is the respected editor of "Ugly Things" magazine, a publication focused on overlooked and obscure bands from the '60s and '70s. He’s written extensively for publications like Mojo and Rolling Stone, co-authored multiple books, and is the author of "Swim Through the Darkness: My Search for Craig Smith and the Mystery of Maitreya Kali."

🌍 Website: https://ugly-things.com/

📚 Book Info: Swim Through the Darkness (Feral House) https://feralhouse.com/swim-through-the-darkness/