A Distant View

Audio Recording of Mazzeo storytelling

So that one’s on. And let’s get this one going. Testing +1 23. 1 2 3. Yeah.

Looks like it’s sticking here pretty good. It’s not doing much relying here. +1 23. 1 2, 3. Yeah.

Just pick it up. That’s all we need. Right? The gas. That’s all.

Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I was thinking about the, Wherever we start, we can go forward and backwards from there anyway. So Yeah. You have this thing, West Coast pop band experiment the West Coast pop art experimental band.

Yeah. The West Coast pop art experimental band. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That was, when I got out of the coast guard Yeah. And staying there once again with Margo at her place. And, at the time, we’re hiding Ken Kesey in our house. Hiding in the basement.

Yeah. Okay. I got out in August of sixty six Oh, okay. From the coast guard. Okay.

So August. And, I’ve had a pretty good time. I bought a a 1949 Packard for a hundred bucks as I as I got off the coast guard base. So there there was a car lot with a ’49 Packard. It just didn’t have any breaks and everything.

Big cars? Oh, it’s huge. And, it it it made it over the Bay Bridge pretty good. I got to Margo’s, and she was up on top of Alpine Terrace, way up high on this hill. Okay.

There’s this little street that goes, like, 15 blocks down to Market Street in San Francisco down to Boyes Street. It’s a anyway, so I park up there, and I park and go in. The next day, Keasy’s there and stuff, and I I get this really cool front bedroom with a king-size bed and everything. So I’m in. So does she she sets you up there?

She, like, lets you She’s like my sister at that point. I’ve been living with her since 1963. Oh, okay. So So you guys are real My whole four years in the coast guard, I was living with her and three other thousand dollar night call dealers. Oh, okay.

I mean, I was a little sailor artist love toy. And and, you know, I would not have to think, wow. I wonder what all the other sailors are doing tonight. I probably know what you’re doing. No.

Not even close. So, anyway, so I get there. I just about the car real quick. I get the second day I do that. It’s parked up for up on the hill.

No problem. Next day, I hop in in my my car. I think I go down to Fisherman’s Wharf or something. Yeah. I hop in.

I go to to the street. I turn right down to Boise, straight on down. Yeah. Start to go down. Big heavy car.

No brakes. Zero brakes. And it had the transmission that you could either push these buttons or use this weird shift. Packard have weird kind of shifting device where you could make it automatic. Buttons.

Yeah. Yeah. You could either make it auto semi automatic or stick. It got caught between that in neutral. So I’m going down this hill in a three ton vehicle.

Uh-huh. 17 blocks. And and the stop signs of, you know, there’s cross traffic and all kinds of shit. You know? It’s it’s it’s and I I I couldn’t jump out of the car because I it weighed so much.

I knew it would kill somebody. You know? It’d be out of control going down this 17 to 20 blocks straight on down this hill. Right. The you know, a cable car would have a hard time getting up and down off it.

And, so I just had to ride it out. So I just screamed the worst swear words I possibly possibly could out of the top of my lungs Yeah. And rode it and steered it. And somehow, I made it through every intersection without hitting anybody. I it was a it was a day afternoon.

You know? It was a busy day. There. Oh, yeah. San Francisco.

Okay. And, I make it all the way down. Uh-huh. And finally, it flattens out, and I go about another three blocks because I’m going pretty fast. And I I finally slowed down enough that I can make a right turn, and I just figured anybody who saw me just do that.

Uh-huh. Let’s call the police, and I gotta get off the speed. It’s pushing impossible. Yeah. You know, otherwise, if they were gonna get arrested or something.

So as soon as I could, I made a right turn, and I was able to pull it over and rub up against the curb and come to a stop part. I thought you were gonna say you somehow tried to do the gear switch. I was trying all the way down. No. No.

No. Not a you know, a parking spot and on the curb, there was one there. I pulled in, and I rubbed the wheels against the curb to stop. You know? Came to a stop.

And, I I shown the car to my brother-in-law in in, in the East Bay the the day before I went over to Marla. So he had seen that he liked the car. Yeah. So I called my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, and I said, you want the car? I I paid a hundred bucks for it.

Don’t even worry about paying me back. It’s yours. Here’s where it’s parked. It has no brakes. And, it almost killed me in another Yeah.

I’ll be doing that thing again. So that was me getting out of the Coast Guard meeting the Margo’s. I’m there for about a month having a good time, maybe maybe three weeks. And this band comes into town from LA, the West Coast Pop Art Experience. Oh, okay.

And they’ve got this guy named Bud White. Uh-huh. And he’s, he’s an instrument guy from LA. Uh-huh. And, but he had put together this little light show kind of thing.

Uh-huh. And and the band that have it was, like, one of the first bands that have their own light show. That’s the pop art experience. That’s where the pop art is also. That’s where the pop art experimental band thing comes in.

Right? The only problem is Bud had sort of a flourishing instrument rental thing happening Uh-huh. In in LA. Uh-huh. And he did and the band sucked.

And so he just he did not wanna be their light show guy. Yeah. He he so they they bought all the equipment from him. Yeah. And he said, I’ll do this.

They they booked it at the arc in Sausalito, and he said, he said, I’ll I’ll get you there, but I I wanna find somebody to review. Kinda have some equipment and stuff? He had tons of equipment. He had strobe lights. He had fog machines.

He had a mirror ball. He had spotlights. He had, four carousel projectors, each with those 67, rotating slide things like carousel. Yeah. Yeah.

Four of those had two sixteen millimeter filled loop, six 16 millimeter projectors Wow. Which I used to do in high school. Instead of going to studies class, I went to Audio Visual Study Hall and I would show movies in homegirls x and flip with the girls I’m showing in movies in high school. So I never done those kind of things. And I was a solo number in the coast guard.

So Margo, the guy, you know, they said, yeah. Bud doesn’t wanna do it anymore. And, you know, we gotta find somebody who’s somewhat artistic. You know? And Margo goes, Maz, he’s he’s an artist.

Right. You know? Yeah. He’s he’s with a son of an I’m sure that he could he could run on that crew. So I worked I they they asked him, and I I went, well, I’ll show up at the ark.

And Bud Bud was there, and he showed me how, you know, how he kind of had his light show structured. And Yeah. And, I went, cool. And then I took the job. And so then that’s He just started right from there.

I started, doing my first gigs were at the at the Arc in Sausalito. And, by then, it was August it was about the September. Uh-huh. It wasn’t October yet. But they they had a light show, and the arch was an after hours music jam club.

Okay. And they didn’t have any light show. Only Bill Graham and Chet Helms and the big guys in the city had light shows. And they all have five or six guys running all the different light show stuff Uh-huh. To fill the auditorium.

Okay. But but it made this little plywood, kind of control panel kind of thing. And There’s a one that’s designed to be one person. So Yeah. He has a one man, so I can only light show.

And I was base I took over Uh-huh. And became literally the first one man, I can only ride show. Okay. You know? And then I went to the Midwest with that band in, in in January of sixty seven.

January first of ’60 ‘7, I left the arc in Sausalito. But while I was at the arc, Lee Michaels was there, Jan Joplin was there, Moby Grape. At the Arc? Oh, yeah. They were all they were all brand new, all starting.

Oh, wow. In fact, I was in the room at the Arc when Matt Matthew Cates ran the Arc. Uh-huh. Matthew, k a t z. And he he was originally put together the Jefferson Airplane.

And and Skippy Spencer was the drummer at that time. He was the Jefferson Airplane. Skippy didn’t wanna be a drummer. He wanted to get he’s a good he liked guitar. He wanted to stand up and and sing his songs Yeah.

And not sit back on drums. So he did he he wanted to leave the Airplane, and Bill Graham saw an opportunity because the Jefferson airplane was starting to really take off in San Francisco. They were just beginning, but they were getting a very quick huge following. Right. And so Bill Graham took the management of the Jefferson Airplane from Matthew.

He said, come with me. You know, I mean, Matthew and Matthew is Matthew is a trip. He’s a and I’ll tell you stories about Matthew. Matthew in the second here. Matthew, so Matthew was you know, Matthew and Skippy left the airplane, You know?

Right. Skippy because he wanted to, Matthew because he had no choice. And, they they went over the Ark, and then Matthew said, I’m gonna put together a band that’s even bigger than the Jefferson Airplane. Okay. And yet Matthew had a stroke to put in the other bands.

He put together it’s A Beautiful Day. He had things that he was, you know, coworking tower power, and then he put together a lot of lot of little bands. Yeah. You know, he was pretty good at putting He just wanted to own every single person’s soul that Oh, okay. Stuff.

That kinda guy. Just total of his job. And and he was kind of bald. He had black hair and and sideburns and, and a goatee. Just a sort of a devil’s goatee and it bald on top.

And when he got really mad, his whole bald head would turn red like the skin of the devil. And these these z blood veins on the side of his head would start pulsing and these lightning bolts, blood veins that there he’d be screaming and stuff. I mean, he did this with us and Moby Grape a lot, you know. Yeah. We were all mellow getting high having a good time and he was like, yeah.

He turned out to you guys. But he was always everybody was in ’67 and ’66. It was real popular to dose people with LSD. You put a little bit on the side of a Coke and say, here, I’m gonna slug a Coke, and then they’ll laugh twenty minutes later when they’re, you know, hallucinating. That was like sport in a way.

Yeah. Matthew was definitely afraid that we were gonna dose him. Alright. So whenever he’d get mad at us, we’d the if it’s the Charles Van Damme ferry boat at Gate 5 in Sausalito, which was an old abandoned ferry boat. We converted it into a semi restaurant with a little stage after hours club called The Arc.

Up on the Second Floor, there was offices and stuff, and then there was a wheelhouse up there. The maintenance guys slept in the wheelhouse. And, and what happened, there was a kitchen and they would make huevos rancheros every day at the ark and and feed all the musicians who are at the jam club after hours jam club. At three in the morning, they did free Waver’s Rancho’s food. Yeah.

Everybody all the musicians, every so Right. Dancing were playing around the area where they got off their gig at ten or eleven at night. Yeah. We go to Sausalito. They’d all jam together, get hot in, and and get free food at three in the morning.

Yeah. So that was that was our only salad. We never really got money, but we were young. That was really Just the food, was it? Yeah.

We got food. Yeah. So and I had this funky old houseboat on just down the docks from the ark, and everybody used it as a crash pad and stuff. And it was horrible, but it was. Anyway, Matthew would have us up in the Second Floor yelling and screaming because he wanted he he owned the name Moby Grape, which I thought was a shitty name.

It’s a it’s it’s a terrible joke. Right? What’s purple hangs on a tree and homes are some Moby Grape or something. Some stupid joke like that. And I just went, man, they got a really good band and they’re naming it after this stupid joke.

You know? So there was there was a little bit of us. So but when Matthew got really mad, he’s like, he’d be talking and lightning bolts going and he’s looking like that. Then he’d pick up a glass ashtray. There’s eight of us sitting around this long table.

He’s at the end throwing a tantrum, Picks up a glass assuring and, like, smashes it on the table, you know, to make point. I mean, he did shit like that. And, you know, we’re like, woah. That’s heavy. You know?

We’re sitting back. It’s kinda mellow and and, but then he would, like, grab somebody’s glass of water or bottle or bottle of water on the table and take us, like, you know, because it all worked up. Yeah. And when he did, we’d go, oh, Matthew. You didn’t just drink out of Bob’s bottle, did you?

He goes, yeah. He goes, oh, no. We that is a bunch of acid in it. You acid, you fight out of it. Yeah.

You you you know, how can you do it? Why didn’t somebody stop me? I don’t yeah. He gets all pissed off, and he’d run-in the bathroom, and we do him at the toilet, hunched over trying to vomit as if that would do anything. But it was really cool because whenever he really got mad at us, we could make him throw up anytime we wanted to.

You know? So that was stuff. It’s kinda fun that we had with the arc itself. So we The bands are great. Moby, great.

I was in the room. I have to just go in there. You wanna just keep going? Or Yeah. Sure.

You can just keep going. I’ll just keep going. I’ll catch up later. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Anyways, so I’m in the room. And, who am I saying now? See, it was a minute. Let’s try.

Oh, I was in the room when, Matthew brought in all these musicians from Seattle and then from some clubs down in the Peninsula. Bob Mosley was playing these, clubs down there, the bass player. And he put them all together, and they became Moby Grape. I was there the day they were sitting up there all meeting each other for the first time, and it’s a five piece band. And I’m doing the light shows with the West Coast Pop Art experimental band, but they’re not there that Matthew had me stay with the light show equipment.

So that so he had a that he got a light show, and I got fed at three in the morning and got to hang out with a lot of much better musicians, even though I did have to go to LA on weekends to play with the West Coast pop art band. But, so I’m up there, and all these musicians get together to be Moby Grape, and they’re all meeting each other for the first time. They’re all meeting each other for the first time up there in Moby Grape, and, and it’s a five piece band. And I’m sitting there because I don’t have anything else to do, and that’s where they have the guys are coming from a new band. So I’m sitting up there to see who they are.

And then and, we’re all sitting around this table, and they’re just meeting each other. I have Bob Mosley, Skippy Spence, I live up Don Stevenson, Jerry Miller, We’re all meeting each other. Some for Seattle, some are from the Mid Peninsula, the musicians. And, and I’m sitting there. Right?

And they’re going, you know, Matthew told them they were gonna have this five piece band. You know? And so they’re counting, and there’s six people there. And they’re kinda like going and I can kinda see them turning on, you know? And finally, they kinda, like, all focus on me.

You know? The drums, guitar, bass. Guitar. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I’m trying to figure it out. Right? And and Bob looks over at me. First first time I ever he ever even talked to me or he goes looks at me and goes, are you the lead singer?

Because he couldn’t figure out an instrument that I could have been playing. Yeah. And I thought, well, I now I thought, man, at that time, if I would have said, yeah. I haven’t stayed the fuck out of my light when I’m singing or something. I probably would be famous by now.

But instead of that, I went, no. I’m the light show guy. And they were, oh, thank god. And I sat back, but we don’t have to split another share of our brother and stuff. That so that was kind of a funny little moment between here and it’s on.

I became real close with those guys. I’ve lived with them and, you know, they’re good guys. Oh, yeah. Right up until I had to leave in, in January to go back to Chicago for six months. The West Coast pop art experimental band signed a contract.

They left their manager in LA and, signed a contract with a booking agency in Chicago. And I literally, because we had a light show, there were no light shows in Chicago in ’19 in the whole Midwest. And so I was literally the very first light show to to be in the Midwest in 1967. Okay. From January until June, my contract six month contract that was up in June.

And those guys, they hated me, the band, by that point because all our bookings were because of the live show. It wasn’t because of the band. Right? Okay. Were they a very good band?

No. No. No. No. No.

In fact, you you I’ll turn you on. I never heard of them. No. You couldn’t be able to hear them because you could you could listen to them. You could get them on YouTube and stuff and listen to them.

No. Their their biggest side their biggest thing, their apex of their entire show was Help. I’m a Rock by the Mothers of Invention, which is the song which happens. It goes, Help. I’m a rock.

Help. I’m a rock. Right. They would their father was a famous composer, Roy Harris. The two brothers of the West Coast pop art band was Sean Harris and Danny Harris.

Okay. Their father was Roy Harris. He wrote the American Folk Ballets. He’s in the encyclopedia for being one of the Oh, wow. I mean, he was a music professor at UCLA.

Very, very established, very upper level. He had a full ball Baldwin scholarship or sponsorship for all at p n. He can he he get anything. So he and he got his kids in on the sponsorship. So we had Baldwin exterminator amplifier, Baldwin guitars, any any kind of Baldwin anything Baldwin made.

We could go in any place in The United States, walk into a place in the Baldwin’s dealership and say, we’ll take that, that, and that, and they’d give it to us. We’d sign for it, never give them a penny, and leave. Wow. Right? So they would destroy the amplifiers.

During the psychedelic part of the stage, these exterminators in 1967 were gonna outdo the marshals. So they were, like, five and a half feet tall, these big giant blue giant exterminators speakers. We had two of them Uh-huh. On stage, all time. They would take it right in the middle, and they throw them off the stage, push them over, cause cause them to distort themselves, to blow themselves up, you know, because it was psychedelic, man.

I had the strobe lights going in the fog machine. You know? The guy all the all the all the kids would be I put the strobe lights over the dance floor, which was right in front of where my table with all my projectors were going on the stage. So I could I could hit the dance floor with the fog machine and fog up the feet of the dancers and then that rides and then the strobe lights everywhere in the psychedelic strobe fog would be dancing. The kids loved it.

They Yeah. They were really cool. You know? But meanwhile, there the bands up there, they’re just, like, putting their guitars up next to the apps, letting them distorted feedback, and they’ll go out looking for girls to to make out with with six minutes, like, an all these things happening. You know?

It was horrible, man. Anyway, they they destroyed lots of the group. By the end of six months Uh-huh. They started to say, we’re the band and you’re the puke that is gonna run the lights and so you have to, like, you know, clean up the trailer and do these tasks. You gotta puke for us if you’re gonna go out on the road.

I said, okay. Yeah. Cool. I’ll write them in the morning. You know?

Once I got out there and realized what was happening, you know? We we opened up for the animals. The first time the animals Yeah. Yeah. The first time they played in The US was in the Northwestern University in Chicago.

Uh-huh. My our booking agency booked it, and they booked it because they had a light show for the animals, and the animals wanted to have a light show. Did you actually do a light show for the animals? Yeah. They loved it.

And they’re and later later on, years ten, fifteen, twenty years later, Eric Bergen got a hold of me Uh-huh. And said, you know, your light show in Chicago is the reason why we we put together a light show after after that. We had a light show for, like, five years after that everywhere we went. And, you know, it’s because, you know, you’re shit. You’re a light show.

Yeah. Stuff like that. So we we and the winner of sixty seven in Chicago was the worst blizzard in forty seven years. That mean, the snow was eight feet high on the sides of the in in town in Chicago. The agency rented us a a penthouse on the corner of Delaware And Rush Street on this old hotel for three story hotel that had a penthouse on the roof.

So we had a penthouse, and and Delaware and Russia is a cool section of Chicago, and we could literally buy a matchbox full of pot. We couldn’t get pot anywhere in the Midwest except for Chicago Chicago. Or Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence, Kansas has a university, and it also has something very rare in Kansas called a hill. And they had this hill.

Oh, yeah. And there were houses on the hill. Houses on it. And I had all these hippie you go log here and hippie guys had this, like, build big old Victorian up there. We we did shows in in Lawrence, and we did a few of them because it was a cool place.

But after the show, I take the light show equipment up to the house, their house, and we put up the strobe lights and they’d party all night long. And so, you know, Lawrence was an oasis in the cultural oasis in the Midwest. And everywhere else in the Midwest in ’67, We were long haired hippies bringing LSD to the children, you know, in in the Midwest, and they did not like long haired hippie people in the Midwest in 1967. We got run off the road by drunk truck drivers. We got, we would get served.

We’d go into a restaurant. I’d even go in with cops that were doing the that were doing the security for the concerts then. Yeah. Yeah. I’d go into a restaurant with them after we did our sound checks.

They we’d all go to eat. I’d go sit with the two with the two cops, the uniformed cops. The waitress would come up and go, well, I’ll serve you and you, but ain’t nowhere in hell I’m gonna serve him. You know? I could get served like that.

I got tickets for walking across the street in Cedar Rapids, Idaho because this woman rolled down the window and started yelling at me that I was, like, this horrible thing in her hometown and, you know, the devil was gonna get me. And all of a sudden, you know, she’s yelling. The guy in front of her stops and she hits the guy. And I kinda check, I go, serves you right, you old bitty. You know?

And I start to walk. And there’s a cock, like, kiddie court across the street Uh-huh. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he and, Iowa. Iowa.

And, he comes out with the cop. He’s talking to her. He’s talking to the guy she hit. All three of them are talking. Then they all look up, and they look at me, and I’m, like, a half a block away by that time.

But the cop comes over and he gets me Uh-huh. And he writes me a ticket for unruly appearance creating an accident. To this day, I’m still want I did not go to court on that, and I’m a wanted man in that case. Yeah. So if I ever go back to the to the Iowa, man, you know, they could they could put me away for a day and a half or two.

Appearance. Underly appearance creating and, creating an accident. I got Do you have long hair? Oh, fuck. Yeah.

I had long I I wore I wore Psychedelic glow in the dark, pants. You know, there were things that were fluorescent acrylic. So when my black lights were on, I was all glowing. You had you had that. I I had this I had these t shirts where I got American flags Mhmm.

And I sewed them upside down Uh-huh. On on on the other front of my shirt. Right? We stopped at a tourist place along the road somewhere, and they had cedar cedar branches, slices of cedar branches with pictures of Jesus painted on them, but I wore one of those around my neck. I mean yeah.

Yeah. Other the other band members, except that that band was so bad, they never had a real drummer. The whole time we’re in the Midwest, they would go to the union halls of the area we were playing and pick a union scale drummer. You know, all he had to do was play a four four beat. It didn’t matter if it was good, bad, or anywhere because even bad fit right on into what they were doing.

And if it was good, the guy never lasted more than he at the break, he would, like, take off all those. Know? Yeah. So I’m hanging out with his family. So that was our first that was my very first tour.

And it was it was a challenge, man. We we played in Peoria, Illinois, where the guy we played at Jackie Gleason Bowling Alley Bar Uh-huh. In Peoria, Illinois. They paid us $3,500 Wow. For a week.

That’s good. We had to play we had to play six shows for six nights, but Jack or Jackie Gleason owned it. But their big guy that they used to pay that money to was Wayne Cochran. I don’t know if you remember Wayne Cochran, but he had this big bouffant kind of blonde blonde, weird, duck tail Yeah. Hooded, hooded, hooded, greaser haircut.

And he’s he’s saying some rock and roll songs. He had a couple rock and roll Midwest hits and stuff. Rock and building kinda shit. Yeah. And right over the and the stage was, like, up behind the bar about four feet up, right, was the was the floor of the stage.

And the stage was so it only had about a six foot high c six six six ceiling. That’s just You can just squeeze because they they It’s kinda like it had a scene. He just he had a lead singer. It was just he could just get his hairdo in underneath him. But above where he would sing Yeah.

They put the there was a square hole there, and they put they would put in the sheet rock, just sheet rock. Because at the end of Wayne Cochran’s sets, they loved him at that bowling alley bar. He was huge. They they did. You know?

And what they really loved when he finished his set, on his very last note of his last song, he would hold his mic dramatically, take his fist, and punch it through the ceiling. And everybody went nuts. It was like, wow. He went through the ceiling again. Maybe he loves us.

You know? It was, like, huge. With us, it was like, what the hell are those long haired hippie dudes doing? I mean, the psychedelics pulls you. Check your drink.

It’s probably on the acid. Yeah. Let’s kill them. You know? Let’s get them out.

Get them out. The trailers out back. You know? You know, they’re making plans on on doing this arm and shit. The bartender was instructed to have this sawed off baseball bat about two and a half, two feet long that he kept behind the bar.

And when these guys and I he made me I usually would be back behind the bar shooting on the stage. Said, no. You’re not safe out there. You have to be with me set up right here and shoot real close to him because I need to be to get between you and these guys. So I’m behind the bar with that guy.

It’s squeezed over in the corner trying to do my stuff. And these guys would get drunk, and they were like monsters. They dress like these like these these little monster guys. Right? And they had they had these big these Polish girlfriends with big blonde bouffant hair hair their hair needs were as big as their boobs.

You know? Sitting at the bar When sometimes they get drunk and they decide to impress their girlfriend by climbing over the bar and and killing me. And they’d start to climb over. Once or twice this happened in the week, when they started to time over, the guy at the bar chain pulled out the baseball bat, and he just hit them over the head Right. And pushed them back into their seat.

And they’d be, like, fucking unconscious. They’d be, like, go, Johnny, wake up. That little thing just happened. I’d be going home. God.

So we’re we’re at thirty minutes. So That’s okay. Let’s go five more minutes. Okay. So we’ll finish this thing and then we’ll keep it going because we’re on the wrong.

Anyway I just have to go right here real quick. So oh, okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. This little mark right?

This little It’s gonna cut off a little bit. Can I click off a little bit? Yeah. So we finished the gig. It’s a horrible gig.

We’re out of it. You know? We’re in a blizzard with the snow. We’re we we’re pulling a 33 foot trailer behind the brand new station wagon everywhere. We do have two engines on the on the station wagon.

But we’re all squeezed in that 33 foot trailer of the van. And then, when the snow blizzard there, you know, the snow’s like six That was like a wintertime. Oh, January. February. No.

No. The worst blizzard to hit the Midwest Oh, for the Chevy years. Yeah. No. Everywhere.

Oh, man. Is this things that we’ve got in? So we finish up, and, we’re done the last gig. So Sean and I go back into the into the manager’s office to get our check, you know, $3,500. So I have we go back there, and the manager’s there, and there’s a sheriff sitting with him.

Yeah. And, and we we go, okay. Well, we’re done. We’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna just pack up and take off here. We just came to get the check.

Yeah. And he goes, wait a minute. This officer needs to talk to you. He goes, guess what we found in your trailer while you were in here? And we went, we didn’t hardly have any any pot or nothing.

You know? We had a safe Bernard puppy. You know? You found the our dog, you know? And they said, no.

No. We found these two girls. They said, come on in. And these two 15 year old girls come in. Uh-huh.

And they said, yeah. We found these two girls in the trailer, and, you guys are going to jail for for a long, long time. And, you know, and these guys and and the girls go, yes. And, because you guys don’t. And, and and the the the the club manager, yes, yes, wait a minute, officer.

Let me talk to him. So I’m gonna read him, Kevin. The officer goes, okay. And you guys, look at I can get you out of this. They’re not gonna get you a check.

I’m not gonna give you a check. Just get the Alright? And I went, okay, you know. Good deal. We’re gonna live.

I’m cool. Let’s go. And Sean, the leader of the band goes, no fucking way. We’re not gonna leave. Send us to jail.

We’ve got lawyers. Send us to jail. You owe us a check. We’re not leaving here until we get that check. We worked our butt off for a week to get that check, and we’re not leaving here without and I’m going, oh my god.

He’s getting us killed. We’re gonna end up in the snowbank out here. They won’t find it’s still springtime. You know? He pulled it off, though.

Like, the guy finally, like, looked around and didn’t cock on the Yeah. And and, apparently, the two girls were the owner of the club’s nieces. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was the other club that kinda organized that one.

Absolutely. He was gonna keep that $3,500 for himself. 3,500 in 1967 was a lot of money. You know? And, anyways, that was those are the kind of things that happened to me.

And because of that, later on, when I wrote managing famous bands and stuff, they all went, oh, fuck. You were in the Midwest in ’67? I was, yeah. It was my first he goes, yeah. I played a folk game through that.

I didn’t think I’d get on a live, you know. I didn’t know we were there for six months. At the end of six months, I the Mothers of Invention, which I was friends with earlier in my relationship with the pop art band in LA Yeah. Which I’ll tell you about. I know those are fun stories too.

But, the Mothers of Invention came through, and and I just had my last argument in June. My contract was up in June. This was, like, June 5 or something, and I was just you know, I was it felt I didn’t wanna be with these guys. So I just the mothers came through and said, what’s happening? So I guess I’m going back to LA.

I’m finishing up with these guys. And Jimmy Cole Black is one of the drummers with the mothers. Really cool guy. He goes, there’s Frank got us the Garrick Theater in Greenwich Village. We’re all gonna go there.

We’re gonna live at the Chelsea Hotel. Come. He goes, I got my wife and kids, but you can stay in our room. We’ll fix you up a place in the living room. Oh, yeah.

Come on. Come with us. And I went, cool. And so I took off of there, and I went to New York. And from there, I, met Paul Butterfield who turned me on who we became really good friends.

Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Yeah. And, he hooked me up with some rich kids who wanted to build a psychedelic nightclub in Boston, and that’s where I went up to Boston. And, Oh, so you went straight from that that road trip to Chicago to, To New York and hung out at the Chelsea Hotel with the mothers for about two weeks. And at Butterfield was showing up because the mothers have mentioned all these great musicians loved them.

Right? Right. So well, I and the Chelsea Hotel is filled with amazing people. You probably heard the story of Chelsea Hotel. Hotel.

Yeah. Fabulous place to be. Yeah. And, and then, because I was a light show guy, and then Paul did, he said three rich kids that had wanted to build a psychedelic nightclub in Boston. Boston.

He said, well, I know a guy who does the first one man psychedelic light shows. So they hired me, and I went up and that’s when I started doing the Boston thing. We were talking about that. Right. Right.

The next one. And, also, we’re talking about the West Coast pop art experimental band when I was going from Sausalito with Moby Grape and those guys on weekends to play the private clubs in New in, LA. I played the Daisy Club and another club called The Other Place. Friday night, the Daisy Club, private club for actors and actresses. Uh-huh.

Became friends with Jim Morrison before he was even in the band and Okay. All these incredible people doing those. And and then, Saturday night, we’d go to Santa Monica and do the other place, which is a private club for directors and producers of movies. So the actors and actresses had their private club. We played Friday nights, and then you and the directors and producers had their private club in Santa Monica that we played Saturday nights.

Both clubs are full of LSD. Everybody was taking acid. I had I’d go to Sausalito and hang out with the band with Bobby Grape and those guys. I had my funky house. But I’d take these really sloppy fluorescent paintings.

Yeah. Choo choo choo. Just really fluorescent paint. It eagle and weird shit. Just anything.

You know? And I take on I’d paint two or three of them. I hang them on the the clubs are all black and dark inside except for where my light show is. Right. So I put black lights on the back wall of the black glove where all the most stoners people were always at the back of the glove on a safe place.

And then so I put black light in there and hang up my psychedelic paintings, the fluorescent ones. And people would have religious experiences, you know, on LSD, you know. At at the end of the night, you know, when the lights came on, it was I’d go and start taking the paintings down. And I’m sure that some rich guy would go, oh, no. I have to have that painting.

That painting’s been talking to me. That’s the you know? I mean, how much do you want for it? I go, $300. Uh-huh.

I I got paid $50 a night for doing the show. Yeah. But I make 300 selling one or two 3 to $600. That was like your first first way of selling, aren’t you? Yeah.

Sometimes I sell first. I the most I have got was 300. Mostly, I get a hundred, hundred and 50. Right. I understand.

You know? How much money do you have that’s yours? You know? Kind of set a hundred, you know, but I’d always make that twice when I’d make do it, you know, I’d always make at least a hundred bucks on it. So I’d go back and I’d have 2 or $300 until the next weekend when I go back down again.

And $300, I could feed Bobby Grape. I helped house people. I’ve got a you know, it was a bank. Yeah. And and I it wasn’t for my wealth.

It was for all of us just to keep going on, you know. You know, back in the sixties, it was one for all and all for one. You know? So it all Okay. Good.

It’s good session. That’s a good start,

When I got out of the coastguard and stayed once again with Margo at her place at the time we were hiding Ken Kesey in her house.

I got out in August of ’66, from the coastguard. I bought a 1949 Packard for $100 as I got off the coastguard base and there was a car lot with a ’49 Packard. It just didn’t have any brakes. It made it over the bay bridge pretty good. I got to Margo’s and she was up on top of Alpine Terrace, way on top of this hill with this little streak of gas fifteen blocks down to Market street in San Francisco, down on DuBois street.

So I park up there and I park it over and the next day, Kesey’s there. I got this really cool flat there? with a king size bed and a swimming pool. She was like my sister at that point, I’d been living with her since 1963. My whole four years in the coastguard I was living with her and three other $1,000-a-night call girls. I was their little sailor-artist-love toy and every night I’d think, “Wow! I wonder what all the other sailors are doing tonight.”

So the second day it’s parked up on the hill and no problem. Next day I hop in and I think I’ll go down to Fishman’s Wharf or something, I go to the street, I turn right, down Dubois, straight on down, start to go down–big heavy car–no brakes. Zero brakes. and it has a transmission but you could either push these buttons or use this weird shift. Packard had weird kind shifting devise where you could automatic or stick. It got caught between that and neutral.

So I’m going down this hill in a three-ton vehicle, seventeen blocks and there’s stop signs and crosstraffic and all kinds of shit, and I couldn’t jump out of the car. It weighed so much I knew it would kill somebody–be out of control. Going down seventeen to twenty blocks straight on down this hill. A cable car would have a hard time getting up and down of it. So I just had to ride it out. I screamed the worst swear words I possibly could out of the top of my lungs and rode it and steered it. And somehow, I made it through every intersection without hitting anybody.

and it was afternoon, San Francisco. And I make it all the way down and finally it flattens out and I go about another three blocks, because I’m going pretty fast and I finally slow down enough that I can make a right turn and I figure anybody saw me just do that they’d call the police and I got to get off this street as soon as possible, so I’m going to get arrested or something. So as soon as I could I made a right turn and I was able to go on over and rub up against the curb and come to a stop. Parked. Lucky me, I made it all the way through. Didn’t kill, didn’t hit nobody. Made a right turn. Just as I’m slowing down enough that I can get up into a parking spot along the curb–there was one there–I pulled in and I rubbed the wheels against the curb to stop. Came to a stop. I’d shown the car to my brother-in-law in the East-Bay, the day before I went over to Margo’s so he’s seen it, he liked the car.

So I called my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, and said, “You want the car? I paid a hundred bucks for it. Don’t even worry about paying me back. It’s yours–here’s where it’s parked. It has No Breaks and it almost killed me and I’m never going to drive it again.

So that was me getting out of the coastguard and moving to Margo’s. I’m there for about a month, having a good time, maybe three weeks, and this band comes into town from LA, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. And they’ve got this guy named Bud White, and he’s an instrument-rental guy from LA. He had put together this little light show kind of thing and it was one of the first bands to have their own light show. The only problem was Bud had a sort of a flourishing instrument-rental thing happening in LA and the band sucked and he just didn’t want to be their lightshow guy. So they bought all the equipment from him. They booked it at the Ark in Sausalito and he said, “I’ll get you there but I want to find somebody to–

He had tons of equipment. he had strobe lights, he had fog machines. He had a mirror ball, he had spotlights, he had four-carousel projectors, each with those sixty-seven rotating slide-things, and two 16-milimeter projectors, which I used to do in high school instead of going to studies class I went to audio-visual study hall and I would show movies and home girl’s ex and flirt with the girls while I’m showing them movies and stuff in high school. So I know how to run those kind of things and I was a sonar man in the coastguard.

Margo, the guy says “Yeah, Bud doesn’t want to do it anymore and we got to find someone that is somewhat artistic and Margo goes, “Mazz! He’s an artist. He’s been a sonar man, I’m sure he could run all that equipment. So they ask me, I went, “Well, I’ll show up at the Ark and Bud was there and he showed me how he had his light show structured and I went “Cool!” and I took the job. That’s when I started my first gig were at the Ark in Sausalito and by then it was about the end of September. It wasn’t October yet. But they had a light show and the Ark was an afterhours music-jam club and they didn’t have any light show. Only Bill Graham and Chet Helms and the big guys in the city had light shows and they all had five or six guys running all the different lightshow stuff to fill the auditorium. But Bud had made this little plywood control panel. One man, one light show. So I took over and became literally the first one-man psychedelic light show. And then I went to the mid-West with that band in January 1st in 1967. I left the Ark in Sausalito. But while I was at the Ark, Lee Michaels was there, Janis Joplin was there, Moby Grape was there. They were all brand new, all starting. In fact, I was in the room at the Ark when Matthew Katz ran the Ark, and he originally put together the Jefferson Airplane, Skippy Spencer was the drummer at that time. Skippy didn’t want to be a drummer. He liked guitar, he wanted to stand up and sing his songs and not sit back on drums, so he wanted to leave the Airplane and Bill Graham saw an opportunity because the Jefferson airplane were really starting to take-off in San Francisco. They were just beginning but they were getting a very quick, huge following. And so Bill Graham took the management of the Jefferson Airplane from Matthew. He said, “Come with me”. And Matthew’s a trip. I’ll tell you stories about Matthew in a second here. Matthew and Skippy left the Airplane. Skippy because he wanted to, Matthew because he had no choice. And they went over to the Ark, and Matthew said, “I’m going to put together a band that’s even bigger than the Jefferson airplane.

And Matthew had a stoke? to put together bands. He put together It’s A Beautiful Day, he had things- he was co-working Tower-of-Power. He put together a lot of little bands. He was pretty good. He just wanted to own every single person’s soul. He was kind of bald, he had black hair and sideburns and a goatee, a devil’s goatee and bald on top and when he got really mad his whole bald head would turn red like the skin of the devil and these Z blood veins on the side of his head would start pulsing and these lightening bolts blood veins, and he’d be screaming and stuff. He did that with us and Moby Grape a lot because we were all mellow, getting high and having a good time and he was like “Gggrrrrh”.

In ’67-’66, it was real popular to dose people with LSD. You put a little bit on the side of a coke and say, “Here, have a slug of coke.” And have a laugh twenty minutes later and hallucinating. that was sport, in a way, in those days. Matthew was deathly afraid that we were going to dose him. So whenever he would get mad at us, at the Charles Van Damme ferryboat at Gate 5 in Sausalito which was an old abandoned ferry boat. We converted it into a semi-restaurant with a little stage and called it The Ark.

Up on the second floor there was offices and stuff and then there was the wheelhouse up there where the maintenance guy slept in the wheelhouse, and what happened was, there was a kitchen and they would make huevos rancheros everyday at the Ark, and feed all the musicians who were at the jam club after hours at three in the morning they would get free huevos rancheros food for everybody, all the musicians, everybody.

So bands who were playing around the area when they go off their gig at ten or eleven at night would go to Sausalito, would all jam together, get high, and get free food at three in the morning. So that was our only salary. we never really got money but we were young and we didn’t really need money. We got food. I had this funky old houseboat just down the docks from the Ark and everybody used it as a crash pad and stuff and it was horrible but it was ————. But anyway, Matthew would have us up in the second floor yelling and screaming because he wanted to he owned the name, “Moby Grape”, which I thought was a shitty name –it’s a terrible joke: What’s purple, hangs on a tree, and hums or some stupid joke like that — and I just went, “Man, they got a really good band and they are naming it after this stupid joke, you know?”

So there was a little bit of —-

so when Matthew got really mad, he’s be talking and lightening bolts going and he’d be looking like the devil. He’d pick up a glass ashtray. there’s eight of us, sitting around this long table, he at the end, throwing a tantrum.. Picks up a glass ashtray and smashes on the table to make a point, I mean he did shit like that. We were like , “Woah–that’s heavy” we sat in back, kind of mellow then he would grab somebody’s glass of water on the table and take a swig because he was all worked up. and when he did we’d go “Oh Matthew–you didn’t just drink out of Bob’s bottle did you?”

And he goes, “Yeah.”

And we’d go, “Oh no! That had a bunch of acid in it!” He go —“EYYYGGGHH(throwing up noise) “Acid! How could you do that? What didn’t somebody stop me!!” He gets all pissed off. and he’d run in the bathroom and we’d hear him at the toilet hunched over trying to vomit as if that would do anything. In fact it was really cool because whenever he really got mad at us, we could make him throw up any time we wanted to! so that was kinda fun.

So I’m in the room and Matthew brought in all these musicians from Seattle and from some clubs down in the peninsula, Bob Moseley was playing these clubs, down there, the bass player. And he put them all together and they became Moby Grape. I was in there the day they were setting up there, all meeting each other for the first time. And it’s a five piece band. And I’m doing the light shows with the West Coast Pop Art Experimental band but they’re not there, but Matthew had me stay with the lightshow equipment. So he got a lightshow and i got fed at three in the morning and got to hang out with a lot of much better musicians, even though I did have to go to LA on weekends to play with The West Coast Pop Art Band.

So I’m up there, and all these musicians get together to Moby Grape and they are all meeting each other for the first time, and it’s a five piece band and I’m sitting there because I didn’t have anything else to do and Matt said, “The guys are coming for my new band.” So I’m sitting up there to see who they are.

And we’re all sitting around this table, and they are just meeting each other. “Hi, I’m Bob Moseley,”, “Hi, I’m Skippy Spence”, Don Stevenson, Jerry Miller, dah dah dah. Some from Seattle, some are from the mid-peninsula, the musicians. And I’m sitting there, right? And they’re going, “We are going to have this five piece band.” And so they’re counting them and there are six people there. And they are kind of like going, [funny look]. And finally, they all focus on me, you know, the drums, guitar, bass, guitar, and they are trying to figure it out. Bob Mosely looks over at me first time I’d ever talked to him and he goes, “Listen, are you the lead singer?” Because he couldn’t figure out an instrument that I could have been playing. And I’ve thought, man, at that time, if I’d said, “Yeah, I am, and stay the fuck out of my light when I’m singing'” or something, I probably would be famous by now. But instead of that I went, “No, I’m the lightshow guy.” And they went, “Oh– Thank God!” and they all sat down, like, we don’ t have to split another share of our money. so that was kind of a funny little moment.

I became real close with those guys, I lived with them, right up until I had to leave in January to go back to Chicago for six months. The WCPAEB signed a contract. They left their manager in LA and signed a contract with a booking agency in Chicago, and literally because we had a light show and there were no light shows in Chicago in the whole mid-West. And so I was literally the very first lightshow to be in the mid-West in 1967, from January until June. My six-month contract was up in June and those guys they hated me, the band, by that point because all our bookings were because of the light show. It wasn’t because of the band.

Kirk: Were they a very good band?

No! In fact, you might want to hear them, you could listen to them. You could get them on Youtube and stuff, and listen to it.

No–their biggest thing, the apex of their entire show was “Help I’m A Rock” by the Mothers of Invention, which is the song where Zappa just goes, “Help! I’m A Rock–blooey blooey–Help, I’m A Rock-blooey blooey”.

Their father was a famous composer, Roy Harris, the two brothers of the WCPAEB, was Sean Harris and Danny Harris. Their father was Roy Harris. He wrote the American Folk Ballets. He’s in the encyclopedia for being one of the , he was a music professor at UCLA. Very, very established. Very upper level. He had a full Baldwin sponsorship. He could get anything and he got his kids in on the sponsorship. so we had Baldwin exterminator amplifiers, Baldwin guitars, any kind of Baldwin, anything Baldwin made, we could go in, anywhere in the United States. Walk into a place with a Baldwin dealership and say, “We’ll take that–that–and that.” and they would give it to us. We’d sign for it. Never give them a penny, and leave.

So they would destroy the amplifiers during the psychedelic part of the stage. These exterminators in 1967 were going to outdo the Marshalls, so they were five and a half feet tall, these big giant blue exterminator speakers. We had two of them on stage at all times. They would take right in the middle, they would throw them off the stage, push them over. Cause them to distort themselves to blow themselves up–“because it was psychedelic, man!” You come out and have the strobe lights going and the fog machine and all the kids would be–I put the strobe lights over the dance floor, which was right in front where my table with all my projectors were going on the stage.

So I could hit the dance floor with the fog machine and fog up the feet of the dancers, the r— lights and then the strobe lights, everybody in the psychedelic strobe fog would be dancing. The kids loved it. They thought it was really cool. Meanwhile the band is up there. They are just like putting their guitars up next to the amps, letting them distort and feedback and then go out looking for girls to make out with while the six minutes psychedelic things happening. It was horrible. But anyway…

They destroyed a lot of equipment. by the end of six months they started to say, “We are the band, and your the puke that’s gonna run the lights, and so you have to clean up the trailer and do these tasks, you got to puke for us if we are gonna go out on the road.”

I said, “Okay, yeah, cool.” And I never give them one. Once I got out and realized what was happening, we opened up for The Animals, the first time The Animals played in the U.S. was in the NorthWestern University in Chicago. Our booking agency booked it and they booked it because they had a light show for the Animals and the Animals wanted to have a light show. They loved it. Ten-fifteen -twenty years later Eric Burden got a hold of me and said, “You know, your light show in Chicago was the reason why we put together a light show after that. We had a light show for about five years after that, everywhere we went.”

The winter of ’67 in Chicago was the worst blizzard in forty-seven years. the snow was eight feet high in town in Chicago. the agency rented us a penthouse on the corner of Delaware and Rush Street on this old three-story hotel that had a penthouse on the roof. So we had a penthouse. And Delaware and Rush was the cool section of Chicago. You could literally buy a matchbox full of pot you couldn’t get pot anywhere in the mid-west except for Chicago or Lawrence Kansas. Lawrence Kansas was a University and it also has something very rare in Kansas, called “a hill”. [chuckles] And there are houses on the hill and all these long-haired hippy guys had this big old Victorian up there. We did shows in Lawrence, because it was a cool place.

But after the show I’d take the light show equipment up to the house. And we’d put up the strobe lights and we’d party all night long. Lawrence was a cultural oasis in the mid-West. Everywhere else in the mid-west in ’67 we were long-haired hippies bringing LSD to the children, and they did NOT like long-haired hippie people. We got run off the road by drunk truckdrivers. We wouldn’t get served in a restaurant. I’d even go to the cops that were doing the security for the concerts that night–I’d go into a restaurant with them after we did our sound checks, we’d all go to eat. I’d go sit with the two uniform cops. and the waitress would come up and say, “Well, I’ll serve you and you, but no way in hell am I going serve him.”

I got tickets for walking across the street in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, because this woman rolled down the window and started yelling at me that I was this horrible thing in her hometown and the devil was going to get me. And all of a sudden, while she’s yelling, the guy in front of her stops and she hits the guy. And I kinda cheered, serves her right, ya old biddy! And there’s a cop kitty-corner across the street, he comes over ,he’s talking to her, he’s talking to the guy she hit, all three of them are talking. then they all look up and they look at me, and I’m a half-a-block away by that time. The cop comes over and he gets me and he writes me a ticket for “unruly appearance creating an accident”.

To this day I did not go to court on that, and I am a wanted man in that town. If I ever go back to Iowa, they could put me away for a day and a half or two.

Kirk: Did you have long hair?

Oh, fuck yeah! I wore psychedelic glow-in-the-dark pants that were florescent acrylic so when the black lights were on I was all glowing. I had these T-shirts where I got American flags and I sewed them upside down on the front of my shirt. We stopped at a tourist place along the road somewhere and they had cedar branches, slices of cedar branches with pictures of Jesus painted on them that I wore one of those around my neck. Yeah.

That band was so bad they never had a real drummer. The whole time we were in the mid-West they would go to the Union halls of the area we were playing, and pick a Union-scale drummer. All the y had to do was play a four-four beat and it didn’t matter if it was good, bad, or anywhere because even bad fit right on into what they were doing. If it was good the guy never lasted –at the break he would take off…

So that was my very first tour. And it was a challenge. We played in Peoria, Illinois, we played at Jackie Gleason’s bowling Alley Bar in Peoria, Illinois. they paid us $3500 for a week. We had to play six shows, six nights. But Jackie Gleason owned it. But their big guy, that they used to pay that money to, was Wayne Cochran. I don’t know if you remember Wayne Cochran, he had this big bouffant kind of blonde weird ducktail ho-dad yahoo-do greaser haircut and he sang some rock and roll songs, he had a couple rock and roll mid-west hits. Rock-a-billy kind of shit. and right over, on the stage was like up behind the bar, about four feet up was the floor of the stage and the stage was it only had about a six-foot high ceiling. The lead singer could just get his hairdo underneath it. but above where he would sing, there was a square whole there and they would put in sheet rock. Just sheet rock because of Wayne Cochran sets, they loved him at that bowling alley, boy he was huge. And what they really loved, when he finished a set, on his very last note of his last song, he would hold his mike dramatically, take his fist, and punch it through the ceiling and everybody went nuts. It was like nuts! It was like “Wow! He went through the ceiling again! He loves us!” It was like huge!

With us it was like, “What the hell are those long -haired hippie-dudes doing with their psychedelic bullshit. Check your drink, it’s probably got acid in it. Let’s kill ’em. Let’s get ’em at the trailers out back!” They’re making plans on doing us harm and shit.

The bartender was instructed to have this sawed-off baseball bat, about two-and-a-half, two feet long, that he kept behind the bar and when these guys–and I usually would be back behind the bar, shooting on the stage. He said, “No, you’re not safe out there. You have to be with me, set up with me and shoot real close to ’em because I need to get between you and these guys. so I’m behind the bar with that guy, squeezed over in the corner trying to do my stuff. And these guys would get drunk and they were like mobsters. They dressed like these little mobsters-guys, right?

And they had these Polish girlfriends with big blonde bouffant hairdo’s. Their hairdo’s were as big as their boobs. Sitting at the bar. Sometimes they would get drunk and they would decide to impress their girlfriend by climbing over the bar and killing me. and they’d start to climb over–once or twice this happened–the bar tender would pull out the baseball bat and he’d just hit ’em over th e head and push ’em back into their seat, and they’d be fucking unconscious and they’d go “John–wake up!” their girlfriends and stuff.

I’d be going, “Oh my God!”

So we finished the gig, it’s a horrible gig. We are out in a blizzard. In the snow. We’re pulling a thirty-four boiler trailer, we had a brand new Chrysler station wagon everywhere. We did have two engines program? on the station wagon. But we’re all squeezed in that thirty-three foot trailer, the band. And one of the snowbirds,

Kirk: Oh,it was like Wintertime!

Oh, January, February. The worst blizzard to hit the mid-West in thirty-seven years. Yeah. As if things weren’t bad enough! So we finish up, and we’re done, it’s the last gig. So Sean and i go back into the manager’s office to get our check, you know, $3500 bucks. We go back there, and the manager’s there. and there is a sheriff sitting with him.

We were “Okay, we’re done, we’re just gonna pack up and take off here, we just came to get the check.”

And he goes, “Wait a minute, this officer needs to talk to you.”

“Guess what we found in your trailor while you were in here?”

And we went, we didn’t hardly have any pot or nothin’ you know? We had a St. Barnard puppy. “Did you find our dog?”

They said, “No, we found these two girls.” And they say, “Come on in.”

And these two fifteen-year-old girls come in and they say, yeah we found these two girls in your trailor and you guys are going to jail for a long, long, time. “Are these the guys?” and the girls go “Yes.” And he goes, “You guys are going to jail.”

And the club manager goes, “Wait a minute officer, let me talk to them. Look it, I can get you out just–I’m not going to give you your check, just get the hell out of here right now. Just leave.”

And I went, “Ok! Good deal–we’re gonna leave–I’m cool–let’s go!”

And Sean, the leader of the band, goes: “No fucking way! We’re not going to leave! Send us to jail! We’ve got lawyers! Send us to jail. You owe us that check–we are not leaving here until we get that check! We worked our butt off for a week to get that check and we’re not leaving here without –“

And I’m going, “Oh my God, he’s getting us killed. We’re going to end up in the snowbank here…they won’t find us until Springtime….

He pulled it off though. The guy finally looked around, and he and the cop ————-and apparently the two girls were the owner of the club’s nieces. He was going to keep that $3500 bucks for himself. $3500 in 1967 was a lot of money. and those were the kind of things that happened to me, and because of that, later on, when I’m road managing famous bands, they all went, “Oh fuck–you were in the mid-west in ’67?”

Yeah, I played a folk gig, didn’t think I’d get out alive, you know. I don’t know, we were there for six months. at the end of six months, the Mothers of Invention which I was friends with earlier and my relationship with the Pop-Art band in LA, which I’ll tell you about–those are fun stories too but–the Mothers of Invention came through, and I’d just had my last argument in June, my contract was up in June. This was like June fifth or something. I didn’t want to be with these guys so I just–the Mothers came through and said, “What’s happening?”

I said, “I guess I’m going back to LA and finishing up with these guys.” And Jimmy Carl Black, one of the drummers with the Mothers, a really cool guy, he goes, “Frank got us the Geary Theatre in Greenwich Village, we’re all going to go there, we are going to live at the Chelsea Hotel. I got my wife and kids but you can stay in our room, we can fix you up a place in the living room. Come on, come with us!”

And I went, “Cool!” And so I took of there and went to New York and from there I met Paul Butterfield, who turned me on, we became really good friends. Paul Butterfield Blues Band. and he hooked me up with some rich kids who wanted to go to a psychedelic nightclub in Boston and that’s when I went up to Boston.

Kirk: So you went straight from that road trip in Chicago to New York and hung out at the Chelsea Hotel with the Mothers for about two weeks and Butterfield was showing up because the Mothers of Invention all these great musicians loved him, right? and the Chelsea hotel was filled with amazing people, you’ve probably heard stories about the Chelsea hotel. Fabulous place to be. And because I was the lightshow guy, the three rich kids that wanted to go to a psychedelic nightclub in Boston. He said, I know a guy that does, the first one-man psychedelic light show so they hired me and I went up and that’s when I started doing the Boston thing. We can talk about that, the next one. And also we can talk about the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band when I was going from Sausalito with Moby Grape and those guys on weekend to play the try the clubs in LA. we played the Daisy club, and another club called The Other Place. Friday night, the Daisy Club, Friday club for actors and actresses became friends with Jim Morrison before he was even in a band or anything. All these incredible people. And then Saturday nights we go down to Santa Monica and do the other place which was a private club for directors and producers of movies. So the actors and actresses had their private club, we played Friday nights, and the producers and directors had their private club in Santa Monica that we played. Both clubs were full of LSD. Everybody was taking acid. I would go to Sausalito and hang out with Moby Grape and those guys. I take these really sloppy florescent paintings–chew–chew-chew and eagle and weird shit, just anything and I’d take two or three. The clubs are all black and dark in side except where my lights. So I put black lights on the black wall of the black club where all the most stoner people were always at the back of the club, in a safe place.

So I put black light in there and hang up my psychedelic paintings, the florescent ones and people would have religious experiences with LSD. At the end of the night when the lights came on I’d go and start taking the paintings down and show that some rich guy would go, “Oh no! I have to have that painting! That painting’s been talking to me. How much do you want for it?” I’d go, “Three hundred bucks.” I got paid fifty dollars a night for doing the shows but I’d make three hundred selling one or two, three to six hundred bucks. The most I ever got was $300. Mostly I’d get a $100, $150. How much money do you have?

But I’d always make about twice what I’d make –I’d always make at least a hundred bucks out of it. So I’d go back and I’d have two or three-hundred bucks until the next weekend and I’d go back down again. At $300 I could feed Moby Grape, I’d help house people, it was a bank. And it wasn’t for my wealth. It was for all of us to keep going on. Back in the sixties in was one for all and all for one.

Yes. I have some notes on a tour here. Did we do can you do that, Eric? Did we do leading up to the tour? Did we do with Mosley and, and, Lee Michaels on New Year’s Eve driving me to the airport?

I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and and we we turned on? I’m I’m on.

Yeah. Yeah. So 66. Right? I get out of the Coast Guard.

I get my light show going with the West Coast Pop Art experimental band. Yeah. We’re playing at the Arkansas, Salido. Lee Michaels is there. Janice Joplin’s there.

Moby Grape just gets, they all meet each other for the first time, and then they start playing that app from the ark because the guy who who ran the ark was the, was their manager. Right. And my manager and Lee Michael’s manager, all our first manager. He’s he was the devil. You know what I mean?

Anyway, so then the pop art band, by the end of the year, they get a gig. They quit with their manager in LA, and they get this they signed a contract with the booking agency in Chicago, right, to to go and have the first psychedelic light shows in the Midwest. And, you know, we have to be there January 1. You know, that was our arrival date in Chicago. The guys in the van were driving a Chrysler station wagon pulling a 33 foot trailer, a big giant trailer with all their band.

Well, there’s only the two brothers because they didn’t have a drummer. We we we went to we went to union halls in different towns and got local guys. Just the band was so bad. They didn’t need a permanent drummer. You know, all the guy had to do is hit a four four beat and melt it away.

So we we used red redder drummers everywhere we went. And we have we had bass and drums with the two brothers. We’re bass in, guitar with the two brothers. So I fly there, New Year’s Eve, and I I have to fly out of the airport at, like, 04:00 in the afternoon. And, you know, it’s almost dark at 04:00 in the afternoon in January.

Up until then, I had my houseboat in Sausalito with this little houseboat on Gate 5 and Lee Michaels and all kinds of people would crash in it. You know, when I was down in LA, they I just said, you know, we’ll stay at that. The houseboat we need a place to stay. No one had any money, so everyone’s crashing with tools and everything all over the place, and I have to stay alive. So it comes in.

I have to go fly out, and I say goodbye to Moby Grape, which I’ve been with now for about, you know, eight or nine weeks in their first two months. And within the two months, they went from media to each other to be headlining at Bat in San Francisco in two months. These guys, they have 30 songs, like, in two months. I mean, it was really productive. And we got their first album shot, you know.

And I’m standing behind the photographer when he shot the album cover. So we’re friends and, hanging out and, you know, together and, and same with Lee Michaels. He’s so Lee and Bob drive me to the airport. And but that night, New Year’s Eve, Moby Grape and Lee Michaels are playing the Avalon Ballroom on a New Year’s Eve party. And there’s a really cool poster for that night of the ship, and it’s sailing away.

And it’s like me. Right? I’m I’m leaving. I’m sailing away. The back end of the ship is headed on out.

And and so here’s the I I have a copy of the poster. It’s a beautiful poster. I can see. And, did I send you a picture of it yet? I I first I think I see it.

Somebody else framed it or something. Yeah. Yeah. It’s framed it or anything. Anyway, on on the posters, Lee Michaels and Louie Wright.

Well, so anyway, they drive me to the airport. Now I’m California. Right? So I’m wearing, like, a Hawaiian shirt, you know, and it’s it’s thin pair of, you know, pair of Levis and no jacket. And little did I realize that Chicago was in the midst of just starting the worst blizzard to hit the Midwest in forty years.

And I get there in the middle of this fucking blizzard. How we even landed was amazing that the the the airport was even open. We landed. I get to, where I’m supposed to go. I got an address of this hotel that we’re supposed to check into.

And, it’s 520 Delaware And Rush Street in Downtown Chicago. So I get there, and, I figured, the, you know, the band should be there too, but but they haven’t shown up yet. They were still driving. And I get to tickets around, I don’t know, 10:00 at night or something. And I’m thinking they’re just gonna give me a hotel room.

Right? And I’m sticking. I get to the hotel, and they said, oh, yeah. You guys are up in the penthouse up on the roof. And the agency had leased us a penthouse for six months on the roof of this old hotel.

We had this whole roof penthouse all by ourselves. It was really cool. And there was, like, three bedrooms in there. So I go up and I’m at the penthouse and checking it out. And it’s it’s a fucking hotel, and it’s a fucking old penthouse, but it’s cool.

You know? I’ve never seen a penthouse in my whole life that I didn’t like. You know? And, so I checked in and, just kinda looking at the snow, man. It’s just coming down like crazy.

And I I hardly ever see snow at all in in Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz. And and it’s cold and fucked too. And so, I look out and there’s the the snow’s build up, like, four feet and snow banks on either side. And the road is smaller and smaller because the snow banks are building up thicker and thicker. And, and all of a sudden, I see turning around the corner this Chrysler station wagon pulling this giant trailer.

In the middle of the blizzard, they got traffic stopped, and they can hardly make the turn, you know, to get because of the road system. And I just go, holy shit. And I don’t know. I can’t remember where the fuck they parked it. The they, you know, they kinda honked, and I kinda, like, went on the balcony and wave, you know, or I don’t know if you saw me.

Anyway, that was my arriving in Chicago. You know, having Bob Mosley and and Lee Michaels drive me to the airport and saying goodbye and arriving for six months contract in the Midwest. And, we hooked that up, and, the next day, we sort of loaded up the we went oh, the next day, we went to the agency and checked in with them. Oh, our first gig. Mhmm.

I I don’t know if I told you. I probably have to. I’ll tell you again. I don’t have to. Yeah.

Now the first gig Yeah. There was we’re in Chicago, waiting for the agency because the agency is a booking agency. So they’ve got the Beach Boys and the Animals and all these different acts coming in. They’re major agency. And then what they would do is have my band open up for them because then the light show would be all set up for the main guys, which they were pimping the guys to book with them because they had a light show in the Midwest.

So, the first show now this is really weird, and I don’t even know if we can put this in the book. Okay? Because I’ve I’ve never thought about this until the other night when I was making this list and and going over this first night. Because here’s what happened. They were there.

We’re waiting for the agency to tell us what, you know, get our our games where where they want us to go. And it was gonna take maybe a week. And it’s the blizzard’s happening. So but, the the lead the band leader, Sean goes, he goes, hey. Our manager who who they had left, right, that they broke up with in LA.

He well, first, the manager told the, set in a a blank poster for us, and, it was it was we we changed the name because the manager had the name the West Coast Pop Art experimental band. Mhmm. So we changed the name to the California Spectrum because the spectrum reflected the light show. Right? It did that Californian.

Anything from California to the Midwest drew a crowd. Yeah. Yeah. So we became the California spectrum. And this poster showed up, and I guess the manager said the other fellas in pooped up.

Said, yeah. They’re, he wrote on the poster, the travel merchants of the travel merchants of the West Coast. That was loosely interpreted by everybody who saw the poster that we were selling LSD at the psychedelic light show operator. So we would get later on on tour, we’d go into these small towns in the Midwest where they hated long haired California hippie people. Anyway, and the sheriff and his posse would be on the outside of town waiting for us to approach, and then they pull us off before we got into town and search our entire trailer, make us in snow banks, and take everything out of the trailer, looking for that LSD stuff because they were going to jail forever.

And I I remember standing next to the sheriff and stuff. After an hour of them, like, just tearing through shit and turning the the the sergeant’s guy in charge going, have you guys ever seen LSD? And they go, no. I said I said, you know, it’s so small that you can’t see it. Listen.

You gotta go, well, my boys will find it. You know? If, you know, if it’s in there, we’re gonna find it. Right? That kind of shit.

After two hours, they made us they’d drive off and all our shit would be out of the snow. We had to put it all back in and then head to where we had to go in the town. That happened a number of times in ’67. I mean, there weren’t a whole lot of West Coast bands traveling through the Midwest. And the Midwest was not a popular place in ’67.

And, we just got adverse treatment. I mean, it was a tour of hell, basically. We had chairs thrown at us. Food refused us. Just all this, every fucking thing.

So, anyway, the manager we’re we’re in Chicago waiting for the agency to, get our booking schedule going. You know, where do we go first and play it? And, Sean comes in and he goes, because, hey. The manager got us a gig. So, just to warm up and, you know, get some stuff.

It’s right here in town. It’s just over, not not too far over, kind of like in the North End Of Chicago, the Italian section of town or something. And, we went, oh, cool. You know, a little club. Okay.

Let’s go do it. So we show up with all our equipment and everything. And and, we get to the address, and it’s a corner place on the corner of a block. And there’s, like, apartments and stuff upstairs, but there’s a basement area. And it’s all the outside of the basement is all painted black, like, spray painted black or shit.

And, inside, it’s all black inside and everything. And there I don’t see any real lights or anything. You know? I mean, maybe they put a couple red lights up in there or something. It was just really fucking.

And we went, is this it? This is this is what we’re gonna play? And there’s two guys waiting for us. Right? There’s two Italian guys.

And they go, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like two in the afternoon. And he he goes, oh, yeah.

Just, I’ll upload your stuff, and, and we’ll get, you know, we’ll get set up. And, so we go look oh, god. This is funky. So we take all our shit. China says, yeah.

Well, you know, it’s a neighborhood gig. So we uploaded all that stuff. We put it down in this basement. And now it’s about 04:00 in the afternoon, five o’clock. And the two guys are there.

And, they go, they go, before you set up, we’re hungry and, you know, we wanna go eat. Why don’t you guys go get something to eat and, you know, meet us back here in an hour, hour and a half. We have plenty of time to set up. The club doesn’t even open until, like, 09:00 at night. Okay.

So we go off and we go eat. And we eat for an hour and a half or two hours. And we go back and there’s, knock on me, and there’s nobody there. Nobody there. And, we kinda jiggle the door.

We open it, and it’s empty. All our equipment, everything is fucking gone. Our very first gig in Chicago, totally wiped out. No band equipment, no light show equipment, gone. Clean as a fucking whistle like we’ve never even been there.

And we go, oh, fuck. I go, fuck. And the band’s just like, oh, well, you know, luckily, we have a Baldwin sponsorship. We’ll just go down to Baldwin and we’ll get all this stuff and, you go over to Brooks cameras and get new carousels. And, I mean, I had to make tons of slides and all kinds of shit.

And, and I did. I found a couple of hippie guys in Old Town in, Chicago, and I told them how to show them how to make these glass slides for me. How to make these glass slides for me and everything. And I would pay them, I think I paid them 25¢ a slide. Each carat I had four carousels and each carousel took 60 slides.

So, that’s, that’s 240 slides that I had to have made. And, so they made like a hundred bucks. And, and, I got all the slides made. And then when I played these little clubs, they had so many kids show up for the light shows that the clubs wanted to put in installation. So I made a deal with Brooks Cameras that I would refer them to buy their light show equipment.

And I and then I hooked it up with the hippies making the slides. And, I would charge the clubs a dollar a slide, and I’d pay the hippies making the slides 25¢ a slide. So I’d made 75¢ on every slide. So I’d make a whole lot of money because every club would have four carousel projectors, And they’d need those 240 slides. So that was a whole bunch of money I made right there just on my glass slides.

Making them the way I liked them. But, anyway, we got all our all our equipment together and everything. But here’s the other night, I was thinking about this whole thing about getting the other night, I was thinking about this whole thing with this first gig And that’s them showing up in, at our very first show, not set up by the edge agency, but set up by the band’s manager. And it was a total fucking rip off of all our equipment, and I I thought maybe, just maybe, the two brothers realized that they had a a unlimited free Baldwin sponsorship so all their equipment could be put back together. And maybe they insured the all the equipment and all the light show equipment for a whole lot of money and collected the insurance on the rip off.

I don’t know. I don’t I I don’t know. The brothers I don’t know. One of them might still be alive, and I don’t even know if I wanna bring it up with them. I don’t know if I wanna insinuate that there’s a chance, but that really makes a lot of sense to me.

That would pay for their whole trip out there. Every all the cost of everything. Because with the all the van equipment, light show equipment, I know they had to have at least a $2,025,000 dollar policy, and maybe they had a $50,000 policy. I who knows? But that would that would kinda make a lot of sense.

Because getting getting booked into a place that didn’t exist and having all our equipment could’ve just been, selling all the equipment to two guys in, you know, in the mob in Chicago. You know, making a deal with them for some money and then, collecting insurance on on it. I don’t know. I don’t know if that happened or not. It could just be my overactive imagination.

But what did happen is we replaced all this stuff. I went into Brooks Scanners. I mean, bought all new Lights Show equipment. I talked to the guy who owned the local Brooks Scammers in Chicago. And, we made told him what was happening and told him that, you know, that I could, represent Brooks Scammers when I’m setting up if I have to set up any, any clubs in the Midwest, and I was gonna be doing for the next six months.

And we made a deal. I made a commission on, on all the sales they made. And, you know, the little bit of money I made from, actually performing, which is minimal, was greatly supplemented by, by sales and stuff of light show equipment all through, all throughout these clubs. So, anyway, that was the very first gig we had in Chicago. The next gig, I think, was in a barn in Western Illinois.

The blizzard’s going full tilt booty. We drive out to this barn, and I can’t, you know, you can’t even hardly see the barn. No. It’s in it’s in farmland, and all the farmland’s covered under four feet of snow everywhere. And, the barn roof is all covered in snow, and you hardly even saw it.

The guy had plowed a little path over to where we could drive in and get our equipment in the barn. But, apparently, all the kids within 30 miles in all directions in the wintertime, We’d all head for that barn, and, the guys booked music in there, you know, entertained the the kids during the wintertime. And it was it was trippy. It was pretty far out. I couldn’t believe how many kids showed up, you know, probably about, yeah, a 50, two hundred kids, which is, you know, pretty amazing in the middle of the middle of the blues room.

And that was we we played played a number of little places like that. But then we also played some, you know, in in towns and stuff. We played, you know, different cities. In Iowa and Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Southern Illinois, and, and, all the way down to Saint Louis. Played all around the Midwest a number of times.

And, there’s no pot anywhere. There’s pot in Chicago. You get, like, a little matchbox of of shitty weed for, like, you know, $10. The only other place in the whole Midwest in that winter sixty seven to get some pot was in Lawrence, Kansas, which had a university and it also had a hill. And, Kansas is like so, we called it randomly flat.

I mean, there’s there’s very few hills or mountains anywhere in Kansas. It’s the flattest place I’ve ever seen in my life. And, except Lawrence, Kansas had, like, three little hills in the town. It was a university town, and that was an oasis. We have got good pot there, met a lot of really cool kids.

And, we played it a couple times. And the second time, we had already we knew people that lived there from, you know, from the university from previous times. So we really kind of had a really good time. Lawrence, Kansas was really a fun place to, to go in 1967 and take refuge. And one of the kids there had this big old house up on top of the hill.

And, after the shows, he’d, he’d help me break down my light show equipment, and we’d take it over to his house and set it back up for, you know, the we’d be done at the club by 11:00. We’d set it up, and at midnight, he’d have these parties and all these college kids that started coming up to this house. We got it all lit up in light share shit, and it’d be flashing and strobe lights go in there. And if it was up on the hill over the town, it was just like when it was cooking, everybody in town could look up and see, yeah, there must be a party up at, up at the Wizard’s house. That that was his nickname.

Everybody called him Wizard. Years later and years later, when I had the ducks in 1977, there was a there was a place in Scotts Valley called The Barn, and captain Wizzo’s light show was at the barn in Scotts Valley in 1977. And, I’m here in town and we have the Ducks and Buck and all the guys. They all have been Captain Wizzo because he had been in town for twenty years. I just got him back to Santa Cruz in ’77.

And so, captain Wizzo comes over and, from his light he had a light show. And he goes, he goes, you know, I I live in, I lived in Lawrence, Kansas, and, and this guy came through with his light show, and and I I patterned my whole light show after his and been doing light shows ever since. And and I went, that was me. That was me in ’67 in Lawrence, Kansas. And I said, you’re a wizard.

He goes, yeah. Captain Whistle. Oh my god. So we kinda had a reunion. That that was, like, really cool.

And then to realize that this guy had seen his first light show was my light show, and then he just went off devoting the next ten years of his life doing light shows and and ended up in Santa Cruz. It just kinda blew my mind. Anyway, that was that was, some of the gigs we did in Lawrence, Kansas. I’m gonna take a little break here for a second, and, let me see. Let me look on this list.

Let’s see if, if I can keep oh, I’m talking. The barn and the blizzard, we did that. We played a gig in Peoria, Illinois, which was right when Carl Spack had gone in and killed a bunch of student nurses. And, he was in prison. It was it was all over the whole nation.

These, these terrible killings that this guy, Carl Spector. And he was downtown in Peoria in a jail cell up on the Second Floor with a night watch so he’s making sure he didn’t kill himself or something. But all the people would drive by and look at the light up on the jail cell. I know that’s where Carl Speck was. We we drove by and we we took a look too.

But we’re in Peoria, Illinois, and it was a good paying gig. Jack, it was a bowling alley bar in Peoria, Illinois that was owned by Jackie Gleason. And they had paid our agency $3,500 for us to play there for a solid five days for a whole week. And, that was the biggest paying gig we had, on that whole on the whole, you know, whole tour. So we go there.

It’s the Blizzard’s Avenue. We park behind the bowling alley, like, plug in the trailer and, settle in for a week, and we have our drummer that we rented from the union named Carl. And, and, you know, three piece band. And I’m set up at the bowling alley bar. And, normally, I set up out in the audience and then project up on the stage.

But here at the bowling alley bar, the bar they said, no. No. We want you to set up inside the bar. The bar was between the the, the people sitting at the bar, and then they looked up behind the bar, and there was a stage about four feet high. And we had a sure.

It was a small roof. The roof was only about six foot six where people stood, so it was kinda squeezed. But, they had a small stay, and that’s where they they played. And, I said, why, you know, why do, why do I have to set up behind the bar? Why can’t I set up, you know, on the other side of the bar and project farther?

And they said, no. It’s for your safety. And it really was because everybody hated long haired hippies, and there was a gangster bar. And all these sort of gangster kind of guys would come in with their Polish girlfriend, big blonde, big boot blondes with giant blonde beehive 1960 beehive hairdos all made up like crazy. And they’d get drunk and, every now and then, one of them would, like, try to climb over the bar to beat the shit out of me.

And the bartender had a sawed off little baseball bat. And when they tried to come over the bar, he’d hit him over the head, knock him out, and put him back in the chair with his girlfriends tending to him. That happened, and, it was it was horrible. Even our time off going down into town, Peoria was it was grim. It was a grim place.

I didn’t like Peoria, Illinois very much, but we were stuck there and it paid good. So we get to the last day of hell, and then, the bar like this this guy fuck. I’ll remember his name in a minute. But, anyways, he he he was a rockabilly kind of guy, and the bar loved him. And he would finish his sets by by because the ceiling was so low.

They put right above where his mic was, they put in a false sheet of of, just, sheet rock, and he’d finish his set, and then he’d take his fist and he’d punch it right through the sheetrock, punch a hole in the ceiling, and everybody would go nuts. It just went, you know, they that was their guy. He was, like, super cool. And we were nothing like him, and they hated us. So, anyway, we finished the gig, and, and we go ahead.

The leader of the band and I, we go into the back room to get our check. And we get back there, and there’s I think I told you this earlier. There’s a cop there’s a sheriff standing next to the next to the manager, the bowling alley manager. And, we go ahead and we go, okay. Well, you know, we got our check ready, and the guy goes, well, something’s come up to the sheriff.

He needs to talk to you. And we went, what what about? The the sheriff was, he goes, yeah. We, guess what we found in your trailer tonight? I know we didn’t have any potting.

I said, well, what? And he said, these two girls. And then boom, out from behind the curtain comes these two 16 year old girls we’ve never seen in our life. And we went, they were they what? They broke into our trailer?

And they said, no. He said that you guys are keeping them captive up there as sex slaves. And I went, what? And I and Sean goes, that’s bullshit. No no way.

You know? No way. And the girls have got it just got it fidgety and standing behind the cop. And, and the cop goes, yeah. You guys are gonna go to, Joliet Prison.

You guys are gonna be in prison for the next twenty years. And we were like, no way, man. This is bogus. Did not happen. Office, I don’t know what’s up, but this isn’t happening.

And, and I just and the the, the manager tell me I said, well, let me talk to the let me talk to the officer for a minute. And they go and whisper back and forth something. And then the manager comes back. He goes, okay. Here’s the deal.

You got thirty minutes to get out of town. And Sean goes the waiter of the band goes, no problem. He goes, give us our check. We’re out of here. He said, no.

We’re gonna keep your check. Just get out of town. And I went, okay. I’m out of here. No problem.

We’re gone. And Shaw goes the leader of the van goes, no fucking way. We worked our ass off for this money. I’m not leaving her. Take me to jail, mother you know?

Take me to jail. You know? I’m we’ve got lawyers. You know? I’ll be out.

You know? Just go ahead. Go ahead. Take me to jail. We’re not gonna that’s not happening.

I’m not leaving here without my check. And I thought, oh, fuck, man. He’s gonna get us all killed. We’re all gonna get shot in the head and buried in the snowbank somewhere. And, the guy goes and he whispers to the cop again, and they whisper back and forth.

And then, he goes, okay. Here’s your check. Get the fuck out of here. And so we did. We got the check, and it was good.

He didn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t defunct or anything. So we got our check, and we got out of there. And about twenty minutes down the road, this big giant truck out of nowhere just comes and just squeezes us and pushes the car and the trailer off the side of the road. I think it was set by the the cock and just kinda hassle us. Anyway, that was Peoria, Illinois, the armpit of Central America Central America.

I think I told you this story once earlier in the tapes too. Now you got you got a stereo version. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Leaving leaving Peoria, after we get run off by that truck, we get to Clark’s Corners, which is halfway between Peoria and Chicago, and it’s a truck stop along the the highway.

And, it’s about two in the morning, and we just we’re just headed back to Chicago. But we stopped at Clark’s Curran to this truck stop to get a hamburger or something and, you know, coffee and keep going. And it’s blizzard out, it was shitty and crazy. So we get in there, and we sit at this table. And there’s, we have four of us because I got another guy to help me named David Gore.

And then he was with us too. So he so helped me with the equipment and shit. So we get it, and the pharmacist is sitting there. And the waitress is she takes our order. And she she doesn’t like us, but she takes our order, which is kind of a good thing.

Because a lot of times we just get kicked out. And, and so we’re waiting. We get some coffee, and we’re waiting for our burgers to show up. And this truck driver comes in, and he must have been drinking all night long because he’s shitload drunk and aggressively pissed off that there’s four long haired hippies sitting in his truck stop. And he looks at us, and he’s he’s just got in the door.

He’s standing up. He sees us sitting at the table, and he goes, I don’t have to take this shit. And he picks up a chair, and he throws it halfway across the restaurant. And we see the chair coming at us, and, like, all of us at the same time pick our coffee up off the table, and the chair bounces off the table. You know?

And I go, oh, man. Here we go. And Sean, the leader of the band, with he just doesn’t put up with that kind of shit. He just looks at their truck driver and goes, okay, skinhead. You’ve impressed the waitress.

Now just sit the fuck down. I thought, no. We’re gonna get killed again. Here we go. This is it.

This is the big one. And the waitress came over and said, look. Look, Mac. You can’t you can’t do that. You’ve got throw chairs and stuff.

You know? Either calm down. And I’m I’m just gonna have to ask her to leave till you’re drunk. Right? And she got our orders already cooked, and she doesn’t wanna pay for those burgers.

You know? So she works. She, she gets in calm down. We eat our burgers in in deathly silence looking around wondering where the next chair is gonna come from. We eat our burgers.

We sort of thank her. She doesn’t even say you’re welcome and then just takes some money, you know, kind of points to the door. We leave. We get in there, and we drive. And sure enough, ten minutes down the road in the blizzard, this big fucking truck comes out of nowhere and just pulls right in front of us.

It just tries to squeeze us right off the side of the road again in the snowbank, and we’re able to slow because you’re pulling a 35 foot overloaded trailer behind where the station might have just stopped. It takes, like, five times longer than normal. You know? And, we’ve we just miss not having to go off the road, and the guy goes past us. And we kinda go really slow, so he gets farther away before we start making a decent speed again for the safety margin.

But, those those are the little things that we would be being out on the road in 1967 with long hair. And, another one here, Cedar Rapids. This is good. We’re playing a really nice gig in Cedar Rapids, and it’s not even snowing. It’s like blue sky, colder than shit.

The blue sky it’s not a blues elite. And, we got a nice gig. It’s a nice club and everything. They got two cops that are from security, you know, at the place for the night. We offload.

We get set up. We do a sound check, and we go to eat. And, the van wanted to go one place, and I didn’t wanna be too far away. And so the two cops, the two I knew that we’d get hassled, you know, for food, for restaurants and shit. They’re gonna like us.

So I told the two cops, uniform they’re in uniform. And I go, you guys gonna go eat? Because they’re the security for that night. And they go I said, you’re gonna go eat? They said, yeah.

We’ll just be down the street. I said, do you guys mind if I go with you? He said, oh, no. No. Come on.

Let’s go. So we go down. We go to this restaurant, and, the the the waitress comes right on up to the table, and she goes, I’ll serve you and I’ll serve you, but there ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna serve him. And I just go, oh, no. Here we go again.

And I just go, well, you know, have a good meal. I’m glad you you know? And I get up, and I leave. Right? It’s it’s nice.

It’s still sunny out and everything. And, I’m walking down the street back because it’s only a couple blocks from the gate, and I’m just headed back over there. I’m walking down the street in Downtown Cedar Rapids. Nice little town, clean, you know, nice you know, got a nice vibe. And, you know, as I’m walking, this car comes up alongside me.

I’m on the sidewalk. This car comes in, and all of a sudden, I hear somebody yelling at me. And I look, and it’s this woman. She’s driving this big old giant Cadillac, and she’s like she’s got the window down and she’s like leaning over going, you’re a total disgrace. You know?

Go back to, you know, China, you know, communist, and just shouting all this stuff at me. I mean, just really, really I’m just trying not to notice this walking, and she’s still yelling at me, and the car in front of her stops. And she’s yelling at me so much, she actually hits the car in front of her. Boom. And I get a little smile on my mouth like karma.

Oh, you deserve that, you old bitty. You know? And, and, kitty corner across from the whole thing, there’s a cop on a street corner, and he’s been watching the whole thing. He’s been watching me yell at me and everything, and and I’m just trying to get up closer to the street corner because there’s a cop up there, you know, in case I need one. And, and sure enough, the cop sees her hit through the other car.

He comes walking kitty corner across the street and goes over to the car to the woman, you know, and says something to her. Goes up to the front car, says something to him. And, and then the woman gets out and she’s pointing at me. Look at the way he’s dressed. Look at this.

All this stuff. And the other guy she hit, he gets out of the car, and he’s looking at me. He’s going, yeah. Look at this, man. Holy shit.

You know, no wonder why she hit me. Look. Look. And I’m just going in the wall. And the cops, I click it, and the cop goes, come over here.

And he didn’t have me come over close to the people. He came over on the sidewalk, called me, and I go back. And he goes, he goes, you know, we’re not used to having, you know, people like you in this town, and a lot of people get really upset as, you know, they consider you a threat. He was, I’m gonna write you a citation for unruly appearance causing the scene of an accident. I went, that’s against the law?

I mean, that you could you know, the captain because he goes, yeah. He writes me a ticket. I guess, this ticket, like, it was a driving site and a movie citation, you know, because I was moving and she was moving. And, and it’s all set up, you know, and it makes me promise to go to court in two weeks. Yeah.

Right. So I I promised. And, I left and I I literally got a ticket for the way I looked and see if it happens. I never went back to court. I’m pretty sure there’s still a wanted poster out on the post office for me.

You know? They’re gonna get me sooner or later if I ever head back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And, that was the that was another another little example of what it was like being on tour in 1967. Later on, when I started working with major bands and stuff, and Neil and Neil and his bands and, and his long time great musicians and stuff, They all when I would go yeah. Like, from here, my first tour was at sixty seven.

I have a first light show in the Midwest. You were in the Midwest at sixty seven? It was like, you were in Vietnam on the front line? You know? It was like, holy shit.

You know? Where’s your scars, you know. Show me, you know. You know, where’d they get you? Yeah.

Very good musicians knew, you know, how, you know, how bad it was. We did a gig. We did an animal steward. How we doing on time? We actually got a little bit of time.

I I put in an hour and a half. I think I did feel awkward. It. Fifteen minutes three. Right?

Yeah. So I did feel for it. We did an animals the the first time the animals played in The L in The United States, and I love the animals. They were a great band. I remember hearing those guys And, especially, you know, their first songs really blew me away.

So our book and he just said, we got you a great gig. The animals are coming. The first time they’re gonna be playing in The United States, they’re gonna play the first show is at Northwestern University in Chicago. So it’s a college gig. And, book is, you know, sold out, and it’s gonna be a great show.

And you guys are gonna open up the thing and you know, the show. We’re gonna do, you know, lights, you know, for the animals. You know? That’s great. You know?

This is really cool. And so I went and set everything up and, and I did the light show. And then years later, it it was really good. It was really cool show. I I got earlier in that day, setting up for the show, I decided because it’s the animal, I need to get a special effect, you know, that I don’t have.

So I went to the works cameras, and they said, you know, I’ve got this big show. And I said, like, I, you know, I just need I just wanna have something to conclude the light show with. It just, like, kinda wows everybody. And the guy goes, he goes, well, he goes, you got strobe lights. You got these fog machines.

You got he goes, but you know what? He goes, somebody just come from, an army surplus place, and they have a giant aircraft strobe that they use in World War two for firing off, and it’s like three times brighter than the sun when it goes off because the planes would be up at 40,000 feet, and they’d fire this thing and take a picture at the same time in the middle of the night. Right? It was like a big strobe for a flat for taking a a spy photo or something, you know, in the middle of the night. And he said, he said it’s really bright, you know, and it’s super bright.

You know, but, you know, if if you put a red lens over over it, that would cut down the light where I don’t think it’ll blind anybody. You know? And and he said he goes, you know, when you take a really bright image of something, your mind and goes in your mind, and then you shut your eyes, you see the same image and the color right that it’s in. But then if you keep looking, you notice that the color changes to its opposite, to its complementary color in your brain. And I went, woah.

That’s cool. So at the end of the show, I could have the whole band, like, jump up in the air and hit the strobe, and then shut off all the lights. And the audience would just see them frozen in red in midair. And then I leave the lights off for, like, ten seconds or so, and it turns from red to orange. You know?

And but there’s still be up floating up in the air. You know? That’s perfect. So I got the thing. The only thing it didn’t tell me was the capacitor to fire the thing off weighed 350 pounds.

It was fucking huge. It came in on a rolling dolly, you know? Get the forklift, you know, with these big wires that came and I had to put it way up. The auditorium we played had a had a a a an attic passageway from the back of the building where the office was over to the back of the stage where they could, get down in the where their curtains and stuff would raise for the staging inside this amphitheater. It was theater.

So I got way up there, and, right over right over the middle of the audience, there was a panel that I could remove, and I put the red strobe right there, way up high. I wanted it to be far away because I didn’t want it to burn anybody. It doesn’t I I never fired it off because you you had to wait, like, seven hours to charge it back up for the next firing off. You know? It was a one shot deal.

And, and I did. I I told the I told the analyst, I said, at the end of your show, I said, I’m your last no. They played their they played their last song, and they said, okay. Here’s it. You guys got it all, you know, at the drum and throw your arms up in the air, and, you know, and everybody else try to jump up as high as you can.

And then they practiced it a couple of times. Right? So I got it down on the counter, the beat, and everything to fire off. And they just said, okay. As long as we do that, we’ll be, you know, right on beat.

Everything will work. And and they did, and I fired it off. And it worked. Yeah. And it and it it worked.

It worked on me too. You know? I’m not there, and I’m going, woah. And and then I I had a I had a cue of just going to turn the house lights back on, bring them up slowly, and I didn’t come up slow. And I waited ten, twelve seconds, a really long time until the image started to fade a little.

And so, okay, now it’s set bringing up the lights. And everybody in the audience, no matter where you look, you saw the same picture in the dark. Right? I mean, it was just like, woah. We’re frozen in time.

It was really cool. Years later, I became friends with Eric Bird, and he moved into the desert down there down by Joshua Tree. And friends mutual friends lived next to him, and they got us back together. And I said, yeah. You know, I did the very first animal tour.

He goes, I said, I had the first light show. He said, you were the light show that night? And I went, yeah. He goes, that was our first light show. We’ve never had a light show.

And it was so cool. He said, we hired a light show guy for the next two years as the animals. Every place we played, we had our own light show guy with us, and it’s because of your light show. You know? So that was pretty cool.

That was that was a good one. So now I’ve done Clark’s Corner. I did Cedar Rapids. I did the first animal gig in The US. We in the springtime, you know, our contract was up in June.

And by April and May, it was, you know, summer, and the blues was over and everything. We have we still had our penthouse in Chicago, but we also would travel really a lot. And and the, the agency rented us a house up in Wakanda on this lake up in Northern Illinois. There’s all kinds of lakes in Northern Illinois. And there’s this one lake that’s real popular with all the kids.

They all go there in the summer and party all summer long. They called Lake Wakanda. They got us a really cool house on Lake Wakanda with its own little dock, and the place came with a little speedboat so we could go water skiing and stuff. You know, our problem was, like, about a month before that, still in a blizzard somewhere in the Midwest doing shows, we were packing at the end of the night loading up the this. We had a a little small trailer that we were towing stuff in at that time.

It’s the big trailer was impractical. And, we’re loading up all the stuff. We get it all loaded. We We could hardly get the back doors closed. There was still a couple microphone stands.

And so I couldn’t get them in, so I had to unscrew the microphone rods and stuff and put them in. And then I had the two bottom big, old, heavy parts of the microphone stands. And two of them, like, two big, old cast iron discs, and each one weighed, what, fifteen, twenty pounds. And the only place to stick them was, like, up on top of some ramps way up by the roof in this little trailer, and they were the last things to go in. And I put one in, and it was cool.

And then I put the second one in. And I get ready to reach over to shut the door. And the second one falls back down four feet, and on the corner, it lands right on my big toe of my right foot and breaks my big toe and right through my boot and everything. Broke it clean. It’s the first bone I ever broke in my whole life.

And it was all, you know, purple and horrible looking and everything. But I went in because I had a broken bone, and and everybody I knew that had broken bones got cast and had their friends sign them. So I went in to get my cast, and they go, well, we don’t put a cast on toes. What a bummer, you know. I’m really losing out on this deal.

And then, later on, we get to Wakanda, and my toe’s still healing. You know? It’s it’s not black and blue anymore, but, you know, it’s still still healing. So so I’m not able to go water skiing. But because I was in the coast guard, I got to drive the boat with the pretty girl sitting next to me as we’re driving the boat.

See? That was sort of okay. But not getting to Wallerstein was kind of a boat. That was at Lake Wakanda, 1 of our one of our getaway spots. Oh, so while I’m up there, this is what it’s leading up to.

We’re in Lake Wakanda. There’s this little town, and we go to town to get some stuff. And I’m in the shopping center, and it’s all glass. The walls are all glass. You walk through the hallways, and you just see glass stores on both sides of me in this little weird little mall.

And I’m in there, and, you know, shopping around. And and all of a sudden, it gets really dark outside in the middle of the day. Really fucking dark. And I I go out and I look at these clouds. It’s just, like, coming over these big old thunder clouds and stuff, and and they’re turning like a pea green.

The clouds are turning fucking green, and and everybody goes, hurricane. Hurricane. No. It’s tornado. Tornado.

And I go tornado. I’ve been in a lot of earthquakes. It’s cool. You know? No problem.

Tornado. And they go, yeah. Tornado. And it’s a it’s a the store said, everybody get down on the floor. Get behind counters.

Down behind. And all the walls of glass and everything. I think, holy shit, man. We’re, you know, we could we’re gonna get shredded, you know. And the thing came over and the building shook.

It didn’t come over us. It came over a block away and totally leveled this this elementary school, you know, made out of stone, you know, flatted it out. I mean, it it just missed us by about a block, and we were close enough to it shook everything. And it was my very first tornado and, and my last tornado. And I never wanna be in another one.

That was that was at Lake Wakanda. Let’s see. Lizard packing up broken toe. I got that one. Bloomington, Indiana.

Bloomington, Indiana was really cool. I, I met this really nice girl. I kinda got a thing going with it. His father was, the president of the university in in Bloomington, Indiana. And she was she her name was Rachel.

She was she looked like a Rachel. She was just beautiful, long hair. She’s about 19 or 20. I’m, like, 22 at the time. And, her father she and her father had a cabin outside of town in in a neck in a stone quarry.

They have stone quarries in Indiana, and they’re they fill up with water. And they they they’re just beautiful lakes and pools that used to be as a stone quarry. And, so we go there and, you know, just to hang out and be together. And, a few of I think another couple that were friends of hers, they were out there at the house doing it now. So we’re out swimming, you know, skinny dipping in the in the lake in the middle of the night.

And all of a sudden, I start seeing these little flashy lights all around me, and I think, fuck. I’m having an LSD flashback. I’ve heard about flashbacks, but I’ve never had one before. But I’m having one, you know. And I got a little weird chest.

And I think I’m having a flash an LSD flashback. And she goes, what? I think, yeah. The lights are just flashing little patterns. Just those are fireflies.

Fireflies. I never saw a firefly in my whole life. Right? So that was, like, the first time I saw fireflies. That was in Bloomington, Indiana.

That was a good gig, though. We’ve that that was that that in, Lawrence, Kansas, like, we’re two towns where you could get high and have a good time. It kinda felt sort of like being in California. We did another gig called, Frontier City or Frontier Land Frontier World. And it was just outside of on the way into Oklahoma City in Oklahoma.

And, we found a place to camp with our trailer called Greenleaf Lake. And it was kinda like outside Oklahoma City too. And it was awkward. Oklahoma’s kinda brown, red, dirty. Stuff.

The green light must have been on Eastern Oklahoma because it was green. You know? It was plush. It was a nice lake. It was a cool spot.

But going into Oklahoma City, it’s Frontier City. So we’re go we go in and, we oh, the gigs at this place called Frontier World, and it’s a western cowboy town. And we’re playing in the saloon. Right? And and during the day, we’ll play the Saturday night gig or something.

But Saturday is tourist time in Frontier World, you know? And there everybody comes to see the the gunfight. Right? And they have these cowboys. There’s some up on the roof with their guns, and there’s some down on the street with their guns, and they’re shooting each other.

Right? They they have this gunfight every afternoon at 03:00 or something. People come to watch And, you know, the guy does a flip off the roof and lands on his back in the hay wagon. You know? You know?

There’s a whole thing. They have this whole thing set up. They have little houses and cabins in downtown, all front to your grill. Really cool. We did the show.

It was real successful. We had, you know, the kids all loved it, and, the guy it was the first time he’d ever seen a light show too. And we’re packing up the next day on Sunday, getting ready to head on out. And the guy who owned the place comes up to me, and he goes, how committed are you to to these guys? And, you know, this it wasn’t in the blizzard time.

It was, you know, this was like in March, so so June was coming. I told the guy, I said, you know, as soon as my contract’s up, I’ve I’ve I’ve got out of here and I live on. I’d probably get a move on, you know, to other things. You guys, how much would it take for you just to stay here? I’ll give you that house over there.

You just give you light show equipment, keep it going in the saloon. And I thought, wow. Once I could be a cowboy, Frontier City, you know, shattering my flashlights. I told him, I said, no. I can’t break the contract.

You know, I’m on your contract and everything. They offered me they offered me a pretty good job. You know? They was they was kinda cool. That was that was Oklahoma.

If we got time for this one too. The one of the little on the side note, when we were in Chicago, we go out all the time. We had 22 years old. We got, you know, two, three days off. I’d go into these Chicago that had, the best white blues clubs going in the whole United States.

They had the black news guys that would come up from the South that live in Chicago and famous guys. You know, there’s always, you know, blind lemon Willie and all these weird blues guys. And, one of them was Junior Wells and was and the all stars. And Junior, we did a gig with, with Peter and Gordon. Peter and Gordon, they’re like folk singers from England.

And I can’t remember the hits. Maybe it was almost anyway, we did a show with them in Chicago. And, and Junior Wells showed up because the light show because he hadn’t ever seen a light show. Right? And afterwards, he came over and introduced himself to me.

I I hardly knew who he was in a while ago. I remember. You know? But I I knew that he had a pretty big dad. So he goes, what are you doing tomorrow night?

I said, no. I’m gonna get to the end of the next few days off. I said, he can say, I got a great gig over in the South end of town in Chicago with the school’s clothing. Come on over and be my guest. So I went.

Fuck. He put on a gold lame suit, you know, giant horn section, you know. Just really, you know, very sort of jive uptown kind of, you know, the country boy goes to the big city and he said, yeah. You know? And, the mafia in South Chicago was a black mafia called the Blackstone Rangers, and they controlled South Chicago.

I mean, they were just, you know, they were Cecilia. They they they all wore black leather and black leather berets. You could tell them who was a Blackstone Ranger. They didn’t didn’t mess with them. You know?

Junior was their guy. Junior was not sort of their moral their leader, you know, in a way. Sort of a cross between a mascot and a and a and a moral or a leader. And, so junior, when I went to saw a show, I was like, the blacks go to majors go, a white guy going to the said, I said, yeah, junior. I’m a guest with junior.

Junior likes you? Look. Come on. You know? So I I just get accepted now.

And, I go see Junior’s show, and I go, Junior, man? I said, oh, man. You’re great, man. This is this is really cool. I, you know, I still haven’t been to too many blues clubs before.

You know, we got rock and roll clubs in California. I said, yeah. He goes, you’re great. He’s that’s good. He goes, I really like your light shade too.

And, cool. I said, Robin, you know so he goes, where are you staying? I said, that corner of Delaware and Rush Street. That’s that’s a cool neighborhood. I said, yeah.

We got a penthouse. You know, my agency got us a penthouse up on the roof. I’ll come by and visit. I’m like, cool, man. You know?

We’re there. So literally, like, within a day or two, it’s night. It’s about 08:00 at night, and you have to go up to this elevator to get up to the penthouse and into our door. And at 08:00 at night, boom, boom, boom on the door. And I go to the door, and there’s this guy.

His his his head doesn’t he’d have to lean down to get into the door. He had to be, like, six eight or something. He’d kind of be huge and weighed, like, three hundred and fifty pounds. His name is Tiny. And he was a Blackstone Ranger, all in black and everything.

So I reckon I knew he was a Blackstone Ranger. And I opened the door, and and he goes, Junior’s down in the car. Yeah. Yeah. He wants you to go eat some chicken with him.

Okay. Cool. Well, I I better say no to Tiny. Yeah. I said, okay.

Let me put up my counter for I get out there, and there’s a big old black cat he lives in down there. Chickens are Junior’s in the back seat. He’s got a big old bucket of chicken next to him. And then he tells the guy who just was driving around driving around the little town. I don’t wanna talk, because he used to try to talk me into doing light shows for him for giving his love and stuff.

But but also, he just really liked me. And I kinda I really liked him. And so he would come over, and just every now and then, he just sort of show up and, you know, Tidy would escort me down and and we’d go out and eat some more chicken. He would sometimes stop into some club, and every time I’d walk into a club with him, everybody loved Junior. You know?

And they’re just like, wow. Junior’s friend. You know? He’s white you know, white guys. You don’t see white guys in there very often.

So that was really fun. Later on, when I lived in Boston, Junior came in. He was playing a gig in in Boston. He came in, he actually stayed at my place, and he really lived in Boston for the night while he was in town. We talked about Chicago or That was pretty cool.

And having the Blackstone Rangers in my corner really emboldened me to be able to go places where very few white men had ever gone before. And, so there’s Junior Wells in Chicago, Peter And Gordon. The band, Peter and Gordon. Something bad with side note. Something some kind of band some kind of band aid.

I don’t know. I can’t remember what that is. Anyway, we talked about Peter and Gordon. They were they were okay. Peter that was Peter Ash, and, he ended up marrying marrying Anne Faithful or something like that.

The only other one I have, and we might be able to squeeze it in, is, because we had a full Baldwin scholarship sponsorship, I told you the band could the big thing on our on our psychedelic segment of of their show were the crescendo. I’d put on the the strobe lights, and I’d fill up the the dance floor under the strobe lights with fog. And everybody would dance in this fog and go click click click click click under the strobe lights. We pretend like they were all on acid. This is what the acid’s all about.

Woah. This is trippy. You know? This never happened before. I’m losing my money, that kind of stuff.

Sometimes we do that in these little towns, and there’d be some cute girls, you know? And Danny, the bass player, one of the brothers, when the fog the fog would raise up off the floor because I didn’t ice it down. So the fog would could fill up the whole room, you know? And all the just the strobe light areas would would would you’d see because everything else was all fogged up. And for the for, like, ten minutes, they would just take their apps and stuff when the fog was happening and just take their guitars and put them up next to their apps and let them feed back.

And that’s the psychoanalyst part of it. That that was their idea of psychoanalyst. And what it did, it freed up Danny to where he could go and grab a girl, you know, from some little chair that he’d been winking at all night, get her in the fog. And a couple times, he’d be like our stages were sometimes only, like, two feet off of the floor, you know, just raised up just enough through little funky little gigs. And Couple times, the fog would start to lift, and I’d see Danny’s feet and with his pants pulled down to his ankles and this other girl on top of him on the side of the stage, you know, and I’d realize that if the fog lifts up another four inches, Danny’s gonna get thrown in jail or something.

You know? And I’d have to go over and kick Danny’s foot. So, fog’s lifted, get it, you know, get in and grow and that would happen quite often. Well, not quite often often. But, anyway, so we have this Baldwin scholarship, and, the guy who loves Baldwin music has this big giant house in Louisville, Kentucky.

That’s the center of Baldwin. And, he has a daughter turning 18 and having the debutante party. And so we’re we’re the rock band. Right? The big and we’re we’re making waves all through the Midwest with the light show.

And so he has us go and and play his daughter’s debutante party right behind in this behind this house in the big giant backyard in this big mansion. And, she and all her friends are there and her college friends and all these guys, they’re all in, like, white white sport coats, you know, and they’re all dressed up, and they’re all drinking, and all of a sudden guys, and they’re all drunk. And they all have short, blonde hair and weird, and and we have long, hippie hair. And the girls like us, and the guys don’t like us because their girlfriends are liking us. And, I’m wearing that guy that a a shirt with an upside down American flag sewn on it and and a picture of Jesus Christ that I bought on a roadside place that a a tree limb that was sliced with a picture of Jesus that I hung around my neck.

And just I’m not religious. I just did it because I kinda went to school with the flag. So I’m there, you know, and, we we play a set, and the girls are kind of liking me and winking and stuff. And then, we take a break, and then we’re gonna play a second set, you know, where we take, like, a thirty minute break, go get a drink and stuff. And, the stage is about, well, about three and a half, four feet high.

The the road. And I’m down down in front, and I I get to drink or water or something. And I start leaning up against the stage, And these four guys come and they surround me, and they just wanna beat the shit out of me. I don’t know which one of their girlfriends thought that I was cute, but, you know, it was enough to they’re drunk and I’m the problem, and they’re gonna deal with it. And so they surrounded me, and the girls start going, hey, Jack.

Leave him alone. You know, you hear the girls all shouting because they know what’s happened. Like and I don’t really I don’t know what’s really happened. I just know that, you know, something’s happened. And, they kinda squeezed me up against the side of the stage.

But But earlier in the set, everybody’s drinking, you know, out of glass champagne glasses and stuff. And some of the glasses get broken, and they’re broken on on the stage, on the front of the stage. I didn’t know that. So I get backed up to the stage, and and they’re, like, going, you know, they’re getting ready to to to hit me. And I I get to the stage, and I feel the back of the stage, and I I lean up kind of back like that, and they’re coming in at me.

And I feel some crutches in in the palms of both of my hands. And and I put my hands back out and I look, and I kept both palms of my hands in glass on the stage. I had cuts and it’s bleeding, both of them. And they’re coming towards me, and I I reach over and I take this picture of Jesus. And I have this long leather tongue, and I hold it like that, like they’re like they’re vampires.

Yeah. And I go, You know? And they see that my palms are bleeding. I’m having this stigmata, right, right in front of them. And a lot of them are, I guess, Catholics and stuff.

And they go, my god. Look. Look. Look what’s happening. Jesus.

And they all, like, back up and begin they all back away at the girls. And then, like, they grab them and they get out of there. I go looking for band aids, and I escape escape that little booty. And, that was another one of those moments, you know, that I had on out there. And then the only other thing, he said, June June came along, the Mothers of Invention.

My friends from that I made friends with, you know, earlier in this in, ’66 with my first shows in LA. They came through, and so we all go down to say hi to them and, you know, go see their gig that night. And Jimmy called Black, the drummer’s a friend guy that I was particularly friends with from the band from LA. And, Jimmy and I are talking, and I go, man, I go, I can’t wait. And they knew the pop art band.

They knew him from LA and everything. And I said, yeah. I’ve had it. You know? Just, I’m ready to go.

This is the worst band, you know, in the whole life. Jimmy goes, well, he goes, Frank got us a theater to he got us a theater in, Greenwich Village in New York. We’re on our way there. We’re playing this gig, and we’re we’re headed straight to New York. We’re all staying at the Chelsea Hotel.

We’re gonna be there for a couple of months. He goes, my wife and kids Jimmy had a wife and then, like, I don’t know how many kids. I don’t think we ever counted them all. He had to lose five or six. You know, maybe seven or eight, but five or six were recognizable.

Anyway, he goes, yeah. He goes to wife and kids. He said, but, hell, what what I’ll throw a mattress over in the corner, and, you know, you got a really big place at Chelsea for being the family. Come stay come stay with us and, you know, and, come hang out at the, you know, hang out at the Garrick and, you know, if you wanna do light shows or something, you know, or do something, you can. But I never really got set up because I left all the light show equipment with the band when I left.

And literally, I’d say it was June. It was, like, June 1, and they were playing, and my contract was up on June 1. And I told Frank I told Jimmy, I said, yeah. My contract’s up, man. I’m going back to California.

And he goes, no. No. It comes in New York. So I was like, cool. I only had about $90 in my pocket anyway.

And, you know, it just went, okay. Come on. So I I flew to New York with him, and I moved into the Chelsea Hotel. And I lived with him for about two or three weeks. And, Paul Butterfield came over all the time.

He and I became really good buddies in New York and really good friends. And, and he hooked me up with these guys that wanted to build a psychedelic nightclub in Boston. And, I went for my first tour to moving into Boston and, setting up a psychedelic light show called the Crossdown Bus. And I’ll tell you all about the Crossdown Bus. And our next little series, Jacob.

We get the whole thing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cool. We have the minor walls and the okay.

Cool. So we got that one. Okay. Well, then we got accounting for now. Alright.