Groovy: When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture by TwoMorrows Publishing

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“To live in joys that once have been / to put the cold world out of sight / and deck life’s drear and barren scene / with hues of rainbow-light.” — Lewis Carroll “Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers / that grow so incredibly high.” — John Lennon “Stay away from (the brown acid).” — Announcer at Woodstock

When flower power bloomed in pop culture Ginger Baker 71 Roger McGuinn 72 David Crosby 73 The Doors 74 John Densmore 75 Robby Krieger 76 Ray Manzarek 77 Justin Hayward 78 John Kay 79 Vanilla Fudge 80 The Zombies 82

THE GENESIS Introduction 4 Overview 8 Timeline 10 The folk scene 12

THE FLOWERING The Beatles’ evolution 14 ‘Pet Sounds’ 16 Brian Wilson 17 The Rolling Stones’ evolution 18

TOP 40 Hit singles 1964-1972 20 Tommy James 22 Mark Lindsay 25 Susan Cowsill 26 Hitmakers 30 The Turtles 34 The Guess Who 35 Donovan 36 The Rascals 37

TELEVISION Television trips 38 ‘The Monkees’ 40 Davy Jones 42 Micky Dolenz 44 Peter Tork 46 Michael Nesmith 48 But were they a real band? 49 Monkees memorabilia 50 The Smothers Brothers 54 ‘Laugh-In’ 56 Ruth Buzzi 58 Lily Tomlin 60 ‘Laugh-In’ memorabilia 62 Tiny Tim 64 Tiny Tim memorabilia 67

ALBUM BANDS 33 1/3 revolutions per minute 68 Cream 69 Jack Bruce 70

FILM Groovy movies 84 ‘Riot on Sunset Strip’ 85 ‘The Trip’ 86 ‘Psych-Out’ 87 ‘Head’ 88 ‘Wild in the Streets’ 89 ‘Yellow Submarine’ 90 ‘Easy Rider’ 92 ‘Easy Rider’ vignettes 94 Peter Fonda 95

Insets: “Their Satanic Majesties Request” © London Records, © Decca Records; “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; “Psych-Out” © Dick Clark Productions, © American International Pictures

Ten Years After 138 On Jimi Hendrix 140 The Altamont free concert 146

MESSIAHS The original hippie 150 ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ 152 Ian Gillan 153 Long-hairs on Broadway 154 ‘Superstar’ the movie 155 Tommy Chong 156

ART

FAMILY FARE

Psychedelic posters 96 Peter Max 98 Peter Max memorabilia 101 John Van Hamersveld 102 Diana Prince transformed 104 DC Comics in the groove 106 On Steve Ditko 108 Jim Steranko 109 Archie Comics in the groove 110 Underground comix 112 On Robert Crumb 116

Post-revolution sitcoms 157 Florence Henderson 158 Barry Williams 160 Maureen McCormick 162 Eve Plumb 164 ‘Brady’ memorabilia 165 David Cassidy 166

Every effort has been made to verify the ownership or source of all illustrated material. We regret any errors of attribution, and will make the appropriate corrections in future editions.

‘SUMMER OF LOVE’

Monterey Pop and Woodstock 130 Richie Havens 131 Arlo Guthrie 132 Melanie 133 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 134 The Who 135 Sha Na Na and Canned Heat 136 Mountain 137

Front cover: Hippie girl from Madhouse Ma-ad Freak-Out #72 (1970) by Stan Goldberg © Archie Comics; Woodstock poster (1969) by Arnold Skolnick © Woodstock Music & Art Fair; Snorky doll (1969) © Hanna-Barbera Productions; “Live For Today” picture sleeve (1967) © Dunhill Records; “Stoned Agin!” artwork from Your Hytone Comix (1971) © Robert Crumb; Jimi Hendrix artwork from the cover of “Axis: Bold as Love” (1968) © Reprise Records

Back cover: Dancing girl from poster for “Mondo Mod” (1967) © Timely Motion Pictures Inc.

Black is Beautiful 120 On the Vietnam War 122 Politicians in the groove 123

FESTIVALS

‘Groovy’ logo by: Ed Gabel Proofreader: Scott Peters

Frontis page: Susan Strasberg from poster art for “Psych-Out” (1968) © Dick Clark Productions and American International Pictures

GETTING REAL

The San Francisco scene 124 Paul Kantner 125 Jorma Kaukonen 126 Jack Casady 127 Big Brother and Janis Joplin 128

Written and designed by: Mark Voger Publisher: John Morrow

Danny Bonaduce 170 Shirley Jones 172 ‘Partridge’ memorabilia 173 Teen magazines 176 Saturday morning TV 178 ‘The Banana Splits’ 180 ‘Banana Splits’ memorabilia 180 ‘H.R. Pufnstuf’ 182 ‘Pufnstuf’ memorabilia 184 Casey Kasem 185 ‘The Brady Kids’ 186

ENDSVILLE Epilogue 188 Index 190 Acknowledgments 191

Insets; “Love” poster © Peter Max; “H.R. Pufnstuf” © Sid & Marty Krofft Productions

For Cholly “Groovy: When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture”

ISBN 978-1-60549-080-9 First printing, November 2017 Printed in China All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from Mark Voger, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Inquiries should be addressed to Mark Voger c/o: TwoMorrows Publishing. Photos credited to Kathy Voglesong © the estate of Kathy Voglesong

Published by: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614

Introduction I had my first instance of transcendent grooviness when I was 12. It wasn’t at Woodstock. And the strongest drug in my system? Pepsi. This occurred at a place called the Echelon Mall (not there anymore) in a town called Voorhees (still there) in Camden County, New Jersey. The year was 1970. This mall, which recently had its grand opening, was a known destination for things that were hip and adult. To repressed sixthgraders at Holy Rosary School in the Diocese of Camden, on the painful cusp of puberty, your first trip to the brand-spankin’-new Echelon Mall was then a rite of passage. “Did’ja go yet?” was the question on everyone’s lips. There were lots of illicit things to see, according to the first wave of explorers. And to Catholic school boys, illicit things were precisely what we craved. One store sold naughty novelties, such as a rectangular box marked “Genuine French Birth Control Device.” Inside was a miniature guillotine. (Get it? It’s the perfect size to behead your babymaker?) Another store was more to the point: A Shop Called East. This was a glorified “head” shop — that is, a purveyor of drug paraphernalia like bongs, rolling papers and small square mirrors (I’ll let you guess how each was used), disguised as a gift shop. The airy, well-lit front of the store was stocked with cheap faux-Asian objets d’art such as Buddha statues, jewelry and brass incense burners. The back room was like a bad-guy hideout in a “Mod Squad” episode. The walls were black. The only light came from spinning psychedelic lamps and overhead “black light” bulbs. (Black light bulbs gave off a purple-ish light that kept a room dark, but illuminated so-called “DayGlo” colors and made white objects, such as sneakers and sweat socks, glow purple.) Freaky, mannn. The walls were decorated with posters for sale: Raquel Welch in a fur bikini … Peter Fonda riding his chopper in “Easy Rider” … Dennis Hopper, from the same film, giving “the finger” … and lots of psychedelic designs, many in DayGlo. Lining the very back wall were glass counters displaying the aforementioned druggie accessories. (This was back before such merchandise was outlawed.) The “straighter”-looking employees at A Shop Called East manned the front of the store; the full-on hippies were relegated to the back room. Respectable citizens, if they set foot in the store at all, rarely made it to the back room. The spinning lights were most unwelcoming to Ward Cleaver types, and blaring rock music provided ample warning: “If you don’t like this

My bedroom in 1972. A skull ashtray, incense burner and posters clashed with the early-American motif. Left: A spinning lamp provided groovy atmosphere. music, you are too square to come back here.” It was in the back room at A Shop Called East at the Echelon Mall that I had my little epiphany. At age 12, I had been wondering about all this “grooviness” I was seeing and hearing about on TV, in movies and over the radio. It seemed like a pretty good deal to me. For one thing — actually, the main thing — the girls were cute, and seemed possessed of dubious morals. On TV, hippie chicks wore headbands, fringe vests, no bras, “hip-hugger” jeans and would say things like “C’mere, man” before laying a long, open-mouthed kiss on a random hippie dude. I couldn’t wait to grow up, grow my hair long and receive a sloppy kiss from a cute hippie chick. But I was conflicted. Drugs like marijuana and LSD seemed to be part and parcel of this grooviness scene. I hoped to remain a dope virgin, lest I end up like the girl in the book “Go Ask Alice.” (When Grace Slick sang “Go ask Alice” — the Lewis Carroll-inspired lyric that inspired the book title — she sounded like some sort of drug witch sending a subliminal message: “Go take dope.”)

I was wishin’ and hopin’ so hard to be a part of this scene that I must have willed myself into having that transcendent moment. One day, blaring from the speakers in the back room of A Shop Called East, was heard a laid-back-soundin’ dude saying some stuff into a microphone, and a huge crowd responding to him. I figured it out: This must be that Woodstock thing I kept hearing about. Woodstock: the epicenter of grooviness. Then a song I’d never heard before (which wound up being “See Me, Feel Me” by The Who) came on. Everything was right. The moon was in the seventh house. The spinning lights . . . the black light overhead ... the DayGlo shimmering from the psychedelic posters ... did I mention the spinning lights? Then Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend sang: “Listenin’ to you . .. I get the fever ...” I felt it. “Gazing at you ... I get the heat ...” I got a little bit light-headed, a little bit alternate-reality-ish, and I felt it. “Following you ... I climb the mountain ...” Maybe, I thought, I could become a hippie without taking drugs and ending up like Alice. Except that I forgot one important thing: My dad would never let me be a hippie. BY THE LATE 1960s AND EARLY ’70s, THE NATION was divided into two groups: No. 1, people like my dad and his World War II veteran bar-tending customers, who hated hippies, and No. 2, hippies. I was a confused pre-adolescent kid watching all of this and wondering where I fit in. My dad was my hero, but the long-hairs were the cool kids. My father, Charles, was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima. In civilian life, he was a shipping foreman at a Philadelphia oil refinery who moonlighted as a bartender at Dan McShea’s Rustic Tavern near the Ben Franklin Bridge. So this was a tough guy, not that he advertised the fact. (He once disarmed a knife-wielding drunk on an early date with my mom; I never heard him mention it.) And Charles certainly didn’t understand, nor did he appreciate, when the young men around him started wearing long hair. Meanwhile, in my delusions, I became some sort of shorthaired, underage, undercover suburban “hippie” by buying groovy stuff from the mall with my lawn-cuttin’ money, in order to groovy-ize my bedroom. (I did this before Greg Brady.) I bought a skull ashtray, an incense burner, two spinning psychedelic lamps, an imitation black-light bulb, two inflatable pillows (one said “Peace,” the other said “Keep Off the Grass”) and lots of posters. (Mind you, no self-respecting “actual” hippie would ever shell out for this manufactured tripe. What did I know?) Each new purchase was like a tiny challenge to my dad, who didn’t understand any of this, having been a teenager during the Great Depression. But Charles allowed me to do my thing without comment. Maybe he knew I was having a tough time. I was not athletically gifted or good-looking or popular. One of the things I bought and hung was a poster of Raquel Welch — that black-and-white one of her in the beguiling cavewoman duds from “One Million Years B.C.” Do you remember it? (If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember.) If you ask me, this poster was more influential than the Farrah Fawcett one a decade later. The Raquel Welch poster walked the fine line between not-quiteporn and va-va-voom. So I was wondering things like, “Will I have the resolve to decline the offer of drugs when the time comes?” and “How can I get a girl like Raquel Welch?”

The poster that launched a million ... never mind. © Seven Arts DID ALL OF THE GROOVINESS I MANAGED TO witness take place at malls? In June of 1969, when I was 11, my own little version of a “Woodstock moment” (two months before Woodstock) occurred, courtesy of that overgrown flower child, Tiny Tim. The ukulele-strumming singer with the stringy hair, toucan nose and effeminate mannerisms was scheduled to appear at the Moorestown Mall in New Jersey, to autograph copies of “Beautiful Thoughts,” his heartfelt — albeit, padded and overpriced — book of psychedelic art and hippie philosophy. (“Sometimes a nice long shower will straighten you out . . . When did you write your mother last?”) I was a fan. I laughed at him — more like marveled at him — on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” I admired his bold stance as a totally unique individual (this, despite my father’s dismissal of Tiny Tim as “some kind of a fruitcake”).

My father, Charles, was a Marine who fought at Iwo Jima during World War II — a lot to live up to for a wanna-be hippie. Tiny really seemed like a guy from another planet. I’d borrowed the 45-RPM of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” from a neighborhood kid, and played it over and over. But not the A-side. I dug the B-side, “Fill Your Heart.” Tiny sang it in his lower register. The arrangement was catchy. The lyrics were very hippie-ish: “Gentleness can clear the head / Love can clean the mind ...” On the day of Tiny’s mall appearance, I drew a cartoon of him strumming his ukulele with flowers floating around him. When my mom pulled into the parking lot at Gimbels Department Store, her timing was perfect; Tiny was just getting out of a town car at the store entrance. He and an entourage of two were met by a Gimbels employee. Tiny wore pancake makeup, eye-liner and a dark cape over a checkered suit (which looked mighty strange on this warm, sunny day). He seemed 7-feet-tall. After a quick chat, the group walked into the store, and I followed. I had to jog to keep up with them. (Like I said, Tiny was tall.) I remember seeing Tiny’s scraggly hair hanging over the back of his cape as he walked. The group arrived at a roped-off area where Tiny would autograph books at a table atop a riser. I jostled my way toward Tiny before he ascended the riser, and gave him the cartoon. Tiny was very gracious, and complimented the simplistic artwork of an 11-year-old. A half-hour later, I spoke with Tiny again, when he signed my copy of his book (“6/7/69: To Mr. Mark: Thank you for buying my book and for the swell drawing you made for me, Tiny Tim”). I told him I liked the message of “Fill Your Heart.” His reply was probably something along the lines of: “That song was written by Mr. Biff Rose and Mr. Paul Williams.” I had my Tiny Tim moment — two of ’em, actually — and now stood contentedly off to one side outside the roped-off area, still basking in the presence of this freaky being. Suddenly, three “mall hoodlums” walked in front of me, their attention fixed on Tiny Tim. In 1969, mall hoodlums wore denim, played pinball, smoked Marlboros (later pot) and carried pocketknives, usually for the purpose of carving swear words into phone

booths and trees. I didn’t recognize these particular hoodlums, but I knew their type. “Look at that faggot,” one of them said as they watched Tiny. They traded similar comments and laughed. Finally, one of them shouted at Tiny Tim: “Hey, Tiny! Sing!” Tiny looked right at the trio with a big smile on his face. He stood, held a hand out toward them with a theatrical flourish, and loudly sang one line: “Tip-toe … through the tu-lips … with me!” The hoodlums clapped, laughed some more and continued walking. One of them turned back to yell, “Thanks, Tiny!” Wow. Tiny Tim won over some “faggot”-bashing juvenile delinquents with flower power. There really was, it seemed to me in that moment, hope for the world. ONE SUNDAY MORNING IN, I’M GUESSING, 1971, when I was in the eighth grade, my dad said something that really alarmed me. After Sunday Mass, he sometimes took us kids to breakfast at the Country Club Diner in Voorhees. (It was still a “dining car”-style structure in those days.) I always ordered scrapple and home fries. (Scrapple is a Philadelphia-area delicacy, if you can call it a delicacy, made from pig snouts, tails, eyes and hooves, ground into a squishy grey loaf, which is sliced thickly, hard-fried and drowned in ketchup, to mask its slaughterhousefloor flavor.) I was only an eighth-grader, but already, I was on the path to clogged ventricles. We’re eating. My dad looks out the window. In the parking lot, a long-haired dude with a bushy beard lopes toward a weathered Volkswagen. Charles watches him and mutters, to no one in particular: “Y’see that guy? Some day, my buddies and I are gonna get some scissors, razors and shaving cream, and when we see a guy like that, we’re gonna jump him, hold him down, give him a shave and a haircut, and let him go.” This little musing scared me on several levels. Dad and his buddies might hurt the guy. Or they might get hurt. Plus, it’s not fair to the guy to be shaven against his will. And worst of all, I’ll never be cool with a dad who goes around shaving hippies.

Decades later, I came to realize that my dad was just thinking out loud. Just lettin’ off steam. His “buddies” were probably the guys he car-pooled with to the refinery in Philly on weekdays. (I can’t imagine any of the button-down suburban dads in our 85-percent-Jewish neighborhood, nor the well-heeled drunks my dad served at Dan McShea’s, forming a hippie-shaving vigilante group. But those refinery guys ...) Charles was his own man, but he always seemed affected by what those car-pooling buddies said during their mundane daily commute. I imagine it went something like: “Hey, Cholly, would’ja lookit that dirty hippie? Whaddaya say we jump ’im and give ’im a shave? Do th’ world a favor?” BUT EVEN CHOLLY MADE A GLANCING SOJOURN into the realm of grooviness. He wasn’t alone among his generation. Richard Nixon went on “Laugh-In.” It was said that after the surprise success of “Easy Rider,” older movie executives suddenly adjusted their looks. Hair got a little longer; sideburns got bushier; lapels got wider; white shirts and navy blue suits were replaced by colorful prints. You saw this in everyday life, too. Here’s how it happened in my dad’s case: In 1970, a doublealbum came out titled “Jesus Christ Superstar,” a rock opera about the last days of Christ. This was part of an over-arching trend in which Jesus was re-imagined as a hippie. Controversy, and therefore media attention, erupted. Catholics weighed in, of course, but the reaction was oddly mixed. Even in my little corner of the universe: Holy Rosary School. Most of the nuns condemned the album, but one younger, slightly hipper nun said she liked it. As for me, I didn’t beg anyone’s permission to buy it; I just marched into Franklin Music at the Echelon Mall. Come on — I had been taught all about Jesus for six of my 12 years on the planet. And suddenly, there’s a rock album about him? I was in. The album came with a libretto, so you could easily follow the characters, dialogue and story. The score is true rock, despite being Broadway-friendly. I listened to the album over and over. I felt like it was all coming together — my years of force-fed Catholicism and my new allegiance to hard rock. Then, one day when I was listening to “Superstar,” my father walked by my bedroom at just the perfect moment to overhear a lyric that, out of context, would seem like heinous blasphemy to an old-school Catholic like Charles. Anyone familiar with “Jesus Christ Superstar” knows “Herod’s Song.” It’s about when Pontius Pilate, who was expected to sentence Christ to death,

Libretto pages from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1970). © Decca Records

passed the buck and instead sent him to King Herod for sentencing. But Herod just toyed with Jesus and sent him back. The melody by Andrew Lloyd Webber is, to my untrained ears, a tongue-in-cheek revisiting of ’20s-’30s ragtime (like what the Beatles did with “Honey Pie”). The lyrics by Tim Rice are pure burlesque. The song is a sliver of comedy in the midst of very dark events, even if that comedy is itself laced with dread. So Charles, a devout Catholic, happened to walk by my room just as Herod was singing: “Hey ... aren’t ... you . . . scared of me, Christ? / Mr. Wonderful Christ? / You’re a joke, you’re not the lord / You’re nothing but a fraud ...” Charles handled it well. He didn’t storm in, grab my 33-RPM record and break it over his knee. He simply looked at me and said, “They’re just ridiculing him.” I attempted to explain to my dad that what he heard was out of context; that “Jesus Christ Superstar” wasn’t blasphemy; that if he would only listen to the entire album and read along with the libretto, he’d see that it’s actually a reverent work. (Mind you, I’m a 12-year-old twerp fast-talking an ex-Marine.) My father thought for a moment and, to my surprise, agreed to listen to the album. We made a family event out of it. My parents, sister, brother and I all listened to the four sides of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” as my parents read along with the libretto. Well, they loved it. My dad, who thought rock was noise, who liked the Mills Brothers and Lester Lanin, actually fell for “Jesus Christ Superstar.” And it wasn’t just lip service; he followed through. On my 14th birthday in 1972, he took me to New York City to see the Broadway adaptation. I’ll never forget it. In 1973, my parents took us to the Philly premiere of the movie adaptation. It’s as close as Charles would ever come to embracing hippie culture. But it was something, anyway. SO I’M THE GENERATION THAT missed the boat — old enough to realize what was going on, too young to take part. If I was born 10 years earlier and grew up in San Francisco instead of South Jersey, what follows would be a different kind of trip. For no true hippie would countenance the corny, co-opted psychedelia of “Laugh-In” or “H.R. Pufnstuf.” Nonetheless, these things happened. Is existence not a form of validity? Perhaps the psychedelic walls behind Fleagle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky inspired a child to later investigate Milton Glaser or Stanley Mouse. Yeah, the Jefferson Airplane has more cred than the Cowsills, but there’s room in the groovy-verse for “White Rabbit” and “The Rain, the Park and Other Things.” This work titled “Groovy” is as much about the cheezy corporate cash-ins as the druggy, organic inception of a genre. To take the stance of a purist — to only consume “real” psychedelia — is to turn a blind eye to some pretty cool, trippy stuff. Besides, let’s not forget what John Lennon said in “Strawberry Fields Forever”: “Nothing is real.”

Yeah, the word “groovy” was coined by 1920s jazz musicians. (Man, we stole everything from those guys.) And trippy art with wild color schemes had been around at least since the dawn of the surrealism art movement, around the same time. And hallucinogen usage dates to the 1930s. But the Big Bang for grooviness as we know it happened on Feb. 7, 1964, when John, Paul, George and Ringo stepped out of a Pan Am plane and waved to thousands of screaming fans at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. American kids welcomed the Beatles with open arms, but most American adults (newscasters, columnists, stand-up comedians, parents) shared a different takeaway: These Beatles have long hair. Long hair? Didja see the Beatles’ hair in 1964? It was, like, an inch over their ears! But that was all the adults saw. So JFK Airport is where the seed was planted in earnest. Of course, the Beatles didn’t traipse onto the tarmac in their “Sgt. Pepper” costumes. It would be a few years before the first buzz of feedback, the first twang of sitar, the first “goo goo g’choob.” A flowering — literally and figuratively — occurred as the 1960s unfolded. It was like the decade began in Eisenhowerian black-and-white, and ended in kaleidoscopic color. Psychedelia — a color-saturated, free-form art style that was as much a lifestyle — permeated all forms of media, and was, in a weird way, accessible to all age groups. Disaffected youth flocked to the hippie mecca HaightAshbury. “Oldsters” laughed at sexy jokes on “Laugh-In” and felt hip at the office water cooler. Urchins in pajamas, high on Frosted Flakes, rocked out to “The Banana Splits” on Saturday mornings. This was the irony: Sometimes psychedelia reflected dark realities (the struggle for Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, the assassinations, the casualties of hallucinogens), but sometimes it reflected childish innocence (the Mondrian bus on “The Partridge Family”). Largely, this multi-medium genre sprang from music. As “British Invasion” bands like the Beatles and the Stones surpassed their first flush of “teenybopper” fame and began to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, their music got trippier. Likewise, their clothes and album-cover graphics took a trippy turn. Soon, fans of these bands were imitating the fashion and graphic sense of their idols — whether or not said fans imbibed. This caught the eye of marketeers, who got in on the gravy (groovy?) train, supplying hippie-inspired accessories to chain stores (which a true hippie wouldn’t be caught dead in) and boutiques: love beads, psychedelic lights, posters. Meanwhile, a more authentic hippie experience could be found at urban “head shops.” Media followed suit. TV got its groove on with “The Monkees” and “Laugh-In.” Artist Peter Max made psychedelia safe for the mainstream by transforming himself into a brand. (Peter Max clocks hung on suburban walls, and his cereal landed on kitchen tables.) “Hair” was a Broadway smash that ran for 1,750 performances. Groovy movies like “Psych-Out,” “Wild in the Streets” and “Head” had parents wondering when it all would end. In the comics, grooviness permeated in wonky ways. At DC Comics, Wonder Woman traded her red-white-and-blue costume for a “Mrs. Peel” look, complete with go-go boots. At Marvel, artist Jim Steranko introduced psychedelic designs to Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. that were cutting-edge for the medium. But no comics were groovier, or more psychedelic, than the undergrounds. As seen in the work of the genre’s greatest practitioner, Robert Crumb, underground “comix” were groundbreaking graphically and thematically, and expressive to an unprecedented

Above: Robert Crumb’s helpful diagram of hippies (in 1981 artwork). Opposite: Norman Mingo’s Mad #118 cover (1968). © Robert Crumb; Mad magazine © DC Comics

degree — albeit, frequently drug- and sex-obsessed. (A semantic digression: The words “groovy” and “psychedelic” can mean the same thing — or not. Elvis Presley was a good old boy who disparaged hippies, but his #1 hit of 1966, “Suspicious Minds,” can be called groovy. The Zombies’ “Time of the Season” is groovy and psychedelic. Furthermore, “groovy” is generally a subjective term; you may think Greg Brady is groovy, I may think he’s a dork. But “psychedelic” is generally objective; something is either psychedelic or it’s not. Generally. End of digression.) Ground Zero for grooviness was the 1969 Woodstock festival, four days of peace and music … and mud. Other touchstones were the Monterey Pop Festival and the so-called “Summer of Love” in 1967, and the infamous and deadly 1969 Altamont “free” concert, the symbolic end of the Aquarian Age. Altamont, and a horrible chain of events known as the Manson Family murders, provided sobering proof that the flower-power lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. If all you do is “turn on and tune in,” you will — to quote a 1968 Mad cover upending Timothy Leary’s slogan — drop dead. And that’s what the choice seemed to become: Either grow up, cut your hair and get a job … or die. (Or, to be a tad less melodramatic, smell bad all the time.) Of course, if there was still a nickel to be made on grooviness, then youth culture would be usurped by ever-enterprising corporate culture. By the time psychedelia and rock music were used in family-friendly TV series (“The Brady Bunch,” “The Partridge Family”) and Saturday morning kiddie shows (“The Banana Splits,” “H.R. Pufnstuf,” “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!,” “The Brady Kids”), the movement had officially transitioned from antiestablishment to … the establishment.

Timeline 38,000 B.C.: Cave paintings from this era are thought to have been inspired by hallucinogens.

Grooviness has many historic precedents. And some decidedly non-groovy events (segregation, the Vietnam War, the assassinations, the election of Richard M. Nixon) had powerful reverberations in groovy culture.

2/7/64: The Beatles land at JFK Airport in New York City. Two days later, they perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Thus, the “British Invasion” is up and running.

9/2/66: TV’s “The Monkees” debuts. 8/5/66: “Revolver” by the Beatles is released. 7/2/64: The Civil Rights Act passes.

1816: The kaleidoscope is invented by Scottish scientist David Brewster (1781-1868).

11/22/63: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas at age 46. 8/28/63: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech during the March on Washington.

Late 19th century: The Modernism art movement originates.

8/2/64: A battle between U.S. and North Vietnamese vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin will spur President Lyndon Johnson to announce, without formal declaration, a state of war with North Vietnam. (Decades later, the validity of this impetus is questioned.)

8/60: Timothy Leary (1920-96) samples hallucinogenic mushrooms. 5/9/60: “The pill,” the first oral contraceptive, is approved by the FDA. Sexual revolution, ho!

11/16/38: LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide, a.k.a. “acid”) is synthesized by Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann (1906-2008). 1950: In a presage to the Vietnam War, the U.S. sends military advisors to French Indochina.

1956: The term “psychedelic” is coined by British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond (1917-2004).

6/66: The National Organization for Women (NOW) forms, a harbinger of the women’s liberation movement. 5/16/66: “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys is released.

12/3/65: “Rubber Soul” by the Beatles is released.

1962: Andy Warhol (1928-87) founds The Factory in New York City. 1920s: The term “groovy” is coined by jazz musicians.

12/9/66: “Fresh Cream,” Cream’s debut, is released.

8/64: “The Psychedelic Experience,” a hallucinogen instruction manual by Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, is published. Summer 1964: A group calling itself the Merry Pranksters led by writer Ken Kesey takes an LSD-fueled crosscountry trip in a psychedelic bus. 2/21/65: Malcolm X is assassinated at age 39 in New York City.

7/25/65: Bob Dylan shakes up the folkie world by plugging in for an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. Dylan’s set is met with a mix of cheers and boos.

1/4/67: “The Doors,” the title band’s debut, is released.

5/12/67: “Are You Experienced,” the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut, is released.

6/1/67: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by the Beatles is released.

6/21/65: “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the Byrds’ debut, is released.

6/16-18/67: The Monterey Pop Festival takes place.

4/4/68: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated at age 39 in Memphis. 2/68: The Beatles, Donovan, Mike Love and others meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India.

7/14/69: “Easy Rider” starring Peter Fonda opens.

4/19/68: “Odessey and Oracle” by the Zombies is released.

1/22/68: TV’s “Laugh-In” debuts. 12/31/67: Abbie Hoffman founds the “Yippie” (for “Youth International Party”) movement.

7/3/69: Brian Jones dies at age 27 in Sussex, England.

1/13/69: “Yellow Submarine,” the movie soundtrack album, is released. 4/29/68: “Hair” opens on Broadway.

8/8-10/69: Manson Family members murder seven people, including actress Sharon Tate, then-pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski.

8/15-18/69: The Woodstock festival takes place.

11/6/68: The film “Head” starring the Monkees opens.

4/30/75: As Saigon falls to North Vietnam, U.S. civilians are evacuated. 1/23/73: Nixon announces an end to the Vietnam War in his “peace with honor” speech.

7/3/71: Jim Morrison dies at age 27 in Paris. Among his lyrics: “This is the end / beautiful friend.”

11/5/68: Nixon defeats Hubert H. Humphrey in the presidential race.

12/8/67: “Their Satanic Majesties Request” by the Rolling Stones is released.

6/6/68: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated at age 42 in Los Angeles.

11/27/67: “Magical Mystery Tour” by the Beatles is released.

7/17/68: The film “Yellow Submarine,” “starring” the Beatles, opens.

10/3/67: Woody Guthrie dies from Huntington’s Disease at age 55 in New York City.

8/68: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe is published.

8/27/67: Beatles manager Brian Epstein dies from a mix of alcohol and pills at age 32 in London.

Summer 1967: The so-called “Summer of Love” takes place, or not, in San Francisco.

11/1/68: The MPAA ratings system goes into effect, allowing greater freedom for nudity and vulgarity. Hooray!

9/6/69: TV’s “H.R. Pufnstuf” debuts.

9/26/69: TV’s “The Brady Bunch” debuts.

10/4/70: Janis Joplin dies at age 27 in Los Angeles.

9/25/70: TV’s “The Partridge Family” debuts. 9/18/70: Jimi Hendrix dies at age 27 in London.

10/68: Zap Comix #1 is published. 12/6/69: The Altamont free concert takes place.

8/28/68: Televised clashes between police and protestors outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago prompt the chant “The whole world is watching.” 9/7/68: TV’s “The Banana Splits” debuts.

9/16/68: Richard M. Nixon appears on “Laugh-In.”

12/17/69: Tiny Tim weds Victoria Mae Budinger on “The Tonight Show.”

9/12/70: TV’s “Lancelot Link” debuts. 9/70: The album “Jesus Christ Superstar” is released. 5/4/70: Ohio National Guardsmen kill four Kent State students during anti-war protests.

Music and message “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in Roger McGuinn — a folk aficionado who co-founded the folka box.” That lyric was sung by Country Joe McDonald at the rock group the Byrds — was a champion of another important Woodstock festival in 1969. McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ player in the folk revival: Pete Seeger (1919-2014). to Die Rag” is what they used to call a “protest song” — in this “Pete Seeger was one of the founding fathers of this rebirth of case, one about the Vietnam War. The protest song is a format that folk music,” McGuinn said. “He was the son of a musicologist, got much usage among folk musicians during the turbulent 1960s. Charles Seeger, and he had transcribed the Lomax recordings” — Was Woody Guthrie — the sovereign of 20th century folk — a historic recorded document of obscure folk songs — “for the ever so morbid and blunt as Country Joe? Well, Guthrie did favor printed version. So Pete was well aware of these songs.” guitars with the inscription: “This machine kills fascists.” Like Woody Guthrie, Seeger didn’t shy away from politics. A folk revival that was flourishing by the beginning of the (And that’s an understatement.) decade helped nudge grooviness into existence in ways great and “Pete had a political background,” McGuinn said. “He went to small. Concurrent with popular music’s metamorphosis in the ’60s Harvard. He had some problems with his politics — he was far from innocuous pop to acid rock, folk managed to survive, and in left of center — and decided to quit Harvard and go on the road a more or less pure form. with Woody Guthrie, and go around to all these union-organizing A prevailing image of the era was the blissful, acoustic-guitarshows and things like that. Unfortunately, the House Un-American strumming hippie. The Monterey Pop Festival Activities Committee asked him to name was as much about folk as rock. And lest we names (in 1955), and he wouldn’t do it. So From left: Folk deity Woody forget: The stage at Woodstock accommodated they slapped him with a contempt charge. He Guthrie; Peter, Paul and both Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix. But let’s get spent a few days in jail and got a suspended Mary; cover girl Judy Collins; back to that guy with the fascist-killing guitar. sentence. Richie Havens’ debut album. Oklahoma native Woody Guthrie (1912“It was a horrible time, and it was a horriOpposite: Bob Dylan, evolved. 1967), who wrote “This Land is Your Land,” ble thing to have to expose your friends (as Woody Guthrie publicity photo; survived the Depression and the Dust Bowl, Communists). And it was groundless.” “In the Wind” © Warner Bros. Records; which is enough to make anyone sensitive to the As a result, Seeger was banned from Life cover © Time Inc.; “Mixed Bag” © Verve Records; “The Times They struggles of common folks. appearing on television or in nightclubs. Are a-Changin’ ” © Columbia Records “My father really believed there was a wis“He was blacklisted, and had to make his dom in ordinary people,” Arlo Guthrie, another money by playing these impromptu college performer at Woodstock, told me in 2004. “He believed and he concerts,” McGuinn said. “He established quite a circuit of college supported people’s best efforts to take care of each other, whether concerts, as a matter of fact, and became quite popular underit was (during) the crises of the Depression or the second world ground. And then gradually in the ’60s, the ban was lifted and he war or the fight against fascism. It still goes on. I mean, all of was allowed to come back to the forefront and recorded some these struggles still continue. albums for Columbia Records. “He was a guy who had a lot of thoughts about that. They “He has become kind of the king of folk music. Some people weren’t always consistent. They didn’t need to be. But they were think that’s Bob Dylan, but Seeger was definitely there first.” always genuine. They were always real. They weren’t based on McGuinn’s fellow Byrds founder, David Crosby, also chimed polls. They weren’t based on his popularity.” in on the subject of Seeger. “He’s so inspiring, man,” Crosby told Woody Guthrie even looked to his own family for inspiration. me in 2001. “He’s one of these guys like Gandhi or the Dalai “He was feeding off of us,” said Arlo’s sister, Nora Guthrie, of her Lama or Martin Luther King who are willing to stand up in the dad. “Particularly with his children’s songs. One of the kids would face of real opposition — you know, real-world opposition — and say, ‘Let’s go riding in the car!’ and he’d say, ‘That’s a great line.’ ” stick up for what they believe in.”

IN THAT SMALL AND ETERNALLY HIP SECTION OF Manhattan called Greenwich Village, the folk revival took hold in the late ’50s and early ’60s. In those heady days, you couldn’t swing an acoustic guitar without hitting a future giant of folk: Dylan, Baez, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul and Mary. To hear Collins tell it, “the Village” was its own, independent entity quite apart from the rest of Manhattan. “The Village at that point was kind of like a little town, really,” Collins told me in 2001. “It was very accessible. I had an apartment down on West 10th. The first few times I came here in ’61 and ’62, I stayed at the Broadway Central Hotel down on Broadway and worked at Gerdes Folk City. Everybody came in there — Joan Baez and Peter Yarrow and Mary Travers, of course. Tom Paxton was hanging around. There was Dylan at the bar having a drink or two. Everywhere you would go in the Village, there was Isadore’s, Izzy Young’s (Folklore) Center, where you’d go and buy your guitar strings and get a copy of Sing Out (magazine). “It was very, very friendly and very kind of ‘hometown’-ish. It’s hard to think of New York as hometown-ish, but it is.” John Sebastian, who would later form the folk-influenced pop group the Lovin’ Spoonful, was a witness to the Village scene, having grown up nearby — and in a musical family, yet. “Within four blocks, there were about 15 clubs and 10 other things that couldn’t officially call themselves clubs, which were known as ‘baskethouses,’ ” Sebastian told me in 2010. “What the Catskills represented to comedians, these places represented to young players. You could play for people and measure the response of the audience by what went into the basket.” “There was something in the air that was so exciting,” Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary, told me in 2003. “People were really interested in seeing what everybody else was doing. We would learn songs from each other. There was a sense that what we were doing was important, that it was going to have some gravity and meaning in the world.” Also drawn to the Village was Richie Havens, another Woodstock guy. At the time, Havens wasn’t musically inclined. “When I first went over to Greenwich Village, it was poetry that got me over there,” Havens told me in 2003. “I started out as a total novice. I couldn’t even play guitar. I didn’t know how. “But hearing the songs that I heard in Greenwich Village over the six and a half years that I spent there — reading poetry and drawing portraits, more or less to stay alive — the songs that I heard from the contemporary singer/songwriters changed my life.” Oddly enough, the music Havens was exposed to in this strange new place made him think of where he came from: Brooklyn. “Not a long leap, but it took me 16 years to get there (to the Village) for the first time. Four miles away,” Havens said. “In Brooklyn where I lived, it might as well have been Oshkosh, Michigan, compared to what Manhattan was for me. It was really like: You turned that corner, and there’s Oz, you know? The excitement and the whole thing was inspirational for me.” For Havens, it was only natural that he start playing music. “Once songs had changed me, I knew that they had value,” he said. “So when I borrowed a guitar and went onstage, those were the first songs I sang.” Having been a Village regular prior to Dylan’s emergence on the scene, Havens was in a unique position to witness the metamorphosis of scrawny Robert Zimmerman to … “Dylan.” “I was probably there for three and a half years before Dylan got there, so I saw the whole thing. I really did,” Havens recalled. “So I got to see Dylan and Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary separately, and watch them become a trio. And all of the others.”

THE FIRST TIME THAT THE REST OF THE WORLD really heard Dylan was through the voices of Peter, Paul and Mary. The folk trio accomplished this with their 1963 hit “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which was written by a then-unknown Dylan. “We had known Bobby in the Village,” Yarrow said. “Initially, he was more like somebody who was trying to fashion a performance. He was just another person finding his muse.” PP&M’s manager, Albert Grossman, presented the trio with an “acetate” (an outmoded recording format) of Dylan’s song. “We were just fully thunderstruck by it,” Yarrow recalled. “It was powerful and wonderful. It was not just a great song, but it seemed, at the time, to encapsulate so much of the process in which we were involved, which was one of questioning the way in which we were living. Instead of prescribing what to do in this situation of real change in the United States, what it did was to allow a person — or request of a person — that he consider the alternatives. So it was an important, important piece on many levels.” The timing of the single’s release was also significant. “It was in 1963, as I remember,” Yarrow said. “And that, of course, was the time of the March on Washington, where we sang it. It was the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. “And that, in conjunction with (PP&M’s 1962 cover of Pete Seeger’s) ‘If I Had a Hammer’ — which was also a song that was anthemic to what was going on in the United States — that established very firmly for us an important ongoing identity, that we were very well aware of, and a sense of responsibility for bringing the issues of public determination, policy determination and issues of fairness squarely into our own internal sense of responsibility.” Yes, folk music carries important messages. But, Collins would add, folk is largely about a very simple act: storytelling. “We are essentially story-loving people,” she said. “Most of the world is. Telling stories is one of the great strengths of any culture. I think the storytelling capacity of folk music was a tremendous source of energy and creativity for people in the ’60s. I think it still is. I think that’s what’s so vibrant about it and completely timeless about it.”

The “flowering” of the Beatles’ sound couldn’t have happened during the insane days of wanton, screaming Beatlemania.

Who can innovate, when you are four jet-lagged zombies in “They were at a major crossroads. It was time to take stock, matching suits and haircuts, struggling in vain to hear yourselves time to go back to their first love: making music. They made a play over a high-pitched, eardrum-splitting din? unanimous decision: No more tours. They all agreed they would It wasn’t until the Beatles extracted themselves from their concentrate on TV broadcasts and their recorded music.” “prison of fame” — as their producer George Martin called it — During a hiatus, Lennon wrote the landmark psychedelic song that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo “Strawberry Fields Forever” while in Spain shooting the World Starr were able to, pardon the expression, let their hair down. War II comedy “How I Won the War” for Richard Lester (director This didn’t happen overnight. With of the Beatles’ films “A Hard Day’s “Rubber Soul” (1965), the Beatles Night” and “Help!”). were finally able to record an album “The song that started it all was without the constant interruptions of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,’ ” Martin touring. The results are a long way said during his lecture, which focused from “Meet the Beatles.” Psychedelia on the recording of the Beatles’ next was creeping in; “Norwegian Wood” album, 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely features George Harrison’s first Hearts Club Band.” recorded performance on sitar (an “It immediately demonstrated instrument that figured largely in much where the Beatles were at that time. psychedelic music to follow). Though When I first heard it, I was spellbound. Harrison was not yet proficient on the “At Abbey Road Studios on a cold instrument, he plucked at his sitar and night in November 1966, John started “kind of found the notes.” singing it and playing on his guitar. It The trippy look of the “Rubber was spellbinding. His lyrics painted a Soul” cover wasn’t part of some psyhazy, impressionistic world. I was in chedelic master plan; it happened by love with what I heard. All I had to do accident. After the boys were shown was record it.” an unintentionally distorted projection The fade-out/fade-in/fade-out on of the image, they had a “That’s it!” the song — a highlight of psychedelic moment, and requested the photo music — happened by accident, appear that way on the cover. according to Martin. He explained that “Revolver” (1966) was the followon his favorite take, something went up, though in some ways, it feels like out of sync near the end. “The soluthe third and fourth sides of a doubletion: Fade down, and then bring it album begun with “Rubber Soul.” back up again,” Martin said. The closing track, “Tomorrow “We finished up with a track that Never Knows,” is full-on psychedelic, showed the way. This was our first with Lennon sounding like a guy from psychedelic track.” another dimension, while otherworldly “Strawberry Fields Forever” was tape loops play over hypnotic drums. the seed from which “Sgt. Pepper’s “Yellow Submarine,” of course, blosLonely Hearts Club Band” sprang somed into a very psychedelic animat(though ironically, “Fields” didn’t ed film. “Rain” — which was recorded appear on “Pepper”). The Beatles comduring the “Revolver” sessions but pleted their transition from lovable released as a B-side — featured the moptops to important artists. Beatles’ first-ever backward lyric, Freed from the onus of playing the courtesy of Martin. songs live, the boys went for it, with “Revolver” was released on Aug. The Beatles’ studio evolution began with “Rubber songwriting, lyrics and arrangements 5, 1966, one week before the Beatles that were absolutely new. The album’s Soul” (1965) and continued through “Revolver” embarked on a tour that proved to be packaging — the boys dressed as the (1966) and, opposite, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely their last. fictional title band amid cutouts of Hearts Club Band” (1967). © Capitol Records; © Apple Records “On tour, the boys couldn’t even nostalgic figures — represented an hear themselves play over the screams of the crowd,” said Martin ironic, colorful, united front. “Sgt. Pepper” is called the best (1926-2016) during a 1999 lecture at the Count Basie Theatre in Beatles album, the quintessential psychedelic album and, by more Red Bank, New Jersey, which I attended. than a few estimations, the greatest album ever recorded. “Every concert sounded like 1,000 jet planes going off. There With “Sgt. Pepper,” the psychedelic album finally came into its were no monitors in those days. The Beatles knew they weren’t own. Many would follow by such artists as the Rolling Stones, the playing very well. The boys had a very bad case of hotel fatigue. Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Zombies. But for all of them, it They had grown tired of their prison of fame. They all wanted out. seemed like “Sgt. Pepper” opened the door that led to their being.

There’s much symbiosis behind the creation of art. In this way, “Rubber Soul” led to the Beach Boys’ masterpiece, “Pet Sounds.” Brian Wilson, the architect of the Beach Boys’ sound, was inspired by the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” to use innovative instrumentation to craft an album as a cohesive listening experience. But it’s not as if Wilson wasn’t already on that path. The Beach Boys’ 1965 single “California Girls” (#3) was the happy result of a regrettable occurrence: Wilson’s first acid trip. “I think the intro to that record is almost like a prelude to some classical piece,” Mike Love, Wilson’s cousin and fellow Beach Boy (who is credited as the song’s co-writer), told me in 2001. “I think it’s just one of the most beautiful intros in rock music. You can hear, in the opening strains of ‘California Girls,’ the classic implications of what Brian was up to.” Wilson was less effusive on the subject of writing the song. “I remember working, doing that Phil Spector-type spirit, having that good-spirited track, and a good background voice sound,” Wilson told me in 2007. “He (Spector) inspired me to write that.” Love considered “California Girls” to be a kind of harbinger. “I think it serves as a prelude to ‘Pet Sounds’ itself, you know?” Love said. “The ‘Pet Sounds’ album being the pièce de résistance of Brian’s efforts in production and arrangement and recording. So I think on ‘California Girls,’ you can hear some of the evolution that was taking place and was about to manifest the following year, in 1966, when ‘Pet Sounds’ was released.” To create “Pet Sounds,” Wilson stayed behind while the rest of the Beach Boys — Love, Brian’s brothers Carl and Dennis, Al Jardine, and Wilson’s replacement Bruce Johnston — went on tour. “Brian was the guy,” Love said. “He left the road in 1965 to devote himself to writing and producing, rather than splitting his time between writing, producing and touring. So Brian was just bursting at the seams, waiting to get into the studio. And that’s what he did. He spent all his time at home, for better and for worse — ‘better’ being musically, at the time, to develop his trade and get in with great musicians and do wonderful tracks. He might have used Carl, but the rest of us weren’t such great musicians. We were great singers, but not-sogreat musicians. So Brian began to use the best studio musicians available on the West Coast, which are some pretty good players. “He actually developed most of the tracks while we were doing other things, like traveling and doing shows and concerts. He would be in the studio developing tracks; we would come back and collaborate. We’d do all the vocals, and we’d collaborate with some of the writing. But Brian was by far the person most responsible for the music of ‘Pet Sounds.’ ” “They were on the road, and I made all the tracks and the backgrounds,” Wilson said. “So when they got back, I taught them the voice parts, and they did all the voices.” Was the group cooperative when they returned from the road? “They didn’t like it as much at first,” Wilson said, “but then they started liking it after they heard it back.”

Beach Boys Mike Love (top) and Bruce Johnston (above) performing in 2001. Both sang on “Pet Sounds.” Photos by Kathy Voglesong “Obviously, Brian was growing faster than the speed of light,” the newcomer to the group, Johnston, told me in 2002. “It wasn’t all recorded when we came back from Japan, not a lot of the tracks were. And then I watched a lot of the tracks being recorded. Just listening to the chord changes in the tracks — the way he voiced his chords with the threes and the fives on the bottom — I knew this was way beyond anything that had ever been done in pop music that might be played on the radio. “This was 180 degrees from ‘Help Me Rhonda.’ I just assumed that this would be another big Beach Boys album. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I just showed up and sang. It was one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.”

Brian Wilson

He wrote about sun and surf, and lived through depression and drugs. Brian Wilson was one of pop music’s brightest lights, and saddest casualties. When I interviewed the California native (born 1942) on four occasions between 2000 and 2012, he was a man of few words. (I’d call him polite and willing, but stunted and perhaps shy.) Still, there were glimpses into the mind and process of one of the greatest songwriters of his time. Q: What inspired ‘‘Pet Sounds’’? WILSON: Well, I was smoking marijuana with my friends, and they brought over the album “Rubber Soul,” and I couldn’t believe it. I was so blown out by a collection of songs like that. It seemed to go together. So I said, “Damn it, I’m going to do what the Beatles did. I’m gonna put an album together with a bunch of really cool songs.” Q: You felt competitive toward the Beatles? WILSON: Yeah. I felt like I needed to compete with the Beatles. I don’t know why. Just because I did, you know? Q: How much did drugs have to do with “Pet Sounds”? WILSON: Do you mean psychedelic drugs? I took some of those. I regret having taken them. I wish I wouldn’t have.

Q: You used unusual instruments on the album: glockenspiel, vibes, harmonium, harpsichord ... WILSON: Well, we used a bicycle horn for “You Still Believe In Me” and we used a theremin on “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” And just experimented with it. Q: Was your idea to convey emotions through sounds? WILSON: Right. To bring out love in people. The main word for “Pet Sounds” is love. People love the voices on the album. Q: There seems to be a lot of spirituality on “Pet Sounds.” WILSON: Well, my brother and I — Carl — we used to pray a lot for people. We tried to bring an album into existence that would bring love to a lot of people. So the main word was love, between Carl and I; love.

Brian Wilson performing in 2000. Photo by

Kathy Voglesong

Q: Is it true that when you record, you’re a perfectionist? WILSON: Yeah, I’m a perfectionist. I like to get things right until things are cool, you know? Q: Do you hear finished songs in your head before you record? WILSON: I can’t hear it in my head. I have to go in the studio first to hear it. Q: Are you aware that some people consider you the most important composer of the 20th century? WILSON: Yes, I’m aware of that. But I don’t agree, though. Q: Who would you give that honor to?

Q: How about the Top 100? WILSON: Top 100, yes. Q: Do you still have good days and bad days? WILSON: I have good days and bad days, yeah. Some days are good, some are bad, yeah. Q: What might happen on a bad day? WILSON: I get a little depressed. I get through it, though. Q: What makes you happy? What lifts you up?

WILSON: Burt Bacharach.

WILSON: Music. Mostly, music makes me happy.

Q: Do you think you rank in the Top 10?

Q: Do you have a relationship with God?

WILSON: I don’t know. I have no idea. I have no way to know that.

WILSON: Yes, I do. I believe in God. I believe God is music.

Mick Jagger had a girlie face and full lips, which made him the ideal poster boy for British psychedelia. More so than any of his four contemporaries in the Beatles. The “Satanic Majesties” cover — the band in multi-colored, Back then — before Jagger’s visage collapsed into “What Ever satin-y costumes amid flowers and way-out graphics — could be Happened to Baby Jane?” territory — he could wear eyeliner, lipcalled the Stones’ answer to “Sgt. Pepper.” Or, if you’re feeling stick and a wizard hat, and still somehow look like a man. Well, less charitable, a rip-off of “Sgt. Pepper.” (I’ve always wondered not to my dad or his refinery buddies, but to us. if John Lennon’s lyric “I roll a stone-y / you can imitate anyone Between the Rolling Stones’ 1966 tour (still a pop band, still you know” was a reference to the Stones’ transparent mimicry.) playing to screaming girls) and their 1969 tour (Brian Jones gone, all focus on Jagger, evolution into modern Stones complete), the THE STONES HOSTED A TV SPECIAL WITH GROOVY band had its psychedelic period: shortlived, frequent interruptus. overtones during this period, though no one got to see it at the The Stones’ 1967 album “Their Satanic Majesties Request” time. In “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus” (1968), the was, like the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” and the Beach Boys “Pet boys were dolled up in eclectic fashions befitting the circus motif, Sounds,” a studio-bound project (unlike previous collections that with Jagger playing ringmaster in a top hat and red tails. The were typically recorded between appearances, schedules permitguest list makes rock fans salivate: Lennon and Yoko Ono, Eric ting). But in the Stones’ case, this was more the result of Jagger Clapton, The Who, Marianne Faithfull, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull. and Keith Richards’ drug busts, and the defense against same, This was the (extremely) shortlived lineup of Tull, with Black than some willful artistic entrenchment. The band had, via necesSabbath guitarist Tony Iommi making his only appearance with sity wrought by outside forces, slowed down. the band. For Iommi, then an unknown kid from Birmingham, This did not guarantee wonderful results. “Satanic Majesties” England, this was a heady experience. was no “Sgt. Pepper.” Jones’ dete“It was like being in a dream, realrioration — exacerbated by the ly,” Iommi said. “I was so knocked awkward Jones-Richards-Anita out. We got together at a reception; Pallenberg love triangle — escalatthe Stones held their own reception ed, unchecked. Vitally transitional at their hotel. And all the people that though it was, this was a messy were in the film were at the recepperiod for the band. tion. And we just had drink and “A sort of dither” is what bassist drugs and whatever. Everything! Bill Wyman said of inter-Stones “I just couldn’t believe I was relations in 1967, when I commentinvolved in all this. From sort of ed on the metamorphosis that nothing happening, to all of a sudoccurred between ’66 and ’69. den, here I am with the biggest “Yeah,” Wyman said, “where people in the world at that time — we’d gone back to ‘Beggars there are just no words for it. I was Banquet’ (1968) and all that, hadn’t just gobsmacked, you know?” we? And back to the basic roots, The once-in-a-lifetime lineup of really, in a way. We were all wanting Lennon, Clapton, Richards (on to play, and we’d made a couple of bass) and drummer Mitch great albums. And we were getting on Mitchell — calling themselves the some again after a sort of dither in Dirty Mac — teamed up for “Yer ’67, when you didn’t know who was Blues” from the Beatles’ “White going to be in and out of jail, and all Album.” And the Stones gave their Dolled up on the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” sleeve. that. (Manager) Andrew Oldham had last public performance with Jones. Opposite: “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” left and so on. It was a whole rebirth, The band also went glam for its © Decca Records; © London Records really. And we were up for it.” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” video and Oldham quit, in fact, during the “Satanic Majesties” sessions, sleeve. In the video, Jagger’s face is painted something like Henry citing frustration over the Stones’ sporadic participation and Brandon’s in “The Searchers,” and Jones’ like Shirley Eaton’s in apparent lack of commitment to the project. “Satanic Majesties” “Goldfinger.” On the sleeve, Jones holds a plastic red devil’s tribecame the Stones’ only self-produced album — a disjointed one dent and a glass of red wine (symbolism?); Wyman (we presume) with the odd brilliant song. Another Stones album from ’67, wears a Halloween mask; and Richards wears perhaps his glam“Flowers,” was a U.S.-only compilation of odds, sods and singles. miest look ever: black “pleather,” Jackie-O shades, red nails. Based on the album’s cover graphics and track list (not to mention Somehow, you can’t picture Richards — who is largely its title), “Flowers,” too, can rightly be called psychedelic. responsible for the Stones “bad boy” image — running through a More than a few Stones songs from the period are hallmarks of field of daisies in slow motion. Granted, the guitarist partook in psychedelia: “She’s a Rainbow,” with its off-time, almost silly illegal substances (to say the least) and wore some wild stuff durpiano and spacey lyrics (“She comes in colors everywhere”); ing the Stones’ psychedelic period. But he was no flower child. “Dandelion,” with its playful harpsichord and high-pitched harmoWhich is what Wyman meant when he said “Beggars Banquet,” nies; “2000 Light Years From Home” and “We Love You,” with the Stones’ universally lauded follow-up to “Satanic Majesties,” their languid vocals over hypnotic rhythms. was “back to the basic roots.” They never looked back.

Albums were something hippies sat around listening to, smoking weed. But Top 40 was heard by square and hip, young and old.

Photo by Mark Voger

It was heard at shopping centers, cafeterias, parks, drive-ins, dances, gas stations, swim clubs, train stations, bus depots, stadiums — any place that had a radio, a record player or a jukebox. And Top 40 exposed John and Jane Q. Public to grooviness earlier and more effectively than any other medium. Because even if you weren’t looking for it, there it was. At the dawn of the 1960s, there were still doo-wop songs in Top 40. Beatlemania in 1964 marked a turning point. Of course, the Beatles’ early hits weren’t yet what you’d call groovy. (The boys were still singing about wanting to hold hands rather than girls with kaleidoscope eyes.) And their instrumentation, though undeniably singular, still fell along conventional lines: vocals, two guitars, bass and drums. No ethereal Moog ... yet. Still, the first groovy singles sprang from the British Invasion.

That first wave, the Beatles and the Stones, opened the door, but it was second-wave Invasion bands, with less resources and a bit more hunger, who took pop in new, dangerous, beautiful directions. What was the first psychedelic Top 40 song? I give it to “She’s Not There” by the Zombies. The song sounds like it came out in 1967 or ’68, but it was actually released in July 1964, less than six months after the Beatles landed at JFK. “She’s Not There” pointed to the future. The jazzy electric-piano opening is Doors-esque; the high-pitched harmonies are haunting; and Rod Argent’s virtuosity on the keyboard wraps the song in love. Even the lyrics about an enigmatic heartbreaker sound somewhat cosmic: “Her voice was soft and cool / her eyes were clear and bright / but she’s not there.” The Zombies song was followed by two more from secondwave British Invasion bands: the Animals and the Yardbirds. The tone of the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (#15), released in January 1965, is set by the introductory riff: tinny guitar backed by eerie organ. Eric Burdon’s vocal is vulnerable, even pleading, in a way that Lennon, McCartney or Jagger never conjured. The backing vocals are more like cries. The arrangement is simple. The stops are dramatic. The production is super raw. This song would be right at home playing in the background while a joint is passed around. A month later came the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” (#6). It, too, has an intro that grabs in unexpected ways: harpsichord and bongos? (The innovation was a happy accident; no organ could be located for the recording session.) The backing vocals are decidedly non-slick, yet the simple harmonies transport you. The tempo change, which temporarily shifts the song into Beatles-style rock ’n’ roll, already seems like ironic comment, even this early in the game.

The more artists experimented with sounds — and, ahem, drugs — the groovier Top 40 got. Many truly fantastic songs are absent from the list below, but anyhoo, highlights follow ... 1965: The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (#13, a favorite in Vietnam) and “It’s My Life” (#23); the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off of My Cloud,” “Satisfaction” (both #1) and “As Tears Go By” (#6); Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (#2); Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” (#1); the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” (both #1); the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” (#3); the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic” (#9); the Outsiders’ “Time Won’t Let Me,” (#5); Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Just Like Me” (#11). 1966: The Beatles’ “Rain” (B-side for “Paperback

Writer,” #1) and “Yellow Submarine” (#3); the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” (#1), “Mothers Little Helper” (#8), “Lady Jane” (#24) and “Have You See Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?” (#9); the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (#1); the Hollies’ “Bus Stop” (#5); the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” (#14); the Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday Monday” (#1) and “California Dreamin’ ” (#4); Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” (#1) and “Mellow Yellow” (#2); the Monkees’ “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” (#20); the Buckinghams’ “Kind of a Drag” (#1); Question Mark and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” (#1); the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” (#1); Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks” (#4); Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Hanky Panky” (#1); Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ” (#1).

1967: The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” (#1) and

“Strawberry Fields Forever” (#8); the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” (#1), “Dandelion” (#14) and “She’s a Rainbow” (#25); the Rascals’ “Groovin’ ” (#1); the Doors’ “Light My Fire” (#1); the Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away” (#7); Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” (#5) and “White Rabbit” (#8); the Turtles’ “Happy Together” (#1); Strawberry Alarm Clock’s “Incense and Peppermints” (#1); the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” (#1); the Box Tops’ “The Letter” (#1); the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” (#5); the Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live For Today” (#8); the Cowsills’ “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” (#2); the Association’s “Windy” (#1); Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s “Woman, Woman” (#4); the Blues Magoos’ “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” (#5); Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco” (#4).

1968: The Beatles’ “Revolution” (#12); the

Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (#3); the Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park” (#16); Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” (#5) and “White Room” (#6); the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “All

Along the Watchtower” (#8); Deep Purple’s “Hush” (#4); the Doors’ “Hello I Love You” (#1); Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” (#2) and “Magic Carpet Ride” (#3); Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (#5); Big Brother and the Holding Company’s “Piece of My Heart” (#12); the Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free” (#1) and “A Beautiful Morning” (#3); Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” (#1); Iron Butterfly’s “In-aGadda-da-Vida” (#30); Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues” (#14); the Fifth Dimension’s “Stoned Soul Picnic” (#3); the Monkees’ “Valleri” (#3); Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover” (#1); Manfred Mann’s “Quinn the Eskimo” (#10); the Amboy Dukes’ “Journey to the Center of the Mind” (#16); the Turtles’ “Elinore” (#8); the Grass Roots’ “Midnight Confessions” (#5); Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s “Young Girl” and “Lady Willpower” (both #2); Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country” (#11); Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” (#17); Friend & Lover’s “Reach Out of the Darkness” (#10); Max Frost and the Troopers’ “The Shape of Things to Come” (#22). 1969: The Zombies’ “Time of the Season” (#3);

the Doors’ “Touch Me” (#3); Shocking Blue’s “Venus” (#1); the Cowsills’ “Hair” (#2); the Fifth Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” (#1); Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” (#1); Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Sweet Cherry Wine” (#7), “Crystal Blue Persuasion” (#2) and “Ball of Fire” (#19); Three Dog Night’s “One” (#5) and “Easy to be Hard” (#4); the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance” (#14); Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (#21); the 1910 Fruitgum Co.’s “Simon Says” (#4); Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” (#1).

1970: The Guess Who’s “American Woman”

(#1), “No Time” (#5) and “Share the Land” (#10); Melanie’s “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” (#6); Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Woodstock” (#11) and “Ohio” (#14); Blues Image’s “Ride Captain Ride” (#4); Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime” (#3); the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” (#1).

1971: Tommy James’ “Draggin’ the Line” (#4);

Murray Head’s “Superstar” (#14); the Partridge Family’s “Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted” (#6), “I’ll Meet You Halfway” (#9) and “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” (#13).

1972: Two holdovers, when heard these many

decades hence, still bid you to live in joys that once had been: the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” (#2, a re-charting) and the Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” (#2). For a smidgen of context, 1972 was the year of “Popcorn,” “My Ding-a-Ling” and “Betcha By Golly Wow” — long since time to stash the peace-sign medallion in the attic.

What a beautiful feeling

IT’S ONE OF THOSE STRANGER-THAN-FICTION STORIES IN ROCK lore that Tommy James’ career was just about dead when out of the blue, a song he recorded years earlier was discovered by a new audience, resuscitating his prospects. But is it a true story? u “Of course, the ‘Hanky Panky’ story sounds like it was made up by a press agent, but it’s absolutely the truth,” James told me. “It’s one of those early rock stories that could only happen in America.” u In late 1963 or early ’64, James and his high school group, the Shondells, released the garage-rock song “Hanky Panky” on Snap Records, a small label in his hometown of Niles, Michigan. “It went #1 in about six square blocks,” James told me with a laugh. “We were on all the local jukeboxes and got airplay in the cities around Niles. But then the record just died, because we had no distribution. So we had long forgotten about the record. I graduated from high school in ’65, and took my band on the road.” u While these Michigan boys were playing clubs in Chicago, something unexpected was going on in Pittsburgh. Recalled James: “A deejay in Pittsburgh played the record at dances, and got such an incredible response that he then took it to the radio station. They started playing it, and a week later, we were sitting at #1 from requests. The local distributor pressed up 80,000 bootlegged records that sold in 10 days. So we were sitting at #1 in Pittsburgh.” u But James knew nothing of this. As far as he was concerned, his dream of rock stardom was over by the spring of 1966. “A club we were working at went broke in the middle of our two-week gig,” he said. “I just happened to be home, out of work and very depressed. The week I arrived back home, I got a call from Pittsburgh that Fenway Distributors in Pittsburgh had pressed 80,000 copies of ‘Hanky Panky.’ They tracked me down because on the original record label, it said ‘Snap Records, Niles, Michigan,’ and they happened to call the one place in the universe that knew me and knew who I was: the old record shop where I used to work. They got my home number, and I just happened to be home. u “All those things came together in one moment when they got ahold of me, and it changed my life. That was the beginning of my career. I went to Pittsburgh and did some shows there and put a new group together of Shondells, because I couldn’t put the old group back together. The people who were in Pittsburgh then took us to New York to sell the master to a major label. We ended up on Roulette Records. This all happened in about six weeks. Roulette put the record out, and it went #1 in the world, basically. It became the #1 record of the summer of ’66, and that began my career.” u James admitted that the story sounds like the stuff of a Hollywood film. “When you tell that to people — that’s just how the good Lord works,” said James, an avowed Christian. “There’s no other explanation. I, basically, had nothing to do with any of that. I was a spectator as much as anything else. All I did was show up.”

I spoke with Dayton, Ohio, native James (born 1947) during four interviews conducted between 2000 and 2016. Q: You went in a different direction with (the 1968 and ’69 hits) “Crimson and Clover,” “Sweet Cherry Wine” and “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” These were psychedelic; there were even some recording innovations, such as the tremelo effect on the vocals. What was behind the decision to go in that artier direction?

JAMES: Well, yeah, but it was sort of rolling around in my head. “Sweet Cherry Wine” was a very strange record for us. It was in three-quarter time, which was unheard of. Nothing we had ever done before was in three-quarter time. You couldn’t dance to it (laughs). All you could do was listen to it. The arrangement, basically, was with a harpsichord. On the basic track, we had recorded an acoustic guitar, a harpsichord, drums, bass and organ. And then one by one, we added things. We added the horns, a rather complicated horn line. There were a lot of different horn lines in there. Gary Illingworth did the horn arrangements on that, and the flute.

JAMES: Basically, in 1968, we made a decision, a group decision, that we were going to produce our own records. That, really, was the turning point. Up until that time, we had been produced by Bo Q: You had several looks in the ’60s. You wore an improbable Gentry and Ritchie Cordell. We just felt that because things were pompadour when “Hanky Panky” hit. By the time of “Crimson changing in the music business so quickly in 1968, we really and Clover,” you had evolved into Mr. Psychedelia, with a Fu needed to produce our own records. Manchu ’stache, tinted glasses and a frilly shirt beneath a cloak! Just to show you how much things were changing, there was JAMES: (Laughs) We just kept changing, but we stayed the same. this mass extinction of pop acts in 1968 because of FM radio, I started out as a garage-band guy 24-track recording and a whole wearing the turtleneck sweaters and slew of “album acts” that came the hip-huggers. Then we went to a out. We started 1968 with groups little more sophisticated look with like the Rascals and the vests. Then we went to the Nehru Association and Mitch Ryder and jackets and the medallions and the the Buckinghams and Gary bell-bottom pants. Then we went to Puckett, and we ended 1968 with the fringe jackets. We’ve done, basiLed Zeppelin, Joe Cocker, cally, every look there is. We were Crosby, Stills & Nash — just an like the mannequin in the (sci-fi) entirely different kind of act. In movie “The Time Machine” (1960). fact, late 1968 was the death of the singles market and the beginQ: In your memoir “Me, the Mob and ning of the album market. And it the Music,” you revealed that your happened, literally, in 90 days. career was forcibly commandeered So the “Crimson and Clover” by Morris Levy, the president of album was the first album we proRoulette Records who had ties to duced entirely by ourselves — organized crime and used strong-arm played, wrote, mixed, designed tactics to intimidate his artists and the album cover, everything. It competitors. Levy died in 1990, and allowed us to make that transition your book came out in 2010 — a from the single, 45-RPM, pop act 20-year period. Why that long gap? into a whole different universe of selling albums and being with the Tommy James (left) evolved into Mr. Psychedelia on JAMES: When we started the book — other album-selling acts. Very few the “Crimson and Clover” record sleeve. © Roulette Records Martin Fitzpatrick was my co-author – acts made that transition. The we were going to call it “Crimson and Doors made it, Sly and the Family Stone made it. Maybe a couple Clover,” and write a nice book about the hits. A third of the way of other acts. Of course, from that album came the “Crimson and into it, we realized that if we didn’t tell the Roulette story, we’d be Clover” single, which was the biggest single we ever had. cheating ourselves and everyone else. That is the story. But I was nervous about naming names. Some of these guys were still walkQ: How did you hit on the idea to put the tremolo effect on the ing around. We couldn’t talk about this. It’s a subject that had vocal at the end in “Crimson and Clover”? been taboo since it happened. So we put the book on a shelf. JAMES: The whole record was built around three chords and the (With the subsequent deaths of key Levy associates by 2005), tremolo guitar. And at the very last minute, when the record was we felt we could finish the book at that point. We were very carebasically finished and we were going to put on the fade, we said, ful to get the names, dates and facts just right. And to be fair. I “Let’s run the fade through the tremolo of the guitar amplifier just didn’t want to go off the deep end and make everybody into a like we did the guitar.” So what you’re hearing are the vocals — hood. Everybody has good qualities and bad qualities. which were already down “straight” — we ran ’em back out Q: You estimate Levy bilked you out of $30- to $40 million in roythrough the mixing board into the guitar amplifier, turned on the alties. That could eat away at a person. Are you at peace with it? tremolo, got it right in synch with the music, and then miked the amp and ran it back to the board. So it was basically the vocals JAMES: I believe the good lord looked out for me my whole life. run through the guitar amplifier with the tremolo on (laughs). If I had all that at one moment, I probably would have destroyed

Q: On “Sweet Cherry Wine,” you mixed instruments that don’t necessarily go together: the clanging bell, the flute, the church-y organ, the horn section. How did you come up with the arrangement? Did you experiment over time?

myself with all that money. At the least, I would have blown it. As it happened, I got it back in dribs and drabs, in a sensible way, in a way I think was appropriate. Over the years, my publishing has come back to me. I’m happy things worked out the way they did.

Mark Lindsay (center) with Paul Revere (second from left) and the Raiders in 1966. “Good Thing” © Columbia Records

Paul Revere and the Raiders

The Beatles made longer hair fashionable in the United States. But a Yank — singer Mark Lindsay, who grew up in Idaho — takes credit for the next step in its evolution: the male ponytail. “I’m the first guy I know who grew a ponytail,” said Lindsay, the singer for ’60s-’70s hitmakers Paul Revere and the Raiders. “I wish I had gotten a trademark or a patent on the ponytail. A lot of old guys riding motorcycles would be paying me royalties now.” Lindsay — who sang “Just Like Me” (#11), “Kicks” (#4), “Hungry” (#6), “Good Thing” (#4) and “Indian Reservation” (#1) with the Raiders and had a solo hit with “Arizona” (#10) — said he wasn’t intended to be the only Raider to wear a ponytail. “Actually, the whole band tried,” the singer (born 1942) said with a laugh when we spoke in 2010. “The Beatles had just hit, and they all had Beatle haircuts. We thought, ‘Let’s all grow ponytails.’ So we started to do it. Two of the guys — ‘Smitty’ (Mike Smith), the drummer, and the guitar player (Drake Levin) — had kind of curly hair. Their hair just wouldn’t ‘ponytail.’ It looked like they had S.O.S. (steel wool) pads stuck to the back of their heads. (Keyboardist) Revere’s hair was brittle and kept breaking off. “Plus, you have to go through a period of about two or three months where it’s too long to look good and it’s too short to look good. So you have to go through this ugly transition period. I finally got through that and decided it was cool.” Lindsay’s ponytail aside, the Raiders became famous for another visual gimmick: wearing Revolutionary War costumes. “Most bands had some kind of a look,” Lindsay explained. “We were dressed in blazers like the Beach Boys used to wear. One day, we were walking down the street to pick up our cleaning in Portland, Oregon. We walked past this costume shop, and there’s a mannequin in the front window dressed up in Revolutionary War garb. I looked at Revere and said, ‘You know, that’s the way Paul Revere and the Raiders should look. That’s the way they dressed back in the good old days.’ “Suddenly, we looked at each other and the light bulb went on in both of our heads. We walked in and made a deal to rent the

costumes, just for a joke. Because we played Portland a lot; it was kind of like our second stomping ground (after Idaho). We thought we’d really surprise the kids. We’d play the first half of the show in our regular outfits, and dress up in these costumes and come out for the second half. So we did that. It was just a one-off thing.” The Raiders returned the costumes to the store, and continued to perform in other towns wearing their regular stage clothes. Recalled Lindsay: “The next time we played in Portland, everybody said, ‘Where’s your costumes?’ We put our heads together and said, ‘Well, maybe we’ve got something here.’ So we had several sets made — first just one, but of course, we had to have other sets made, because you can’t wear the same thing night after night. Well, you can, but then you’d be in a punk band.” The costumes had an unforeseen effect, according to the singer. “It was like dressing up in disguise,” Lindsay said. “You could get away with anything. I mean, that was my feeling. I could do anything, because nobody would know who I really was. Of course, they did. But it was just that I was kind of hiding behind this costume. The whole tenor of the band changed.” Another upside: “It’s hard to have a bad time wearing a lace dickey.” There was a downside, though. “After a while, we got tired of the costumes,” he said. “But we could never get rid of them, because that became the trademark.” TV, too, figured in the band’s popularity. The Raiders were the featured band on “Where the Action Is” (Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” spinoff), and even played themselves on “Batman.” “Actually,” Lindsay recalled, “because ‘Where the Action Is’ was on almost three years, for five days a week, and the fact that we did ‘(Ed) Sullivan’ a couple of times and we did ‘Hullabaloo’ and ‘The Smothers Brothers’ and basically all the TV shows, we ended up being the most televised band in the ’60s. We did almost 1,000 television appearances. We did TV a lot, and obviously, it was very, very important in the Raiders’ career. And mine. “This was, of course, pre-MTV. But as you know, the formula pretty much now is: To get a breakout, you have to be seen on television.”

For the Cowsills, pop success was all in the ...

A GROUP OF SIBLINGS WEARING MATCHING stagewear tour the country with their mom, singing their pop hits. “The Partridge Family,” right? On TV, yes. But there was a real-life inspiration for the fictional Partridges. The Cowsills were the real thing: a touring, recording family who put out real hit singles. Tie for the toothy clan’s highest chart position was “Hair,” which went to #2 in 1969 and raised more than a few eyebrows. A squeaky-clean family act, covering a song from a counter-culture musical? Susan — the youngest Cowsill and the only sister in the act — sang the immortal lyric “and spaghetti” in “Hair” (to her chagrin). I spoke with the singer (born 1959) in 2015. Q: Do you remember much about your childhood in Rhode Island prior to joining your brothers’ band? COWSILL: I totally remember my childhood. More than I remember the band, in fact. It was a rural, in-the-woods kind of lifestyle the whole time. I missed it greatly when we moved to New York City, until Paul found Central Park. Then there was a place for all of us. Q: You aren’t on the Cowsills’ earliest records. When the band started getting attention, were you itching to join? COWSILL: I was. I bullied my way into the band. I would beg, borrow and steal, do laundry, whatever it took. I saw all the fun my brothers were having, and I wanted in. Although, they didn’t want me at first, because I was the creepy little sister (laughs).

born a 30-year-old. I knew exactly what was going on. I made it into the band two months before we did “The Ed Sullivan Show,” so my timing was impeccable. I knew I was a musician, even though I was very young. I was into music. Q: It seemed almost wrong that the Cowsills recorded “Hair.” But it went to #2. How did the idea to cover it come about? COWSILL: The “Hair” thing came about when we were doing a TV special with Carl Reiner. It was about art and culture of the time. He had us on, and he thought it would be funny if we did the song from “Hair” — the dichotomy of having the Cowsills do “Hair.” The boys did a recording of it, just for that TV show. It came out so well that we wanted to put it out as a single. MGM didn’t want to put it out, so my brothers brought it to a (radio) station in Chicago, and they secretly played it on the air. The switchboards lit up. Today, they would call it “going viral.” Q: What do you remember about recording “Hair”? Do you remember anything about developing the arrangement? COWSILL: The guys would know. I just remember that I wished I didn’t have to do the “and spaghetti” thing. I remember not appreciating that part. The others got such cool parts to sing, and I’m singing what? I got the cute part, because I was the little girl. Q: But after all, “and spaghetti” is a part of pop history. And history is history. COWSILL: History is history. Q: Did you see “Hair” on stage?

Q: You were 8. Did you know what you were getting into?

COWSILL: We did go see it. But not me. My mom wouldn’t let me. My brothers all saw it, at the Aquarius Theater in Los Angeles, in fact.

COWSILL: I knew what I was getting into. I think I was

Susan Cowsill rocks “The Mike Douglas Show” (1970).

Q: Of course, “Hair” was inspired by the hippie movement. It was the time of “flower power,” psychedelia, Vietnam. Were you too young to be aware of these things? COWSILL: I was incredibly aware of that movement. I wished I was older; I would have been in it. Because, I became a hippie at 9. I decided that’s who I was. I knew I was a bit young. I said, “I’m gonna kick it back here with these people.” Q: How did you become a 9-year-old hippie? COWSILL: I think I was simply paying attention to the energy and focus of these kinds of people. It was more appealing to me than worrying about corporations and the state of the country. Plus, it was easy; I had brothers. My oldest brother (Bill) was bona fide. That’s not something you choose. You don’t just say, “I think I will take on the hippie mentality.” It just fit. It still fits. I’m still a hippie. Don’t tell anyone. Q: You toured a lot as a child. Was it a blur? COWSILL: It was not a blur. We toured all the time. We played fairs, auditoriums, colleges. I barely went to school. Q: The Cowsills wore some groovy threads. Did you get a kick out of that? COWSILL: The clothes were fun. I got to pick out most of my own stuff. We had a very nice lady named “Genie the Tailor” (Jeannie Franklyn). “Tiny Dancer” (by Elton John) was written after Jeannie. She did our last look, which was the more psychedelic look — “groovy,” as you would say. The guys had less fun with the clothes than I did, because guys’ clothes are limited. But I enjoyed it, because I was a girl. Q: The band did a lot of TV. You mentioned “Ed Sullivan”; I’m guessing it meant something to do “Johnny Cash.” COWSILL: Doing “Ed Sullivan” was awesome, because it was “Ed Sullivan.” Johnny Cash, for me, was great, because he was one of my favorites. I always thought he was such a bad-ass guy. I liked his music. We did Johnny Carson (“The Tonight Show”). Not a lot of people can say that anymore. Q: Your father (Bud Cowsill) managed the Cowsills and would, to say the least, clash with your brothers. Did these incidents stress you out as a child?

COWSILL: I just needed to know where I was supposed to be, how long I was supposed to play, and where I was gonna play next, to get the most fun out of it. There were plenty of things to stress me out; show business was not it. I was 8. All I cared about was: Does the motel have a pool? Q: Would you call your father a Svengali? A taskmaster? How would you categorize him? COWSILL: My father? An ill-equipped parent. An illequipped music-business participant. An illequipped-to-be-on-this-planet kind of guy. He bit off a lot when he was very young. He did not have a lot of education. I think I would categorize him as that person. Not prepared for the life he was living. Q: “The Partridge Family” was inspired by the Cowsills. Did you watch the show? COWSILL: Sure. I watched it every Friday night. I had a crush on David Cassidy. I knew who I was on the show. I remember thinking that the girl (played by Suzanne Crough) couldn’t play her tambourine, but I could play mine. I was sad when she died (in 2015). So, yeah, I loved the show. Q: It’s a well-known, and tragic, phenomenon that many child stars have had difficult adult lives. Some say they had “interrupted childhoods.” Was this the case for you? COWSILL: I wouldn’t call it an interrupted childhood so much as a different lifestyle. I understand the concept. Was I in the Brownies or the Girl Scouts? Did I go to the dances? No. What do you say about something like this? It’s not your regular thing. But so much of it was truly a blast. It was an alternative childhood lifestyle. Part of me laments not having a lot of the things other people had. But a big part of me says, “How cool for you, that you had this adventure.” It’s crazy. Everything that would seem unnatural and/or different from a regular childhood, to me, was normal. You are presenting a life to a child that, as they’re growing up, they’re not going to question. It’s only when you look back as an adult that you see the differences. When people say, “Was it a weird childhood?” I say, “It was my childhood.” I only had one.

A Susan Cowsill ’toon by caricaturist Jack Davis, from the back cover of “The Best of the Cowsills” (1968). Overleaf: The entire clan by Davis, from the album’s cover. © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

The Lovin’ Spoonful

When singer John Sebastian formed the Lovin’ Spoonful with guitarist Zal Yanovsky in 1964, they had a simple but telling mission statement. “Zal and I wanted to form a band that would love Elmore James as much as it loved George Jones,” Sebastian said. “They called it ‘folk rock,’ which kind of took the fun out of it.” The Lovin’ Spoonful had a string of Top-10 hits in 1965 and ’66: “Do You Believe in Magic” (#9), “You Didn’t Have to be So Nice” (#10), “Daydream” (#2), “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” (#2) and “Summer in the City” (#1). “It was a wonderful time, when influences were bouncing around freely for many years,” New York native Sebastian (born 1944) told me in 2010. “The Beatles influenced us. The whole concept of a self-contained band that wrote their own songs and played their own instruments — instead of calling (session drummer) Hal Blaine — was a cool thing. It was important to us. “Then, the turnaround happened a couple of times. Paul McCartney has been very gracious in explaining the influence ‘Daydream’ had on ‘Good Day Sunshine.’ Jimmy Page said one of the Led Zeppelin tunes was a rip on ‘Summer in the City.’ I never noticed it, but he was nice enough to point it out. “These are great things to hear, especially as we grow older and have the opportunity to reflect on the influence that the Spoonful had on some of these groups — many of the English groups that we were sort of seeking to unseat,” Sebastian laughed. It could be midnight in the dead of winter, but hearing “Summer in the City” — with its traffic sound effects — instantly transports you to Manhattan on a 95-degree afternoon. Said Sebastian: “Originally, the chorus was written by my brother, Mark Sebastian. Once I added the verses — the piano figure and the verse — and Steve Boone, our bass player, added that middle eight, those sound effects suddenly began to seem logical. “It began to sound, to me, kind of (George) Gershwin-esque — not that I want to pat myself on the back too much. What I mean is, it kind of gets that New York-ish feel. “When we started to experiment with sound effects, if we’d had an orchestra, we probably would have tried a rock ’n’ roll version of what Gershwin did, which was to make music sound like traffic, in ‘An American in Paris,’ ” Sebastian added, singing a few Gershwin notes. “So that inspired our experiment.”

The Association

Between “Cherish” and “Never My Love” — two glorious, hushed romantic ballads that went to #1 and #2 in 1966 and ’67 respectively — the Association was on hand, albeit indirectly, for many a slow dance, proposal, wedding and, well, conception. “Yes, indeed,” said founding member Russ Giguere with a laugh. “We’ve heard that a lot.” Add to those “Windy” (another #1), “Along Came Mary” (#7), and even a psychedelic song, “Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies” (#35), and the California-bred group’s place in pop is assured. The harmonies for “Cherish” were road-tested, according to Giguere. “We were performing that song long before we recorded it,” the New Hampshire native (born 1943) told me in 2011. “That was one of the few songs I knew was going to be a hit. Because after the show, people would say, ‘When are you going to put out “Cherish” as a single?’ So ‘Cherish’ went through quite a bit of an arrangement change.” But at least one vocal innovation was born in the studio: the “bum-bums.” (Listen to the song — you’ll know what I mean.) Said Giguere: “I can remember the day that was added to the arrangement, before we recorded it. (Association member) Jim (Yester) said, ‘I have this idea. Start “Cherish.” ’ We started rehearsing. He started singing, ‘Bum-bum, bum-bum.’ We all went, ‘Wow! Great!” ’ The Association opened the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (though their set was not used in the resulting concert film). But the group seemed just as at home with “old guard” entertainers. “We did everything,” said Giguere. “We did all the TV shows. We did ‘Dean Martin,’ ‘Red Skelton.’ Carol Channing had a special that featured us, Walter Matthau and the Air Force Glee Club. It was called ‘Carol Channing and 101 Men’ (1968). “When we played the Cocoanut Grove (nightclub in Los Angeles), this was very impressive for us. This was (Frank) Sinatra’s room, OK? So we were pretty impressed. We got to headline there. And also, we were the first rock ’n’ roll band to ever play the Cocoanut Grove up to that time. “When the lights came up, Carol Channing and George Burns were at the front table. When I introduced them, what I said about George Burns was: ‘I’d like to introduce the man who taught us everything we know about singing.’ ”

The Grass Roots

Talent made the Grass Roots a one-band hit factory, without a doubt. But a bit of right-place-right-time also played a role. “Back then, the Grass Roots and the Turtles and a lot of other bands used to play in L.A. on the Sunset Strip,” said Los Angeles native Rob Grill (1943-2011), the group’s founding singer. “We would go into recording studios and record our material. We would either take it around ourselves or, if we had a manager, he would take it around to different record labels. “Dunhill Records really liked ours, and they signed us. The first song we put out, ‘Where Were You When I Needed You’ (#28 in 1966), was a hit, which was unbelievable.” The Grass Roots scored 14 Top 40 hits between 1966 and 1972, including one of the all-time great psychedelic songs, “Let’s Live For Today” (#8 in 1967). Hear also “I’d Wait a Million Years” (#15 in 1969), “Heaven Knows” (#13 in 1969), “Baby Hold On” (#35 in 1970) and “Sooner or Later” (#9 in 1971). On “Midnight Confessions” (#5 in 1968), Grill sounded like a man in pain as he sang of an unrequited love: “Passing so close beside you, baby / Sometimes the feelings are so hard to hide.” “That lyric was kind of telling a story, so you just tried to feel it,” Grill told me in 2008. “I’m not a Method actor, but just in the sense of: You wouldn’t sing a lyric like that in a real bright, cheery way. It was a haunting, pleading kind of a thing, for sure.” Grill’s favorite was “Temptation Eyes” (#15 in 1970). He said: “I love A minor; it’s the same key as a couple of Beatles songs that I love, like ‘Things We Said Today.’ It’s a very pretty key. “We actually recorded the track at one studio, but Dunhill didn’t want to release it as a single. They didn’t think it was a really strong single. So they put it up on a shelf for about eight months. We moved to another studio and I put a vocal on it and they said, ‘Oh, OK. We see what you mean now. We’ll do it.’ ” Grill said he could sense the social change that was taking place during the Grass Roots’ heyday. “We used to do a lot of pop festivals,” he said, “and people would be out there dancing, virtually nude. The girls looked good; the guys didn’t look so good — to us, anyway. People were just going out of their way to do things differently. It was a time to really make a big change.”

Gary Puckett and the Union Gap

On his first big-league recording session, Gary Puckett knocked it out of the park, scoring a #4 in 1967 with “Woman, Woman.” Still, he remembered being a wide-eyed kid. “Really, ‘Woman, Woman’ was my first real, legitimate recording for a real record company with real musicians and a producer in a studio that was constantly producing great recordings,” Minnesota native Puckett (born 1942) told me in 2011. “Vividly, I remember the day. We had hooked up with a guy by the name of Jerry Fuller who had written ‘Travelin’ Man’ for Ricky Nelson. When I walked into Jerry’s office the first time with my little promo package, he was putting the nail in the wall to hang up his gold record that he got for ‘Travelin’ Man.’ ” Puckett said all of the instruments were recorded at the same time for “Woman, Woman” (as opposed to being overdubbed). “They had the strings set up in one area, and the horns were on the opposite side, and the rhythm section was interspersed around them,” Puckett said. “There was vocal booth in the middle, and I was supposed to, of course, sing the vocal live with the orchestra. “But the music in the headphones was so incredibly inspiring and beautiful, that I just nearly broke down. I went, ‘You guys are just going to have to go on without me. I’m going to sit here and listen.’ And Jerry laughed and said, ‘Alright.’ ” As an eye-catching gimmick, Puckett and the Union Gap wore Civil War uniforms. Puckett pushed to have the band shown on the “Woman, Woman” picture sleeve — in costume. “I wanted our picture on the very first single,” Puckett recalled. “Because I said, ‘There are how many records released every month?’ They said, ‘Probably 500 singles go out every month.’ I said, ‘Well, that gives me good reason to believe that we should have an identity, and people should see that identity.’ “They took us to a school in Van Nuys that had been demolished by the wrecking ball. We stood on the actual auditorium stage that was still standing — the rest of the walls and everything were crashed down. We posed on this stage. They put it on the first record, ‘Woman, Woman,’ backed with ‘Don’t Make Promises.’ It went out to this guy Bob Harrington at WCOL in Columbus, Ohio. He was a Civil War buff. Guess what he did? He picked up the picture and went, ‘Wow, what a great picture. I wonder what the record sounds like?’ ”

The Small Faces

“It’s all too beautiful,” goes the refrain from one of the grooviest hit songs ever: “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces, which went to #16 in 1967. For a Top 40 song, the drug references are fairly transparent: “I got high ... I feel inclined to blow my mind . . . we’ll touch the sky . . .” But “Itchycoo Park” is no mere salute to illegal substances, according to keyboardist Ian McLagan (1946-2014), who explained the meaning of the song written by fellow Small Faces Ronnie Laine (1946-1997) and Steve Marriott (1947-1991). “The thing about that song is, it was not all about drugs and getting high,” McLagan told me in 2013. “I mean, it talks about getting high, but the verses are all about education and privilege. That’s Ronnie Laine for you. He says, ‘Over bridge of sighs’ — which is Cambridge University — ‘to rest my eyes in shades of green, under dreamin’ spires’ — which is Oxford — ‘to Itchycoo Park, that’s where I’ve been.’ “It’s all about privilege, money, education, Oxford. England’s green and wonderful and all this — Itchycoo Park, that’s where I’ve been. That’s what I know.” Laine once said the inspiration for the song was a park in Ilford, in London. McLagan elaborated: “It’s a park that has bomb sites, and the grass growin’ all around it. It was all covered in nettles, stinging nettles. So Ronnie Laine found beauty in a nettle patch. As against privileged people — he didn’t have any of that. So when you listen to that song, check out the lyrics.” Adding to the song’s grooviness was the early use, in a rock song, of “phasing” — a distortion technique by which two recorded sources of the same performance are manipulated in order to sound, well, trippy. It’s not that the Small Faces were innovators; the band happened to be scheduled to record on a fortuitous day. Recalled McLagan: “The engineer (of ‘Itchycoo Park’) had been working with George Martin on ‘All You Need is Love.’ They had live horns and strings — some of it on tape, some of it live. It was a breakthrough session, but they didn’t know how to make it work. George Chkiantz was the engineer on that session. “He mentioned it to (engineer) Glyn Johns; he showed him how it worked, with a couple of tape machines. Glyn said, ‘The Small Faces are in tomorrow. Let’s use it with them.’ George said, ‘Oh, it’ll take me ages to set up.’ But anyway, they did it.”

The Buckinghams

When, in 1967, the Buckinghams took the stage for an appearance on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” they found that the set designers had pulled out all the stops in their honor. There was one small problem, though. “The whole stage set was decorated in British flags — you know, the Union Jack. The whole set,” Buckinghams guitarist Carl Giammarese (born 1947) told me in 2010. “We were called the Buckinghams; they took it for granted that we were a British group. The reality was, we were a bunch of guys from Chicago.” The Buckinghams hits included “Kind of a Drag” (#1), “Don’t You Care” (#6) and “Hey Baby (They’re Playing Our Song)” (#12). The band recorded its debut album, 1967’s “Kind of a Drag,” at Chess Records, the legendary studio in Chicago. “It was my first experience at recording,” Giammarese said. “I remember we were so excited that we were going to record at Chess Records at 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. I was very much aware of all the great jazz artists, all the great blues artists, who recorded at Chess — people like Muddy Waters and Little Walter and Chuck Berry. We were just blown away. “I remember the Rolling Stones coming in there to record, also. I never got to walk in on them while they were recording, but I remember them coming in and out of the studio. We were a new band just getting started.” Giammarese credited Dan Belloc — who co-produced the song “Kind of a Drag” with Buckinghams manager Carl Bonafede — as the creator of the track’s horn-driven sound. Subsequent Buckinghams producer James Guercio built on that theme. But Guercio perhaps took studio innovation a bit too far while producing the Buckinghams’ 1967 hit “Susan” (#11). Recalled Giammarese: “We were in the studio, and Jim Guercio said he had this idea. He had us leave a blank space there on the track, and then come back in.” Later on, without the band, Guercio added an avant-garde “psychedelic” sequence with discordant strings and sound effects. “When we got the test pressing of ‘Susan,’ ” Giammarese said, “we thought something had gone wrong with it! A few radio stations edited that break out of the song when they played it. Maybe Guercio was thinking of the Beatles’ ‘Day in the Life’ or something? I should ask him some day.”

1910 Fruitgum Co.

Does any band set out to play bubblegum music? Well, maybe the Archies, but they were cartoons. Listening to sugary pop confections such as “Simon Says” (#4) and “1-2-3 Red Light” (#5), you might think the 1910 Fruitgum Co. were cartoons, too. But the 1960s hitmakers were a real band — at first, anyway. In the middle 1960s, five youths from Linden, New Jersey, initially called themselves Jeckell and the Hydes, after founding guitarist Frank Jeckell. The band had serious aspirations. “We wanted to become the next Vanilla Fudge or Cream,” Jeckell (born 1946) told me in 2014. The band was heard by Jeff Katz, a music producer who signed the renamed 1910 Fruitgum Co. to Buddha Records. “We thought, ‘Here we go,’ ” Jeckell said. “We wanted to record original material. We were waiting to record. Jeff said, ‘I’ve got this song. I really believe it’s a hit. I recorded it with a band out of Philadelphia, but it’s missing something.’ ” The song, “Simon Says,” couldn’t be further from the direction the band wanted to go in. According to Jeckell, the boys balked, but Katz said, “See what you can do with it.” “We figured, ‘So, we do one (non-original) song. What could it hurt?’ ” Jeckell recalled. “We took it home. We rehearsed it. It was still missing something. Then we came up with the idea of altering the feel by changing the beat. We stole the beat and sound from ‘Wooly Bully’ (by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs). “We played it for Jeff. Jeff went, ‘That’s it!’ ” Silly but infectious, “Simon Says” made the Top 10 in the United States, the U.K. and Japan, and charted in Germany and Italy, according to Jeckell. And so five young men from New Jersey with aspirations to become the next Vanilla Fudge scored a Top 10 hit .. . with a bubblegum song. How did the 1910 Fruitgum Co. get its name? Said Jeckell: “If you look at the very first album we made (‘Simon Says,’ 1968), on the album are liner notes that say: ‘It was Frank who, while searching through some old vintage clothes in an attic, found a wrapper that said, 1910 Fruitgum Co.’ ” Um, is that true? Jeckell came back: “Of course — he said with tongue in cheek.”

Three Dog Night

Three lead singers? Sounds like a political minefield. But it worked — for the most part — for Three Dog Night’s hairy trio of frontmen: Corey Wells, Chuck Negron and Danny Hutton. “Our philosophy was: Whoever could do the song best,” Buffalo native Wells (1941-2015) told me in 2014. “And if we couldn’t decide, then all three of us would sing on it.” Three Dog Night was a hit machine, with 21 Top 40 songs between 1968 and 1975. Two back-to-back monster hits catapulted the band to superstardom in 1969: “One” (#5) and, from “Hair,” “Easy to be Hard” (#4). Both were sung by Negron. “I got ‘One’ from Harry Nilsson’s publisher,” Bronx native Negron (born 1942) told me in 1999. “I went in, and we came up with a really good arrangement of it, with a lot more attitude. I knew when I heard it back that it was a hit record. I knew.” But Negron said he had to go straight to the record company president in order to get “One” released as a single. “It’s kind of a shame that I didn’t have the support of the band,” the singer said. “But you know what? It didn’t matter. It was huge. It launched our career.” Negron wasn’t as prescient about his “Easy to be Hard” vocal. He recalled: “I went in and I knew this song, because I’d been singing it with the band. And I said, ‘OK, we’ve got the levels. Let’s go for it.’ I sang it once, and they said, ‘We’re gonna play it back.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no, let’s go again. I’ve really got this song.’ Gabriel Mekler, who was our producer, finally said, ‘No, that’s it. You got it, Chuck. You can’t do better than this. Plus, it’s honest.’ I said, ‘Please, let me do it again.’ He played it back, and I went, ‘Wow.’ And that was it. We used the first take.” Now on a roll, TDN score a #1 the following year with Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me (Not to Come),” sung by Wells. “I was doing that song before Three Dog Night,” Wells pointed out. “I found a Randy Newman album in the bargain bin of Sears and Roebucks for 50 cents. I took that album home and fell in love with it. I really liked his sarcastic approach to music.” The band’s next #1 was “Joy to the World” (1971), with the head-scratching lyric sung by Negron, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.” “That song touched a lot of people,” Negron said. “But then to hear, on the other hand, ‘Oh, it was so commercial.’ I remember Jimi Hendrix wondering, ‘How do they have so many hits?’ ”

The Turtles

Just because your first hit is a Bob Dylan song, doesn’t make you a folkie. “In fact, we weren’t a folk-rock group at all,” said Howard Kaylan, a founding member of the Turtles. “We were just a club band for teenagers playing Top 40 hits, until the one night when we went down to the Sunset Strip as a band to see these new guys, the Byrds, play at Ciro’s (a club in West Hollywood). We said, ‘Oh my God! This is it.’” The band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, the same year their cover of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe” went to #8. Though the Turtles’ version was pop-ier than Dylan’s spare, plaintive original, the Dylan purists left them alone. “The Dylan purists, I think, had gotten it all out of their system when the Byrds’ record (‘Mr. Tambourine Man’) hit,” New York City native Kaylan (born 1947) told me in 2011. The Turtles’ pop-friendly harmonies powered such hits as “Happy Together” (#1), “She’d Rather Be With Me” (#3) and “Elinore” (#6). How did Kaylan, co-founder Mark Volman and company create those harmonies? “Believe it or not, I think it came from a capella choir,” Kaylan said. “I think it came from the fact that not only did Mark and I sing in that choir (at Westchester High School in Los Angeles), but so did (fellow Turtle) Al Nichol. Chuck Portz, the bass player in the original band, was also in that very ensemble.” “We had sung in choir, very much broken up in the tenor-baritone-bass organization,” L.A. native Volman (born 1947) told me in 2003. “When ‘Happy Together’ was arranged and organized, it helped that we had the background singing for three years in choir together in high school. It opened up that song’s possibilities.” Volman believed “Happy Together” was emblematic of the era. “The song has become, virtually, an icon of the ’60s,” he said. “It represents all the great things the ’60s stands for. It brings together romance and fun, and it’s high-energy and it’s childlike and it’s quality popular music. Believe me, when we made the record, we had no idea that would happen. You just hope you’re gonna have a good record and it’ll find its way to the radio.” As for the song’s arrangement: “The organization of that record is centered around, obviously, the vocal. The vocal was something we’d been priming ourselves for with the record ‘You, Baby,’ of course, and ‘Can I Get to Know You Better?’ These records were beginning to show a side of the band vocally.” Volman gave much of the credit to onetime Turtles bassist Chip Douglas. “He focused the arrangement of the background instruments — the outside instruments that are a part of that song, but don’t get in the way of the band,” Volman said. “Chip Douglas was only in the Turtles for this one record; he went off to produce the Monkees and had a very successful career. So I think, really, the starting ground for Chip was ‘Happy Together.’ ” Considering the song’s title, it’s ironic that the Turtles were going through a period of turmoil when “Happy Together” was recorded. “The Turtles had backed themselves into a corner, really,” Volman recalled. “At that point, we found ourselves in a proverbial rock ’n’ roll slump. We were losing members. We lost a drummer. We lost a bass player. We were making some significant personnel changes. Our record company (White Whale) was a very small record company. We also had management prob-

lems that were causing some tremendous insecurities. “I’m not sure how close we came to breaking up, but we were certainly on the road to that when ‘Happy Together’ came along. It is funny to think that that record would give us an entirely new life, and what that record would eventually turn into.” The Turtles were also known as clowns who often goofed around during performances and photo sessions. This comedic approach was born of necessity, according to Kaylan. “You’ve got to remember: When we were coming up, when we were 17 years old, the guys who were on the cover of (editor) Gloria Stavers’ 16 Magazine were Mark Lindsay and Davy Jones and Peter Noone and Bobby Sherman,” Kaylan said. “I mean, they were these cute guys. And what did we have going for us? These two fat Jewish kids from the airport in Los Angeles. We were white middle class. We had nothing to protest, and yet, here we were making protest records. “When we first came out, it was on an unknown label with an unknown name. People thought we were English anyway. It was horribly confusing for everybody involved, and it was something we didn’t try to squelch. Because it bought us six or eight months of people thinking we were part of the British Invasion. Before they realized: ‘Oh, they’re not?’ “Once you’re established with two or three hits records, you can afford to be kind of comedic about it, and kind of take your looks — and the comments about that sort of thing — not very personally. We weren’t teen idols. So we had to do something else. We were always funny. We were always funny onstage. We did take our music very seriously.”

Howard Kaylan (left), Mark Volman (top right) and the Turtles. Publicity photo

The Guess Who

The Guess Who’s #1 hit of 1970, “American Woman,” sounds live-ish. The interplay between vocalist Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman comes off like improv, and yet, one senses structure. Did the Guess Who — Winnipeg natives, all — have a lucky jam in the studio? “It really started as a jam onstage,” Cummings (born 1947) told me in 2001. “Back in ’69, we toured the States and then we came back to Canada. We were playing two shows at a curling rink outside Toronto. Came time for the second show to go on, and I was outside talking to some guy about a collection of Gene Vincent records. And the other three guys started up, so I said to this guy, ‘Oh, my God! I’ve gotta go, man! I’m supposed to be on!’ ” To stall while awaiting their tardy frontman, Bachman, bassist Jim Kale and drummer Garry Peterson cooked up a riff. “We started jamming, so that wherever Burton was, he would hear us and rejoin us,” Peterson (born 1945) told me in 2013. “I had been listening to Buddy Miles and the Electric Flag. Buddy Miles used double-bass (drums); I was using double-bass at the time. I started to play that ‘American Woman’ rhythm.” “They were doing this riff over and over,” Cummings said. “When I finally jumped up onstage, Randy said, ‘Sing something!’ So I just ran to the mic and started singing whatever came into my head. About 95 percent of those lyrics were just made up on the spot — one of those stream-of-consciousness moments.” “Burton started to sing about being home and the troubles we saw while touring in the States,” said Peterson. “We’d seen many of the political things that were going on in this country at the time — race problems and the Vietnam War and all of that stuff that was germane to that age, the late ’60s and ’70s.” By now, everyone knows the lyrics Peterson was talking about, such as “I don’t need your war machines / I don’t need your ghetto scenes.” These may have been lost to the ages, but for an audience member who happened to bootleg the show. “We got ahold of that tape,” Cummings said. “On it was this thing about the American woman and the war machine and the ghetto scene. We thought, ‘This is pretty catchy. We should record it.’ ” The Guess Who kept the impromptu piece in their act. “The audience loved it, so we kept on doing it,” Peterson said. “It morphed every night. So it really had its rehearsal and training ground in front of the audience. They’ll tell you what they like.” According to Bachman, writing the song — which is credited to the entire band — was more like mapping out a strategy. “It wasn’t a sit-down, written song, like Cummings and I wrote our other songs,” Bachman (born 1943) told me in 2001. “We actually sat down, put pieces together, worked out format, lyrics and what the song was going to be about.” First, the band recorded the track without vocals or lead guitar. “I was just playing rhythm, and Cummings was just kind of counting out different bar things, and there was drums and bass,” Bachman said. “Then we went back, and he did the lead vocal and I did the lead guitar, and there was that kind of interplay there. We were trying to truncate what we were already doing onstage; the song was eight or 10 minutes. I was kind of glad we did get that little jammy thing in the ending.” The very first take of the vocal/guitar interplay was used. “There’s even a mistake in it,” Bachman said. “When he first goes, ‘Bye-bye,’ I was trying to catch what he

Clockwise from left: Garry Peterson, Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Burton Cummings of the Guess Who. Publicity photo was doing, and I caught it late. The first one doesn’t match. Then every one after that does. I could see his mouth, and I start to play along. ‘You’re no good for me, I’m no good for you’ — that whole thing. So I could follow at that point, but when he started it, I caught it late. It’s a mistake. “I wanted to go back and fix it. He (Cummings) said, ‘No, no, no, no. The way it happens onstage is, if the singer’s doing his thing, and the guitar player or the saxophone player is trying to play the same line, you never catch the first one. You don’t know what he’s going to do. And then after that, you play the line, or you play a third over or under the line or whatever. Let’s just leave it.’ So we left it. “But it still bothers me to this day when I hear it on the radio, that that little thing is just a hair off.” Petersen believed “American Woman” echoed the times it was recorded in not just lyrically, but in its free-form musical structure. “It reflects the fashion of how bands were jamming in our era — the Jefferson Airplane and Santana and anybody back then,” the drummer said. “Those were the times when that was acceptable. It’s become more tailored and pre-fab today. We were fortunate to be recording at a time when you could experiment with many things.”

Donovan

If you feel kind of lightheaded when you hear “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” it’s no wonder. Donovan — who sang the #5 hit of 1968 — said the song was created in the midst of his famous pilgrimage to India to study Transcendental Meditation. “It was begun before the trip to India in ’68 with the Beatles and the ashram by the Ganges, and it was completed after the return from India,” the Glasgow native (born 1946) told me in 2006. “It was very much a mantra. In the Celtic music that I come from, they have drones, one-chord drones. In the meditation, you can chant, and it centers you. It actually can take you some of the way into this inner world. That’s why drones and chanting have always been part of tribal shaman music. “But ‘The Hurdy Gurdy Man’ had this sound of a drone — aaaaaah — so it was meditational. But in the words, I wanted to express — at the height of the violence of wars and unrest and student protest all over the world — I wanted to remind us that there was an inner world.” Like many hip Londoners at the time, Donovan was a recent convert to Jimi Hendrix fandom. “I immediately wanted to give ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ to Jimi Hendrix, but he was out on the road by then,” Donovan said. “My producer, Mickie Most, said, ‘No, you should record it.’ And I said, ‘OK. We’ll get Jimi Hendrix (to play guitar).’ He couldn’t make the session, but Jimmy Page did. “And something extraordinary happened in the studio. Ah! It was meditational, it was mind-blowing, and Jimmy Page’s guitar. But then I played that drone of the instrument called the tambura, which George Harrison gave me when we were in India. And all in all, the song, for me, is the favorite of what I would call my sort of mantra rock songs.” Donovan previously had hits with “Sunshine Superman” (#1 in 1966) and “Mellow Yellow” (#2 in 1967). He remembers a dizzying early career moment in America. “I was driving from LAX, from Los Angeles into Hollywood, for that first trip in 1965 to play on some cra-a-azy television show called ‘Shindig,’ ” Donovan said. “KRLA was blasting out my song. That made all the sense in the world. I said, ‘There it is. That simple, cheap, little 45-revsper-minute is going to change everything, and I’m part of it.’ I felt great. I realized that radio was now wide open.” For Donovan, he’d become the latest participant in a revolution begun when his forebears such as the Beatles invaded America. “Obviously, it was extraordinary what happened between 1964 and 1969,” he said. “The amount of renaissance changes that happened, the amount of material and ideas that burst out of what I call ‘Bohemia’ — the art schools, the jazz clubs, the folk clubs, the poetry groups, the spiritual groups. “The Bohemian world of the late ’50s was cooking. This was led by the Beat poets, of course. (Allen) Ginsberg, (Jack) Kerouac, (William S.) Burroughs, (Lawrence) Ferlinghetti and (Michael) McClure and all these guys in the late ’40s and ’50s were great supporters of us, you know. And then it exploded. “We all stood up out of Bohemia and said, ‘This is an extraordinary situation.’ A nuclear war hovering above us; two world wars; a depression. The 20th century full of violence and suffering has produced a generation, a post-war Baby Boom, where more young people were let loose with money in their pockets, and the small, 45-revs-per-minute record. A bit of plastic. So cheap that everybody could buy it.”

“I wanted to remind us that there was an inner world,” said Donovan of his lyrics to “The Hurdy Gurdy Man.” © Pye Ltd.

It happened in India

In February of 1968, the Beatles, Donovan, Mike Love and other young luminaries traveled to India to soak in the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918-2008). “In fact, it was probably me and the Beatles and one Beach Boy (Love) in the music world that really brought meditation to the attention of our generation in 1968, as an alternative to drugs and the inner journey through magic plants,” Donovan told me of the experience. “We sought out a yogi and we found one: Maharishi. He found us and we found him. Transcendental Meditation (TM) was invented by Maharishi and his yogi as a Western way of entering the inner world without shaving your head, or living in a cave, or changing the way you look, or joining a religion, or even changing your own religion. You can keep it all.” “I was in Boston at the Harvard Law Forum when the Maharishi gave a speech,” recalled Love. “Mia Farrow was there. I flew from L.A. to Hawaii to Japan to Thailand and finally to Delhi. The Beatles were invited by the Maharishi separately. Donovan and the Beatles went from England. “We (Love and the Beatles) were both new to meditation. But I think we missed out on the purpose of the event. It was to learn how to teach TM. But the Beatles brought guitars, and there was a lot of music going on. Subsequently, I became a teacher of TM. I got the proper certification. “There were long hours of meditation and imparting of knowledge about ancient technologies that go back to — nobody knows how long. It was one of the most fascinating experiences I think I’ve ever had.”

The Rascals

“You should see / what a lovely, lovely world this would be / if everyone learned to live together ...” The message of the Rascals’ 1968 hit “People Got to be Free” remained painfully pertinent for decades after it charted in 1968. It’s not something that Felix Cavaliere — who co-wrote the song with fellow Rascals member Eddie Brigati — was happy about. “Even though it was a long time ago, unfortunately, the message is still relevant,” the New York native (born 1942) told me in 2009. “That’s what’s kind of sad and amazing.” The singer/keyboardist formed the Rascals in 1965 in New Jersey with singer Brigati, guitarist Gene Cornish and drummer Dino Danelli. The band recorded such hits as “Good Lovin’ ” (#1), “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long” (#16), “Groovin’ ” (#1), “How Can I Be Sure?” (#4) and “A Beautiful Morning” (#3). The Rascals’ first single, 1965’s “I Ain’t Gonna Eat My Heart Out Anymore,” failed to pierce the Top 40. So when their next release shot to #1, it was kind of a shock for the group. Said Cavaliere: “Our second record, which was ‘Good Lovin’,’ went into orbit. It took off so quickly that we were totally unprepared for the rocket launching that had just taken place. But it was so exciting, you know? You’re part of it and you’re feeling it.” Especially when these young men were sent out on tour. “It was so exciting to have the purpose of your traveling being the promotion of your record,” Cavaliere said. “It was so much fun to go out there and play a song for people who were hearing it for the first time, and watching and hearing their reaction. We went on a Dick Clark tour, which really opened up the whole South to us, which has been another strong base for the Rascals. It was a bus tour; it was a ‘Where the Action Is’ tour. “When we went to California for the first time, that was mindboggling. Because it was right in the middle of all the, at that time, Los Angeles craziness,” Cavaliere laughed. “I mean, I can’t even describe the craziness. So it was an education. We were a bunch of kids that were watching a dream unfold. “When you’re with a group, it’s entirely different. Especially with our group. We had fun. We had crazy people in the group who took very little seriously, which may have worked against us. But it sure was fun.” This spirit of fun continued as the boys made their first of six appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Recalled Cavaliere: “We went into a dressing room. And in those days, yeah, they piled that — whaddaya call? — that pancake makeup on. It was hysterical. I remember my dad came to one of the ‘Ed Sullivan’ shows, and he walked right by me. He didn’t even know who I was

with the makeup on! Seriously, it was kind of like a fantasy land.” But the fantasy couldn’t last forever. With nine Top 20 songs inside a three-year period, success eventually exacted a toll. “It was not a business yet, to us,” Cavaliere said. “That was the big difference. It was the music music, not the music business. And then, unfortunately, as the years went by, that fun kind of changed into a more serious industry. It changed everything — within the group, without the group. The country was going through a lot of turmoil.” SOME OF THE RASCALS’ BEST-REMEMBERED hits were feel-good songs. “People Got to be Free” was different — it was an uplifting message that followed a dark event. “I was working very, very closely for the Robert Kennedy (presidential) campaign,” Cavaliere explained. “There was such a euphoric feeling, with the (party) nomination getting closer and then winning the state of California primary. And then, boom.” “Boom” was Kennedy’s assassination on June 6, 1968. “I was seeing a woman at the time who was actually there when he was assassinated (in Los Angeles),” Cavaliere said. “I don’t think she’s ever recovered. “It really crushed us. Really, I felt compelled to say something or do something. It was just too much to just let go. I just felt that those of us who were in the public eye, we had to let people know how we felt, because people were looking up to us.” Cavaliere decided to respond with music. “I was actually on vacation when I wrote that ‘People Got to be Free’ basic idea and theme,” he said of the song. “When I brought it back to New York and spoke to Eddie about it, the record company was really not that thrilled. They thought we were meddling in the wrong place, that it would stir up controversy. Fortunately, we had complete creative control. “I was very proud of that song, because it became #1 in all of the oppressed areas of the world. I thought that was the coolest thing. We were in South Africa, we were in Hong Kong, we were in Berlin. It was really kind of an amazing feeling to know that that music got all over the world.”

From left: Cavaliere, Brigati, Danelli and Cornish. Publicity photo

Television trips

WHEN THE SEEDS APPEARED ON “THE MOTHERSlittle while, that she would be wearing clothes that other people In-Law,” an insipid 1967-69 sitcom about the generation gap, the would wear once in a while. script took pot-shots (no pun intended) at groovy culture. “It was a lot of fun. I loved it. I’m wearing bell-bottoms now. The episode has the hubbies of co-stars Eve Arden and Kaye You know, they’re ba-a-ack. It’s so funny. And the big platforms. Ballard investing in a rock band called the Warts. The Seeds All the teenage girls are running around in their platforms.” appear as — you guessed it — the Warts. They wear “rock group” A trio of female TV spies wore up-to-the-minute fashions: costumes straight out of the wardrobe department. They have Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel on “The Avengers” (1965-68), Barbara fresh dye jobs (though guitarist Jan Savage wears what suspiFeldon as Agent 99 on “Get Smart” (1965-70) and Stefanie ciously resembles a Tonto wig). In dialogue, the Warts confuse Powers as “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” (1966-67). their investors via hippie jargon like “bread,” “heavy” and “gas.” “The two main influences on the show were my favorite Then the Warts perform a song for the two older couples. It is designers,” Feldon told me in 2003. “The first was Rudi Gernreich — talk about meta — “Pushin’ Too Hard,” the Seeds’ real-life who, of course, was a very famous, very mod designer at the time. #36 hit of 1966. Whenever the Seeds get to the “aaaaaah” backI had been wearing some of his clothes anyway. For the first couing vocals, Herb Rudley (as Arden’s husband) covers his ple of years, I wore a lot of Gernreich. The other was a woman ears and winces in disgust. Then the couples suggest some named ‘Cappy’ (Catherine) Capriotti, who had a store called improvements for the Seeds, er, Warts: Get crew-cuts. the General Store in Beverly Hills, where I bought all Below: Wear tuxedoes. Rename yourselves the Hep Cats. my clothes. I began, especially in the later years of Sing “Some Enchanted Evening.” Glamour (spy) ‘Get Smart,’ wearing her pantsuits and jackets. Granted, the episode, directed by Desi Arnaz, “Basically, it was my taste, but there were some girls Agent 99, April sought laughs by painting its stars as out-of-touch very fine wardrobe people who were able to collect Dancer and Mrs. Peel. oldsters. But it also put on display the establishthose things and put them together for me.” “Get Smart” © Talent AssociatesParamount Ltd.; “The Girl From ment’s built-in assumptions and prejudices about U.N.C.L.E.” © Metro-Goldwynthe younger generation and its music, fashions and VARIETY SHOWS MADE INROADS BY Mayer, Inc.; “The Avengers” © Associated British attitudes. Says Ballard in the episode: “Doesn’t exposing mainstream America to groovy music: “The Corp. seem like a good influence, that music and those hipEd Sullivan Show” (guests: the Beatles, of course, and pies and the beads and all that craziness.” the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Turtles, the Shondells, It’s a sometimes hilarious aspect of 1960s studio television: Tiny Tim) ... “Shindig” (The Who, the Moody Blues, the Programming was often behind the times. It conflated beatniks Zombies) ... “Hullabaloo” (the Animals, the Byrds, the Yardbirds) with Beatlemania with mods with hippies with radicals with ... ... “This is Tom Jones” (Janis Joplin, Donovan, Joe Cocker) . . . Still, no matter how large those temporal gaps, grooviness “Music Scene” (Sly and the Family Stone, the Cowsills, Ten crept in. Its precursors were beatnik characters like Maynard G. Years After, Richie Havens, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) . . . Krebbs, played by future “Gilligan’s Island” star Bob Denver. Series that flirted with grooviness included “Then Came Then came “British Invasion”-era characters and cameos. (Chad and Jeremy alone were seen on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Patty Duke Show” and “Batman.”) The musical sitcom “The Monkees” was inspired by — or a ripoff of, you decide — the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” Alas, the fictional band on “The Monkees” was only 25 percent British. Female stars wore far-out threads. As a housewife with a magical twitching nose on “Bewitched” (1964-72), Elizabeth Montgomery became a one-woman campaign for paisley print. In the final season of “I Dream of Jeannie” (1965-70), the title character (Barbara Eden) traded her genie uniform for contemporary chic. “It was just a natural evolution, I guess,” Eden told me in 2005. “They decided that after she’d been on this planet for a

The Seeds rock “The Mothers-In-Law” (1968); Carradine stretches as a hippie (1971); stoned again in “Go Ask Alice” (1973). “The Mothers-in-Law” © United Artists Television; “Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring” and “Go Ask Alice” © Metromedia Producers Corp.

Bronson” (a dude sought truth on a Harley) ... “Room 222” (an L.A. high school in the early ’70s? Come on!) ... “Lost in Space” (Penny Robinson met space hippies, Dr. Smith donned a wig and cut a rug) . . . “Star Trek” (Kirk and Spock, too, met space hippies, and Spock even “jammed” with them) ... “Batman” (the Batusi, ’nuff said) . . . “Love American Style” (grooviness abounded). Opposite ends of the spectrum: On “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Granny taught long-hairs how to dig “taters,” which they mistook for a new dance, while on “Dragnet,” newlyweds were smoking weed as their infant drowned in a bathtub. Eventually, groovy people started headlining their own TV series (“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In”). “The Ugliest Girl in Town” (1968-69) — inspired by “boyish” British supermodel Twiggy — starred Peter Kastner as a guy in drag who became the hottest “female” fashion model in swinging London. (No one knew “she” was a he.) The ratings were ugly, too; the show was yanked after 17 episodes. THERE WAS EVEN GROOVY DRAMA. “THE MOD Squad” (1968-1973) featured three hipsters-turned-cops who, unlike Sgt. Joe Friday, could convincingly infiltrate the hippie world. The show’s tagline: “One white, one black, one blond.” These were played by Michael Cole (curly locks), Peggy Lipton (wispy blond hair) and Clarence Williams III (full-on afro, baby). “The New People” (1969-70) was about a society of youths stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. No adult supervision on the island, less teens on the mainland — a fantasy for both sides of the generation gap. An undeniable hippie vibe permeated “Kung Fu” (1972-75), which starred David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-Chinese, half-Caucasian exile drifting through the Old West. Longhaired Caine, despite his wicked kung fu skills, is staunchly nonviolent — essentially, an avatar for the contemporary peacenik. But just prior to his breakthrough in “Kung Fu,” Carradine played a contemporary hippie in the TV movie “Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring” (1971) which, along with “Go Ask Alice” (1973), realistically depicted druggie encroachment on suburbia. “Alice” was preachy — it set the tone for all of those corny “afternoon specials” to follow — but “Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring” didn’t demonize, or glorify, hippies. Joseph Sargent’s thoughtful film stars Sally Field as a runaway teenager who, after living on the streets with her former boyfriend (Carradine), returns home. But the very things that drove her away in the first place — chiefly her distracted, alcoholic, occasionally abusive parents (Jackie Cooper and Eleanor Parker) — have not changed. Matters are complicated when Fields’ little sister (Lane

“The Mod Squad”: “One white, one black, one blond.” © Thomas-Spelling Productions

Bradbury) starts popping pills, and Carradine shows up to reclaim his woman, thus upsetting suburban “tranquility.” Carradine’s look and portrayal are quite authentic — something that rarely happened on network TV in those days. “Well, you know, I wasn’t too far away from being that kind of person,” Carradine (1936-2009) told me in 2001. “That is my own hair. And I think I might have been wearing my own clothes and my own Indian jewelry and everything in it. “I mean, not that I was that person, because I’m certainly not. I’m an actor and everything. But that look is certainly what I was doing with my life right then. I really was walking around in Indian leathers and wearing all that jewelry, and I had hair down to my knees.” In the TV movie’s twist ending, Bradbury runs away from home, leaving Fields behind, vacuuming the house — a dour message that set “Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring” apart from the frequently out-of-touch network fare of the time. “I don’t think it was the least bit out-of-touch,” Carradine said of the film. “And, you know, it doesn’t even have a happy ending. As a matter of fact, it says: ‘Don’t go back home. You’ll just end up pushing a carpet sweeper.’ ”

Reality TV They were born in a network boardroom. They ripped off “A Hard Day’s Night.” They didn’t play their instruments. That’s what naysayers said of the Monkees. But you know what? The Monkees’ songs are immortal, and their TV shows are funny. Still. The Monkees — Meanwhile, the TV show began to subtly reflect the counterDavy Jones (the heartculture movement, while Jones, Dolenz, Tork and Nesmith were throb), Micky Dolenz (the growing tired of the sitcom format. They had guest Frank Zappa clown), Peter Tork (the stoner type) and “play” a car — that is, beat a 1940s jalopy with chains. Michael Nesmith (the relatively sane one) — were After “The Monkees” was canceled, reruns began airing on derisively nicknamed the “Prefab Four,” and not unreasonably so. Saturday-morning TV, and Monkeemania infected the little brothIf you watch the Beatles in the 1964 film “A Hard Day’s Night” ers and sisters of first-run viewers. Cereal-munching children in and then watch the 1966-68 sitcom “The Monkees,” the imitation pajamas watching Frank Zappa? Now, that’s subversive. is conspicuous. But you can’t blame the boys, who, after all, “ ‘The Monkees’ was, I think, unique in the sense that it kind merely answered an ad for a cattle-call audition and won their of brought long hair and the hippie culture into the living room,” roles over 437 fellow hopefuls. Dolenz told me in 2001. The series, co-created by Bob “NBC was very, very concerned Rafelson and Bert Schneider (who and worried about putting the show later produced “Easy Rider”), was on the air, putting guys with long madcap, inventive, energetic and hair on TV in prime time. I rememirreverent. Part Beatles, part Marx ber them telling me that. Because Brothers, Mssrs. Jones, Dolenz, at the time, the people you saw on Tork and Nesmith were like cartelevision with long hair were usutoon characters come to life. ally on the news, getting arrested,” The boys’ road from fictional to Dolenz added with a laugh. bona fide band was paved with “Because, it was considered the surprise. Don Kirshner was initialcounterculture. It was considered ly enlisted to expedite the necesanti-American. And they (the netsarily rapid writing and recording works) were very, very careful. of tunes. Some heavy hitters That’s one reason we were never penned Monkees songs (Tommy able to make any political or social Boyce and Bobby Hart, Gerry comments. Not that we even would Goffin and Carole King, Neil have wanted to. It was probably the “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc. Diamond) and provided key instruwrong venue for that. It was fairly mentation (the Wrecking Crew, Glen Campbell). The Monkees — I don’t want to say ‘innocent,’ but — mainstream in that sense. scored 10 songs in the Top 40, six in the Top 10 and three #1’s. “So I think if there’s anything we did contribute, it was to So in real life, the Monkees, manufactured though they were, make it a little more acceptable to be young, male and have long became a real phenomenon. To the network suits, a Frankenstein hair, as most of the kids in the country did. And most of the kids was created. When the boys began making noise about musical in the country — even though they may have been sympathetic to autonomy, they were granted more clout. Kirshner walked, saying what was going on politically and socially — were not necessarily his agreement wasn’t honored. (Tork later said Kirshner “left in a active. They weren’t blowing up things or being extremely antihuff.”) Now working with producer Chip Douglas, the boys still social. They were just wearing the stuff that you can get at the scored hits (“Daydream Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday”). mall now. And the Monkees kind of represented that.”

Davy Jones HE WAS THE PEPPY ARTFUL DODGER, dancing up a storm and charming the swells and squares of Broadway. Later on, he became a pop star. And Manchester native Davy Jones (19452012) looked perfectly comfortable in either world. In “The Monkees,” Jones was the short one, the one with the British accent — powerful currency in 1966. And, when the need arose, he could be relied upon to break out his stage-honed showmanship. When Jones’ 1963-64 Broadway stint in “Oliver!” landed him on “Ed Sullivan” as a teen, he hit the fate jackpot; it was Feb. 9, 1964, the night of the Beatles’ historic debut on the same program. Screams emanated from the audience … and Jones took note. I interviewed the singer in 1998. Q: How did you get into music? JONES: Music really didn’t really hit me until, probably, 1964 when I was in New York. I was at Carnegie Hall when I was watching the Dave Clark Five and a number of other people. I looked pretty much like Dave Clark, because I had an English accent and black hair and I was sort of baby-faced. And the girls turned ’round — they thought that I was Dave Clark’s brother or something — and they all mobbed me. Q: You witnessed that again on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on the night of the Beatles’ debut. JONES: I remember seeing the reaction. It was the old Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway in New York. It was only a 400-seater, probably less, and it was full of Beatles fans. I saw the Beatles, and that’s what got me interested. I was getting affection from kids at the stage door. I was getting applause and standing ovations as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!” A Tony Award nomination. But after seeing the Beatles, I thought, “Well, there’s more to life than acting and singing Lionel Bart’s “Consider Yourself.” Q: There were no drug references on “The Monkees,” but I’m guessing you boys weren’t quite so squeaky-clean. JONES: They wouldn’t let us do any (publicity interviews), because we

Broadway to pop stage would either talk about pot or we would talk about girls. They didn’t want any association with any one particular female. They didn’t want any association with any sort of drugs. “Do you take drugs?” “Yeah, we have an aspirin and a Coke every morning before we start work.” We weren’t told to say that, but that was basically what we did say, because we were protecting each other. Yeah, we used to sneak behind the shed and smoke a joint once in a while and then come out. I look at the shows and say, “Yeah, I was stoned when I did that.” But, you know, that’s not very professional. That’s a 20-year-old going, you know, “Hey-y-y.” Taking advantage. That’s as far as I went with it. Q: You and Micky often sang lead on the songs. How was it decided who sang which? JONES: We were chosen to sing certain songs by who was available that night. Peter and Mike weren’t singing a lot of the stuff, because they supposedly didn’t have the commercial voices. So Micky and I were asked night after night. “Would you come in the studio tonight?” “No, I’m not coming tonight. I’ve got a date.” “Oh, OK. You go, Micky.” And then he sings “I’m a Believer.” I go. Well, Micky wouldn’t sing a song like “Daydream Believer.” Mike certainly wouldn’t. Or Peter. So I was the obvious choice. Q: When you first heard “Daydream Believer,” did you feel a connection? JONES: When we started to record that album — most albums had 12 tunes. We had 13 tunes on that album. So I was called in by (pro-

From top: Jones in cartoon form from Dell’s “The Monkees” #16 (1968); teen magazine hoopla. “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc.

ducer) Chip Douglas. He says, “Okay, we’ve got these 13 tunes here.” He played “Daydream Believer” and he said, “What do you think?” I said, “Yeah, that’s the one. Get rid of that.” I figured he’s asking me which one we should dump from the album. And I’m saying dump “Daydream Believer.” He says, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re thinking this would be the single.” I said, “What? Please! Don’t embarrass me.” Q: The ad-lib at the top of the song (“Just because I’m short”) is charming. Please set the scene that brought about that moment. JONES: Usually, I’d go in because we were doing songs for the TV show only. Most of those are one take. Only one take. In you go; do it; gone. Because this was for a TV show. How much time did you have to put into it? To sing this stuff that was being written for us? Because it was supposedly part of the story, I was told each time I went in, for the TV show. I mean, that’s why I sang a lot of that stuff. And we went in there, and I started singing it (“Daydream Believer”) the first time, and I said, “I can’t sing another one of these, guys!” I probably said, “You f***ing guys! F! F! F! F! F! F! F!” Then all a sudden, I got embarrassed and I said (whispering), “OK, OK, you guys. I know. It’s just because I’m short that you’re making me do it again.” When the album came out, they put a little bit of ad-libs on there. And that is exactly the reason that thing in “Daydream Believer” is on there. They were smart enough to leave it, and make it something the Monkees became known for: talking on their records. Then they had the Beatles with “Sgt. Pepper”; you play it backwards and it says, “I am dead. I am dead.” That’s all baloney. Q: Was it weird seeing your likeness on lunch boxes and comic books and finger puppets? JONES: It’s kind of weird seeing the lunch boxes and books and everything, but it’s a compliment. I don’t think about it, but that was all money made by the company. Those things should irk me, because I see them all still. I have a few bits of memorabilia. My father collected a few things, whether it be the little Monkeemobile car and things like that. But, you know, somewhere deep inside, a little thing turns and I go, “Well, that’s all very nice. I guess they’re all retired in Mexico now, and there’s me still working my ass off.” Q: Was 1966, when “The Monkees” debuted, the end of innocence? The next few years is when the drugs and “free love” and rebellion set in. JONES: All I saw were 14-, 15-yearold girls who were screaming and shouting and running after us. As soon as we got to the pop festival stage, when all these people were out there, it was no longer, like, “Be careful who you smoke with.” They were all smoking out in the field, and it was on TV. It was the end of the innocence, but the innocence can start again whenever you want.

Davy Jones in 1998 and looking mod in a 1960s publicity photo. 1998 photo by Kathy Voglesong

Micky Dolenz THE CASTING OF MICKY DOLENZ on “The Monkees” was a shrewd choice in one respect. Dolenz was already a TV veteran, having starred in a 1956-58 series with a title that says it all: “Circus Boy.” The bonus was that Dolenz had a singing voice perfectly suited to ’60s pop — sweet, with a trace of snark. Dolenz’s readings on “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Stepping Stone” put him right up there with the Tommy Jameses and Gary Pucketts of the era. I interviewed the Los Angeles native (born 1945) in 2001 and 2004. Q: What do you recall of the “Monkees” audition process? DOLENZ: It was extensive. The closest thing that I could compare it to is doing an audition for a Broadway musical. In fact, the closest thing to a description of “The Monkees” was probably “a musical on television.” You had to act, of course. You had to learn lines and do a traditional television acting audition. Then you also had to be able to play an instrument. That was the first question they asked: “What do you play?” I played guitar at the time, so, fine. I came in; I did “Johnny B. Goode.” Then you had to be able to sing, of course, and everybody sang. And then you had to just look good, I guess. Q: Were you auditioning for actual roles? DOLENZ: When they cast us in the show, the producers, I think, had in the back of their minds the idea of not just casting these roles — you know, inventing a role and trying to find an actor to fit it — but trying to find four characters that really got along and really had a chemistry. The kind of thing that you can’t buy. The kind of thing that either happens or it doesn’t. Well, obviously, they were fairly successful at that. Q: On the TV show, the four of you had a real Marx Brothers thing going.

One circus to another

“When they said, ‘You’re the drummer,’ I said, OK. Fine. I’ll start learning the drums, like I learned how to ride an elephant on that other show.”

Micky Dolenz performing in 2001 during a Monkees reunion tour. Opposite: Curly-topped Dolenz in the Monkees’ ’60s heyday. 2001 photo by Kathy Voglesong; publicity photo by Henry Diltz

DOLENZ: We watched Marx Brothers movies as part of the preparation, the development of the show. We also watched Beatles movies, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello. The only thing we didn’t really watch was Three Stooges. Because that was one place we didn’t want to go, was the physical punching and hitting and abuse — which is very funny if you’re a Three Stooges fan, but on “The Monkees,” we never did that to each other. Q: Your singing voice was radio-friendly, and carried so many Monkees hits. Was that an unexpected bonus for the producers? DOLENZ: I’m sure it had something to do with the reason I was cast. I don’t remember thinking about it too much. I approached the show like I did the other series I had when I was a kid, “Circus Boy” — as kind of an “actor-slash-entertainer” on another series. And so when they said, “You’re the drummer,” I said, OK. Fine. I’ll start learning the drums, like I learned how to ride an elephant on that other show. Q: How was it decided which Monkee sang which songs? DOLENZ: Often, any one of us, or two or three, would do vocals for one of the songs. I don’t remember anything specifically, but I wouldn’t be surprised if David tried a vocal on “I’m a Believer” or Mike did or Pete or something. I remember doing a vocal on “I Wanna Be Free,” the song that David eventually sang. So I think that it probably happened frequently that especially David and I would do vocals on a tune, and somebody up there would decide which vocal they were going to use. It wasn’t up to us. We had very, very little control over the music at that time.

Q: So you just lucked out, singing lead on that string of hits? DOLENZ: I think maybe I ended up singing most of the rockers. It was more by default than anything else. David has a very distinct, kind of “Broadway musical” sound. Peter sings kind of folk. And Mike has, definitely, a country-western twang. Which is wonderful these days, but back then, in 1966 or ’67, there was not much crossover. So I guess maybe I was the only one that could go “Whaaaaaa!” and kind of scream like Little Richard or something. That’s probably how I ended up singing a lot of those tunes. Q: Between 1966 and ’68, while “The Monkees” was on, America saw escalating drug use, protests. How do you recall those times? DOLENZ: I think it happened over a much longer period than that. I mean, that stuff, those few years, were like the culmination. But I think America started that change way back in the late ’50s, with what used to be called the beatniks and the Bohemians. That was the start of the counterculture, if you want to call it that. So it started long before the “Summer of Love” (in 1967). I watched the whole thing happen and, of course, I was a part of it to a great degree. As far as the Monkees — you know, “The Monkees” was just a television show. And it was just a television show about a band, an imaginary band, one that didn’t really exist. On the television show, we never actually make it as a band. We are never that successful on the television show. We’re always the underdogs, which is another one of the elements that I think helped the drama of the show, so to speak.

Peter Tork IN 1966, A TIME OF WANING innocence, the popularization of “stoner” characters was still about 12 or 18 months off. But on TV’s “The Monkees,” which premiered that year, Peter Tork came close. There were no overt drug references, but a stoner sensibility was undeniable. Tork’s TV persona was that of a blissful, unassuming soul in a wispy bowl-cut and love beads. Tork was the peacemaker in the band, and the least likely to sing lead (though “Your Auntie Grizelda” holds a special place in the hearts of the Monkees faithful). I spoke with the Washington, D.C., native (born 1942) in 1999. Q: How did you learn about “The Monkees”? TORK: Steve Stills and I were kids in Greenwich Village who looked alike. I think Steve met (“Monkees” co-creator) Bob Rafelson. After a bit of chat, Bob Rafelson said to him, “You’d be great, except that your hair and teeth are wrong. Do you know anybody who looks like you, who has some talent, and whose hair and teeth are right?” And Steve called me up and said, “Go try out for the ‘Monkee’ thing.” Q: What was your audition like? TORK: I walked into the cattle call. I thought I had a special “in,” but no, I walked into the cattle call. But I remember I met (“Monkees” co-creator) Bert Schneider first. He had his feet up on his desk, so I put mine up on his desk. He offered me a cigarette. I said, “I don’t smoke . . . those.” And he thought that I was casual enough and non-frantic enough. Q: What did they ask you to do on film? TORK: They gave me what they call a “personality test.” They put me in front of a camera and asked me questions. I went into my “dummy” mode, which is a character I created in my Greenwich Village days. After the personality tests, the top eight did screen tests in pairs. I did mine perfectly in the first take. Then they had us reverse roles and do it

From top: A ’toon Tork in Dell Comics’ “The Monkees” #16 (1968); Tork trading cards. “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc.

The stoner prototype again with a partner. After all of that, they selected the four guys they wanted. All in all, I think it was the best combination. I cannot imagine they’d get a better assortment. I don’t think anybody else could have done what the four of us did. Q: You worked with many veteran actors on the show: Hans Conried, Burgess Meredith, Vito Scotti. Had you known their histories? TORK: Oh, I knew. The most historic, as far as I’m concerned, was Lon Chaney Jr. He has a historic place in the history of entertainment. To have him on the show was really something very big. Rose Marie, Stubby Kaye — these people were wonderful to have on. I got to meet Annette Funicello, who I had a total crush on when I was a kid and she was in the Mousketeers. Who else? Frank Zappa, not as a television person, but he did a couple of things with us. He was fun to work with. Hans Conried — he hated us. Q: Why on Earth would Hans Conried hate you?

TORK: Well, we were brash kids. We didn’t know anything about stage decorum. We were just goofing around all the time. No respect for the process, he must have thought. We got under his skin in a terrible way. Q: Was it weird to see your likeness on comic books, lunchboxes, trading cards? TORK: I don’t know. You go, “Oh, that’s great. A comic book. I always wanted a comic book.” I remember reading Roy Rogers comic books when I was a kid. That was such a big deal. Comic books with real people in their fake modes — Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comic books. It was a lot of fun. Q: I don’t want you to incriminate yourself, Peter, but did you guys ever imbibe in illicit substances while filming? TORK: Well, we smoked a little dope. But by that time, everybody pretty much realized you can’t smoke too much dope and do your work. There’s really a limit.

Same thing goes for alcohol. For instance, if I had two beers at lunch, I was doomed for the rest of the day; I could just barely drag myself through the day. If I kept it to one, I could work that day. So I had to make sure I didn’t drink two. It took me a couple of times to realize what was happening. If you can’t remember your lines, and you’ve been smoking a lot of dope, and somebody points it out to you — “Listen, you smoked quite a bit before you came on the set, and you can’t remember your lines. Do you think maybe there’s a connection?” So you back off on a lot of that, because you want to do your work as well as you can. Q: Was it an adjustment going from obscurity to being mobbed by screaming teenage girls, almost overnight? TORK: That was a little difficult. I didn’t get it then, what it was about and why things went the way they did. I get it now. It took a long time to put it into some kind of order that I could deal with. Q: What do you “get” about it now? TORK: I basically figure now that American kids — well, EuroAmerican kids — of all stripes were severely repressed. I mean, all cultures repress their people to some extent, and I think ours does just as good a job as any. Particularly in the ’60s, they were so severely repressed because they were the children of people who grew up in the ’40s; it was World War II, post-war peace and prosperity. These are the people who raised these kids, and they expected: “We did right in the world, so we can tell you what to do.” Q: What effect did the Monkees have on this? TORK: Nobody was paying any attention to the kids. Enter the Monkees, who brought Marx Brothers-style comedy to the small screen and hit songs “I’m a Believer,” “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone,” “Daydream Believer” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” to the airwaves. Along come these freedom-looking kids (the Monkees) on this TV thing, whose idea was to project freedom and fascination and danger and adventure and fun and music. It was enough to make you just lose your little heart. Q: So the Monkees had sociopolitical significance. TORK: (The Monkees were) an expression of the ’60s, particularly as seen on the television show. Four young adults without any authoritarian father figure over them, I think, was the message — that young people could get together and by hanging together, young people could get along. I don’t think anything like that has happened since. So these kids who were screaming at us — basically, it was out of their repression towards their dream of freedom, which we stood for. They didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know this at the time. Nobody knew this. It was beyond any information. But this is what happened, I think. All I knew was that they were screaming and wouldn’t shut up and I was playing music, and I thought I was a hot musician.

Tork beaming in 2003 (right) and rocking the love beads in the ’60s. 2003 photo by Kathy Voglesong; publicity photo by Henry Diltz

Michael Nesmith HE WAS THE ONE IN THE WOOL CAP. The one who was a little bit country. And, for better or worse, the one who pushed hardest for the Monkees’ artistic emancipation. Michael Nesmith’s career is marked by firsts. Nesmith was a pioneer in the blending of rock and country. He is called the father of the music video. And, hey, hey, he was a Monkee — a member of the first rock band with its own prime-time television series. Post-Monkees, Nesmith was the least inclined to participate in Monkees reunions, though it happened on occasion. I interviewed the Houston native (born 1942) via email in 2013. Q: What did you do for fun while growing up in Texas? Did you play sports? Was your childhood about music? NESMITH: I was wrapped up in music from the moment I discovered it. I went to live music (shows) regularly. When I was 15, I got a job in a record store where touring acts would stop by and promote their records — sign autographs and such. The acts that came through were Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee (Lewis) and Little Richard and Fats (Domino) and those early guys — all were kids — and I knew that was where I wanted to be. Bo Diddley was who I listened to most and saw live a few times. Theater came next and then movies. All pretty much along the same path.

March to a different drum

Q: Some of the songs that you wrote prior to “The Monkees” are in our collective consciousness, such as “Different Drum” and “Mary, Mary.” Did those early successes bolster you? NESMITH: I don’t know. Probably, but success is such a strange metric. It is so different for everyone. I was never more happy than to hear my songs sung by another. But public acceptance was not so high on the scale of satisfaction for me. I learned it was futile to write in order to please others. Q: When you filmed “The Monkees,” old Hollywood was still in the ether. You were on the Columbia lot. It was your idea to use the John Wayne “dust button” look on the Monkees’ jackets. Were you a movie buff? NESMITH: No, I was a Beatles fan, and that meant “A Hard Day’s Night,” and I was right on the same page as the producers who wanted to bring that format to TV. I learned a lot from the environment, but the new technology and the new music were what filled my thoughts. Q: Frank Zappa appeared on the show at your invitation (Season 2, Episode 25, aired March 11, 1968). How did you broach the idea of him appearing, and the idea of you two switching identities? The footage is hilarious and even subversive in its way.

Q: What was your first musical instrument? NESMITH: It was a saxophone and it was the school band and it was a bad experience. Second was piano, another bad experience, and I almost gave up. Then I got a guitar. That did it for me. Q: Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? NESMITH: It may have been a folksy protest song of sorts about equality and racism, but I can’t remember it exactly. It was during the Civil Rights movement, so it was natural to write about that and think about that.

NESMITH: I met Frank socially, and we spent some time together. When we had the opportunity to invite someone (as a guest star on the show), he was a natural. I liked his work. He said he would do the show, but only if he could be me. And I responded, “You can be me if I can be you.” And so it was.

48 Publicity photo by Henry Diltz

The “fake”: The Monkees ape it for TV, left (1966). The “real”: A live-ish sequence staged for the movie “Head” (1968). “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc.; “Head” © Rhino Entertainment Co.

David Cassidy can deny being Keith Partridge. But Davy, Micky, Peter and Michael could never deny having been the Monkees.

Both “The Monkees” and “The Partridge Family” were series about fake bands played by actors. Both had real hits. But in the 1966-68 sitcom “The Monkees,” Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith went by their real names. And they really sang on the records. And they really toured as the band. So the question of whether or not the Monkees were a real band becomes a complicated one. I’ll cut to the chase and give my viewpoint up front: The Monkees were a fictional band that became a real band. (This couldn’t have happened with the Partridge Family, any more than it could have with the Archies or the Banana Splits.) Complicating the issue: Nesmith, who was pushing for musical autonomy, made a statement to the press about something many people already assumed (and many others hadn’t even thought about) — that the Monkees didn’t play key instrumentation on their early recordings. “I think it was a terrible mistake,” Tork told me in 1999. “Michael announced to the press: ‘Tell the world we’re fake, because by God, we are.’ I think that’s a direct quote. “In fact, the truth of the matter was available to anyone who paid attention. The point was not the fact of it, but the announcement of it. It wasn’t brave of us, it was stupid. Because if we hadn’t said that, nobody would have cared. We would have gone on making the records that we wanted to make.” “We never claimed that we were playing,” Dolenz told me in 2001. “We were using (the session band) the Wrecking Crew, like the Byrds were using the Wrecking Crew. The Beach Boys didn’t play on any of their original tunes. The Mamas and Papas, of course, didn’t play on anything. “To be honest, I wasn’t really that familiar with the music industry at the time at all. I was an actor. Who knows why and how and what the producers had in mind? I certainly don’t. If they had intended to mislead anybody, then that’s their problem. We

certainly didn’t. We were just hired hands. We were just guys who were hired to play the part of rock musicians on a TV show.” “We were the front men for a larger operation,” said Tork. “If you’re gonna create a thing called ‘The Monkees,’ you need actors who might be able to play (instruments). Because if you get musicians who might be able to act, you won’t have a TV show. And the TV show is the wellspring. It all comes from the TV show. So you needed actors. The fact that we were able to do anything like play together is miraculous. And totally unexpected.” Not helping matters was chatter that the Monkees drew criticism from within the rock music community. Such criticism, according to Jones, was scant and has been blown out of proportion over the years. “That’s just a case of: ‘Don’t let the truth spoil the news,’ ” Jones told me in 1998. “Peter Tork always says the actors in New York were saying, ‘Oh, boy, those guys are crap actors, but that music’s great.’ And the musicians in L.A. were saying, ‘Man, that music sucks, but they’re funny, they’re good.’ “Barry Gibb said once, ‘Hey, the Monkees don’t do this and they don’t do that.’ Maybe the Troggs said, ‘They’re a crap group.’ But Stephen Stills and Buffalo Springfield and the Mamas and the Papas and the Association — anybody else who was happening in the ’60s — they’re all pretty much based in L.A., and we were all friends. We went to the same parties and dated the same girls or whatever.” “Basically, all our friends treated us like friends,” said Tork. “The people who gave us a hard time — we only heard about the hard time we got through the newspapers. I think it served some people’s purposes to ferment that. “You know, I was good friends with Cass Elliot. She never gave me any s*** about it. Jimi Hendrix never said s*** to me about it. (John) Lennon and (Paul) McCartney and (George) Harrison and Ringo Starr never said anything to me about it. None of those guys. I met them all. I’ve hung with some of them.”

But were they a real band?

Clockwise from top left: Transogram game (1967); Bland Charnas mask (1967); Mattel guitar (1966); Corgi car (1967); Mattel talking puppets (1967); Fairchild puzzle (1967); KST lunchbox (1967). Opposite: Remco Davy Jones puppet (1970). “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc.; Jones puppet photo by Mark Voger

Clockwise from top left: Popular Library paperback (1967); charm bracelet (1967); Whitman hardback (1968); Donruss Co. trading cards (1967); Monkees buttons (1967). Opposite: Monkee-centric 16 Magazine cover (1967). “The Monkees” © Raybert Prod. Inc. ™ Screen Gems, Inc.; 16 Magazine © 16 Magazine, Inc.

They began as short-haired folk nerds. They evolved into ballsy political satirists who fought the law — but the law won. During the turbulent late 1960s, the folk-singing Smothers Brothers — straight man Dick, goofball Tommy — turned their prime-time variety show, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” into a hip, sometimes explosive forum, infusing skits with political commentary and providing a stage for the era’s rock greats. “It was one of the most volatile times in our country, and we were at the scene of the crime. We happened to have a television show,” said Tommy Smothers. “When ‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour’ was on the air, it was an incredibly political time,” the New York City native (born 1937) told me in 2004. “There was a lot of turmoil. Bobby Kennedy was shot. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The Vietnam War. Kent State. The Democratic convention. Voter registration. A whole lot of things, particularly the war. Nixon was president, and the war was screaming along. So we had a reputation because of that show and being fired by CBS.” How did it happen? To begin with, the Smothers never intended to become a political act when they formed the duo. “We just grew up musical,” Dick Smothers (born 1939), also a New York City native, told me in 2004. “Public schools were musical with choirs and bands and things like that. Tommy always had this desire to have his own little instrumental combo or band. We put together little singing groups. We happened to be in the right place in the country, near San Francisco. It had a lot of nightclubs. The Kingston Trio was the hottest thing going in the late ’50s. We happened to be there with the right amount of talent and comedic talent, which Tommy was just born with.” It was Tommy’s clowning that distinguished the Smothers from straightforward folk acts, according to his brother. “We started making fun of folk songs and stuff,” Dick said, “and boom, we got one job after another. It was just timing. We just grew with it and stayed focused on our integrity and what we believed in.” Live performances led to TV appearances and a breakthrough on “The Tonight Show” (then hosted by Jack Paar). The boys next starred in a sitcom, a one-season wonder that didn’t set the world on fire. (Dick played an executive, Tommy was an angel.) A subsequent TV offer was not promising: a comedy variety show in the least-coveted time slot in prime time: Sunday nights opposite “Bonanza,” a show-demolishing ratings juggernaut. But the Smothers took the slot and ran with it. You could have built a Monterey Pop or a Woodstock around the musical guests booked for the show, which included The Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, the Byrds, the Beatles (via film), Buffalo Springfield, Steppenwolf, Donovan, Cass Elliot and the Turtles. “ ‘The Smothers Brothers’ was probably the hippest of all of them,” said Turtles singer Mark Volman. “Because on a week-to-week basis, they were featuring the younger bands and they were nurturing that audience, which was the liberal, pot-smoking teenagers of the time.

“The Smothers Brothers were playing to that, so they brought the rock bands in a lot more readily than, let’s say, ‘Hollywood Palace’ or ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ and those type of shows.” By degrees, the Smothers exercised the folk traditions of social commentary, made palatable with comedy, and reflected chaotic current events in their monologues, songs and skits. One reason they got away with it — at first — might have been their appearance. The clean-cut Smothers hardly looked like radicals. “That just happened to be incidental,” Tommy Smothers said. “The exterior of what the Smothers Brothers looked like had nothing to do with how they felt in their hearts or in their heads. And you always have to be careful of those kind of judgments. “It did work to our advantage in presenting our view. We didn’t have long hair. We didn’t look threatening. We weren’t hippies. During that time, you’ve gotta remember, you were either a longhair or a short-hair. You were a hawk or a dove — the extremes of everything.

“And the point was, there were a lot of people who looked like us, but we just didn’t hear their voices.” As Tommy and Dick grew bolder, network censorship occurred almost weekly. Things came to a head with the Season 3 premiere on Sept. 29, 1968 — the first show following the June 6 assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. “I knew Bobby Kennedy on a personal level, and so did some of our cast,” Tommy Smothers said. “The third year, when we came back, there was a stronger commitment to the show and to the satire. (Comedian) Pat Paulsen was running for president, which was great satire. We were entertainers first, but we certainly wanted to influence what people thought. Our opening show was that killer one with (Harry) Belafonte.” Tommy Smothers referred to an infamous moment in TV history. CBS axed a number by Belafonte — an upbeat calypso song ironically intercut with news footage of protestors clashing with police during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “The Belafonte thing was a big production,” Tommy recalled.

On “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in 1968. © CBS “CBS took the whole piece off. It was eight minutes, an eightminute hunk. As I recall, they put in a Richard Nixon political advertisement,” he added with a laugh. “We did a takeoff on a show we were opposite, ‘Bonanza,’ which was a beloved icon of a show. In fact, we had (former Los Angeles Ram) Rosey Grier on the show too, who was with Bobby, remember, at the time of the assassination. “That last season had a definite stronger, more powerful point of view. The whole season did. There was a huge disappointment in the way things were going in the country. There were a lot of sad things and emotional things, particularly the bombing of Cambodia. Things that went on during that war were just horrible. And this country still owes an apology. Never will give it.” CBS finally dumped the controversial show the following April, a few months after Richard Nixon’s inauguration. “We would have still been on the air, I guess, if Nixon had not been elected,” Tommy maintained. “Nixon was inaugurated, and we were fired. It was a direct consequence of the political climate, that this administration was not gonna put up with listening to the Smothers Brothers on Sunday nights criticizing how they conduct the war. That was the nuts of it.” Should the Smothers Brothers have played ball with the network — toned down their act, and stayed on the air? “We had no choice,” is how Tommy put it. “I look back and say, ‘Would I change it? Would I have done something different?’ Not if there’s a youthful, passionate belief in it. “At the time, when you’re younger, like we were — everybody was in their twenties — there was a complete and committed idea that the war was not a good one. It was tearing the country apart.” The Smothers maintained that anyone offended by their show needn’t have watched it. Said Tommy: “It’s up to the audience to listen and eliminate. We always said that: ‘Turn your dial.’ ”

Tommy and Dick Smothers in character in 2001. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

It’s to ‘Laugh’ Psychedelia. Bawdy humor. Goldie Hawn in body paint. These are some reasons America turned on to “Laugh-In.” It also didn’t hurt that the irreverent, innovative 1968-73 comedy hour “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” — hosted by tuxedo-clad Dan Rowan (chain-smoking straight man) and Dick Martin (girl-watching funny man) — had a sparkling cast that included Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Judy Carne, Chelsea Brown, Henry Gibson, Alan Sues, Teresa Graves, Jo Anne Worley, Gary Owens and Dave Madden, all fresh-faced kids doing madcap stuff. With its quick-cut editing, psychedelic set design and often risqué comedy, “Laugh-In” picked up the torch from Ernie Kovacs and paved the way for “Saturday Night Live.” The casting of “Laugh-In” was prescient. (Hey, Hawn won an Oscar, and Tomlin was nominated for one.) I asked producer George Schlatter the secret of his “Laugh-In” hiring strategy when we spoke in 2011. “A lot of luck,” Schlatter said with a laugh, “and an absence of network interference. None of them auditioned for the network. They just came in, I saw them and I hired them. “In each life, only one Lily Tomlin comes along, only one Goldie Hawn. Can you imagine that collection of talent? Arte Johnson — just think of that plethora of characters he created. “These were not sitcom people, they weren’t stand-up comedians; they were sketch performers. They walked in and we started. We would tape for hours. We’d tape what was written, but then we kept the mistakes. That, of course, developed a whole new technique of editing.” “Laugh-In” offered familiarity in its structure and recurring characters, but an element of the unpredictable in its riffing. Rowan and Martin opened with a monologue in the best straight man/funny man tradition. (Martin deftly played both innocence and carnality.) The “cocktail party” skit had

Opposite: The back cover of Signet’s paperback “Rowan & Martin’s LaughIn” (1969). Right: Goldie Hawn in the same edition. “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; book © 1969 Signet

groovy dancing to groovy music, punctuated with (often silly) jokes. But the characters made the show: Johnson’s Nazi soldier, lecherous old man and “funny foreigner”; Buzzi’s homely spinster Gladys; Tomlin’s bratty tyke Edith and squinting telephone operator Ernestine; Sues’ alcoholic kiddie show host and flamboyant sportscaster. The fun was infectious, and before long, guest stars of every caliber gamely joined in, from Bing Crosby to William F. Buckley, Raquel Welch, Sonny and Cher, Diana Ross, Sammy Davis Jr., Hugh Hefner, Otto Preminger, Liberace and Richard M. Nixon. Tiny Tim gained overnight stardom with his appearance on the premiere episode. How did “Laugh-In” attract such guests? “Nobody knew what the show was,” Schlatter said, “but once it happened, everybody wanted to do it. “In the beginning, we taped across the hall from the Johnny Carson show (‘Tonight’). People were wondering what all the ruckus was, what we were up to. They would come over and watch the mayhem. So we’d go across the hall and just grab people. We go, ‘Just stand here and say, (the catch phrases) “Sock it to me” or “Look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.” ’ It took no time. You’d just come in and read the jokes off the cards. The fact that it made no sense appealed to people.” Schlatter attributed much of “Laugh-In’s” freewheeling vibe to the era in which it was created: the swinging ’60s. “It was a wonderful time,” Schlatter said. “Today, to hire a cast like that, you’d have to look at 25 people for every role. I saw Goldie and I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you, but you’re hired.’ Those people were hired on the first day they came in. That kind of freedom doesn’t exist anymore. “Today, it’s all so controlled. It’s like the saying about an elephant being put together by a committee. Our success gave us total freedom. That’s how we were able to get the results we got.”

Funny frump Gladys Ormphby swung a mean pocketbook on “Laugh-In.”

And cast member Ruth Buzzi scored yuks as the dowdy spinster, among other characters. The Rhode Island native (born 1936) believed “Laugh-In” was still relevant when we spoke in 2002, but not in a good way. “There was a war then, there’s a war now. There were drugs then, there are drugs now,” she lamented. “It’s like nothing’s really been fixed.” Q: You created Gladys Ormphby prior to “Laugh-In.” How did you bring her into the show?

BUZZI: One time while I was in New York City, I stood in a wastepaper basket that said “Keep New York City clean.” I got dressed like Gladys, stood inside the wastepaper basket, and a friend of mine took a picture. I added that little snapshot to my very full book that I would bring to auditions. So that snapshot was in my book when I auditioned for George Schlatter for “Laugh-In” years later. When he saw that picture — after I had already auditioned and sung songs and everything — he said, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! What’s that? What’s that? That’s very funny!” He thought it was hysterical that I would think to throw myself away. So he said, “What does she sound like? What does she walk like? What does she move like?” So I showed him. He said, “Oh, that’s great!” He said, “We’re going to do a cocktail party (a recurring sketch) on ‘Laugh-In,’ and I can picture her. She could be very funny in the cocktail party!” And after that, I knew I had “Laugh-In.” Q: “Laugh-In,” had a casual vibe. You all looked like you were making it up as you went along. BUZZI: At the end of almost all the sketches, George Schlatter would say things like, “Remember, gang, at the end of this sketch, just continue. If somebody thinks of a funnier line than what the writers have written, we’ll leave that on.” So many times, it gave the show a look of, “Oh, yeah, we’re making it up.”

Q: The recurring “cocktail party” sketch always looked like it was shot in one long take, with those scripted zoom-ins. Was it an arduous shoot?

BUZZI: The cocktail party, actually, took the longest. It always took all Wednesday morning to tape. But we enjoyed it, because there were always so many people on the set, and they were all so much fun. Especially if people were in a good mood and the atmosphere was right. And that has to come down from the directors and the producers. They’d yell to us in the middle of doing it, so that you knew that they wanted it to be a fun party. So it would be fun just standing and kibitzing. Q: Was shooting the “joke wall” — with those doors opening and closing — a timing nightmare? BUZZI: Believe it or not, that was a harder set. It was two stories, and all they had was a ladder behind it leading up to a plank we stood on. So our feet, the front of our toes, would stick out, and you’d sometimes knock people’s heads with your feet as they were coming back from shutting a door. It was very dark back there. If you were on a plank, you had to lean over a railing and reach to get your head out the door, so the light hit you correctly. Q: There were so many great “LaughIn” guest stars. Who sticks out in your memory?

BUZZI: Kate Smith — I liked her. I felt sorry for her. She did some number on the boys. They all just walked out of that rehearsal — they just ended up disliking her. They said she was mean. I don’t know what she did. What was really funny about Kate Smith was that on the day, on the big day, when we did all the musicals and everything, she was in her dressing room, but left her door wide open, propped up with a folding chair. She brought in a real old Victrola with a horn on it and did nothing but play her records on that thing when she was in that room. All day long, you heard Kate Smith songs coming out of there. And the guys that already didn’t like her, they were just: “Oh, why doesn’t she shut up already? What is she doing?” So I felt sorry for her. And she was scared when it was time to do the joke wall, because it was dark back there. I went up to her and said, “Kate, here, let me take your hand. I’ll take you. Don’t be afraid.” She was an older woman. She could have tripped back there or something. I volunteered myself to help her. Terry-Thomas did our show stinking drunk. Held the whole thing up. Everybody was ticked, because we couldn’t get it done. We had a long day, and he was stinking drunk. Q: A lot of the material on “Laugh-In” was risqué for the time. Did you always go head-to-head with censors? BUZZI: Oh, yeah. The censors were wonderful, the guys that used to sit with us. (In sinister tone) They’d be right there every time we were filming. But a lot of times, they wouldn’t be there right away when we’d have our Thursday readings around the table. And George would come in — because he’d just had a meeting with them where they’d go through the script and ask certain things — and he’d be laughing and laughing at what he passed over them, what they didn’t get. I mean, we had a lot of double entendre, so you could take it as either being dirty or straight. But because it was “Laugh-In,” everybody knew we were really trying to get it through the risqué way. It was all fun. I mean, when you think about what we see now — heaven’s to Betsy! You go, “Oh my goodness, look what is done now, what is accepted.” Hey, that was nothing, what we did. That was nothing.

Driving Miss Ormphby

The roots of Ruth Buzzi’s most famous character go back to her early career, when she was styling herself as Agnes Gooch, the spinster character in “Auntie Mame,” in the hopes of landing auditions. “I went all around Pasadena — Salvation Armies and different second-hand clothing stores — and I put together that outfit that you later saw on ‘Laugh-In,’ figuring that’s how she should look,” Buzzi said. “I knew that I had to look really, really as homely as I possibly could. The worst thing I could do to my hair, I found out through the years, was to part it in the middle and hold it back real tight. A woman with a long face shouldn’t do that. So I parted it, pulled it back and I said, ‘Gee, it’s not flat enough.’ I put on this hairnet and pulled it back. I had to bend my head down to pull it real tight. When I looked in the mirror, the knot, rather than being on the side, was right in the center of my forehead in between my two eyebrows. It looked funny. I thought, ‘Gee, that looks interesting. I think I’ll just leave it like that.’ And then I thought, ‘That character — she should not have good posture.’ ” Buzzi eventually landed the role of Agnes in a stage production. Following that run, Buzzi decided to the retain the look and modify the characterization. Said the actress: “I thought, ‘I’ve got to keep this costume and this character, but I’ll change her name.’ So I thought, ‘She should have a name that sounds like she’s constipated.’ That’s where I came up with Gladys Ormphby. Doesn’t Ormphby sound constipated to you?”

Ruth Buzzi as Gladys. “Laugh-In” © George SchlatterEd Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; photo courtesy of Ruth Buzzi

Out of character She was a doyenne of comedy, an Oscar-nominated actress. But there was a time before all of that high-class stuff. Lily Tomlin was in the cast of two groovy TV shows: “Music Scene,” which featured artists from Sly and the Family Stone to the Archies, and “Laugh-In,” in which Tomlin established her penchant for comedic characters, especially snorting telephone operator Ernestine. I spoke with the Detroit native (born 1939) in 2004 and 2011. Q: I’ve always thought of you as not only creating but embodying characters. Are they people you know? Are they you? TOMLIN: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think they’re some part of me, and at times, they’re people I know. Sometimes, they’re just people that kind of get invented. You might see a single gesture. Q: “Music Scene” was one of your first TV gigs. The bands were amazing. It was packaged with a dramatic TV series in an early bid for the youth market. What do you remember about the experience?

TOMLIN: Oh, “The New People” (laughs)! Was that it? Q: It was a drama about kids who were stranded on an uninhabited island. They were all 20 and under. TOMLIN: That’s right. I knew it was something like that. I kept thinking they went into outer space. Anyway, parents around the country were just up in arms about the show. They thought it was all long-haired dopers in prime time. It was just too early for it. But it was totally exciting. And I chose to go on that show over “Laugh-In” at that time, because I thought “LaughIn” was square. And I thought “Music Scene” was gonna be, like, too hip to live, you know?

Lily Tomlin in “Music Scene” opening credits.

TOMLIN: That was in the fall of ’69. © ABC Television I was scared to death, because first of all, I didn’t want to be on television. I wanted to be a New York actor. They persuaded me to come out (to Los Angeles) and do “Music Scene.” I knew they were going to have people like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. So I said, “Oh, yeah. Hey, I’ll go.” It was like a contemporary “Hit Parade.” It had a tie-in to Billboard. And, yes, we had concerts with Janis, Jimi Hendrix, anybody you could think of. Q: You were in a troupe of, like, shiny, groovy kids.

TOMLIN: (Comedian) David Steinberg was sort of the head “kid” on the show, and then there were four or five others of us. And, yes, it was probably totally goofy. As a comedy troupe, we had to do — instead of, like, Dorothy Collins and Schmecky Lansing and Giselle McKenzie (laughs), who you probably don’t even remember, who were on the original “Hit Parade” — we would have to sing the top three songs every week. But they were the same songs week after week! I remember the song that was #1 for ages was “Sugar, Sugar” (laughs). We had to find some way to try to do that. You’re right; it was the first youth-oriented programming. It was two 45-minute shows back-to-back in a 90-minute slot. I can’t remember the other show.

Q: It was called “The New People.”

Q: But you joined “Laugh-In,” which we look back on as a kind of laboratory for bubbling young comedic talent. So many careers were launched by that show.

TOMLIN: Mine certainly was, yes. I didn’t want to go on “Laugh-In,” but when “Music Scene” got cancelled — which happened very quickly — I went over, mid-season, to “Laugh-In.” Because I met George (Schlatter) and I just fell in love with him. He remains a great friend to this day. He was sort of my touchstone there. Q: When you started bringing your own characters in, was there competition like we hear about on “Saturday Night Live,” where cast members vie, sometimes bitterly, to introduce characters? Or was it a more nurturing environment? TOMLIN: I’m one of those people — I never get that something’s going on. On “Laugh-In,” maybe there was competition. I don’t know. I would just come in and pitch George. Q: How did he respond to your Ernestine character? TOMLIN: The first season, he knew I did a telephone operator, because he heard about it. I was doing it in little clubs. Because Judy Carne was leaving, and she used to do the switchboard thing with “beautiful downtown Burbank,” I guess George’s ears perked up at the idea that I was doing a telephone operator. So that went automatically into the first season. That’s why I was, literally overnight, a success.

Dialing up Ernestine

At first, Lily Tomlin was just trying to do a riff on the phone company. “This was the mid ’60s back in New York, and everybody hated the phone company to such a degree,” Tomlin said. “It was still a monopoly, and you couldn’t get service, you couldn’t get a phone repaired. “So I started out just doing a kind of Bronx operator. But as I threatened people (over the phone) and stuff, it just took over my body. It was some kind of repressed sexual thing. Her body got tighter and tighter, and squeezed up more, and her face got squeezed up. And then her faced was so squeezed, it made her snort.”

“It was some kind of repressed sexual thing,” said Lily Tomlin of Ernestine, her snorting telephone operator. Photo courtesy of Tomlin and Wagner Theatricals

Ernestine was, I must say. I can’t say I was. Then I went on the road with Dan (Rowan) and Dick (Martin). They took three acts with them, and we each did 20 minutes. So I spent the whole summer working on (the characters) Edith and Susie Sorority, and I used to do a ’50s teenager. Q: Edith, the little girl who spun tall tales, was your other flagship character. Was she an easy sell? TOMLIN: No. When I went back to George and pitched Edith, they didn’t like Edith. They thought she was too bratty. They didn’t like my ’50s teenager. They just didn’t relate to it. “Grease” wasn’t out yet. “American Graffiti” hadn’t come out. “Happy Days” certainly wasn’t there until much later. So they probably related to the ’40s more, you know what I mean? They were just that much behind in generations. They wanted Susie Sorority because she had a catch phrase: “I’m Susie Sorority from the silent majority.” Then she’d go, (quietly) “Rah.” That’s all I really had. I didn’t have anything substantial. But they wanted her because of the silent majority (a political designation at the time). So I said, “OK, I’ll do Susie if I can do Edith.” I traded Edith for Susie. Q: And they built that giant rocking chair for Edith. TOMLIN: Well, I didn’t get the rocking chair until the fourth or fifth show. I had to do her out of a cardboard box. I needed something to work with, so I got a big box, like a kid would make a fort out of a refrigerator box. I cut a flap in it and I would come out and do something. And she caught on. And then they built me the rocking chair. And I still have it.

Aladdin’s “Laugh-In” lunchbox (1968) features artwork by Elmer Lehnhardt. “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; lunchbox © Aladdin Industries Inc.

Cover girl Judy Carne mugs on “Laugh-In” magazine’s sixth issue (1969). Left: The Topps Co.’s “Laugh-In” trading cards (1968). “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; magazine © Laufer Publishing Co.

Jo Anne Worley’s book is a henhouse of labored, godawful chicken jokes. Pigmeat Markham’s book is a frank and funny “chitlin circuit” memoir. © 1969 Signet except “Here Come the Judge!” © 1969 Popular Library; “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc. 63

Campy troubadour “By and by they had a song, about a lost child traveling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.” — Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” (1843) WITH HIS DEATH-WHITE PALLOR, STRINGY hair, protruding beak, effeminate manner and nails-onblackboard falsetto, Tiny Tim was a lightning rod. Most people laughed at him. Some called him a “fruitcake.” Perhaps a few fringe hippies, or aficionados of 1920s songs, took him seriously. But the overwhelming consensus was: He’s a freak. “Is Tiny Tim for real?” was a question on everyone’s lips after the singer (some would argue against that descriptor) debuted on TV’s “Laugh-In” on Jan. 22, 1968. “It was tough to get letters, after the ‘Laugh-In’ show, 98 percent ‘pan’ mail,” Tiny told an interviewer. “They said, ‘Where’d you get him from?’ ‘What’s happening to the world?’ “Even though it was rough, that’s the same thing that happened when I had this long hair in ’54 around the neighborhood in New York City, in Washington Heights. Only this time, it was on a larger scale. It was around the world.” Tiny Tim (1932-1996) was born Herbert Buckingham Khaury in New York City to a Jewish mom and a Catholic dad. “I remember, when I was 3 years old, having an old gramophone Victrola,” he once said. “I was always attracted to, not only those types of records, but a medium in which a voice can come out of a box like that.” A man named Bill Chambers was in Tiny’s junior high class. “The way people saw him on TV, that’s the way he was back then. That was no act,” Chambers told me in 1997. “He was very good-hearted, very bright. I used to go to his house and listen to his records. He had a crewcut in those days. He was a big guy — the tallest kid in the class. He used to sit way in the back. He was very shy. He was so unathletic, it was incredible. But he loved sports, especially hockey. “One kid at school used to bully him a lot. But he would never fight, no matter what. I took care of this bully one time. Herbert never forgot that.”

Tiny from the cover of “God Bless Tiny Tim.” Opposite: A one-shot magazine (both 1968). “God Bless Tiny Tim” © Reprise; The True Fantastic Story of Tiny Tim © Corncob, Ltd.

The scratchy songs coming through that gramophone had an effect on Tiny, who was determined to follow in the footsteps of his musical heroes of yesteryear such as Rudy Vallee, Byron G. Harlan (“Thomas Edison’s favorite singer”), Irving Kaufman and Bing Crosby. But Herbert Khaury seemed like an unlikely entertainer. He was odd-looking, and his passion for the old songs outstripped his actual talent. Still, he had drive. He hustled. He went on many auditions, and adopted the ukulele out of necessity. “The reason for the ukulele is very important” he once said. “I used to go to a lot of singing auditions — plenty in the ’50s.” He explained that he would accompany himself on the uke so that if an audition went badly, he wouldn’t have to suffer the humiliation of asking a pianist to return his sheet music. BY THE MIDDLE ’50S, KHAURY was singing in Greenwich Village clubs billed as Larry Love, “the Singing Canary.” To stand out, he adopted the falsetto. “Like it or not,” he later said, “I really do thank Jesus Christ for his blessings. He gave me a style which I believe, I pray to him, was a little different. And in this business, originality is the key to success.” Not everyone embraced the falsetto, to put it mildly. “You’ll never get anywhere singing in that sissy voice,” his father once said. He turned pro in 1962, when he was paid $10 a night to perform at the Café Bizarre in the Village. The next year, his agent (who specialized in representing little people) suggested he change his name to Tiny Tim, after the Charles Dickens character. Later in the ’60s, Tiny garnered notice while performing at The Scene, a New York City discotheque; in the 1968 film “You Are What You Eat”; and on “The Merv Griffin Show.” It all led to “Laugh-In.” For his debut “Laugh-In” appearance, Tiny was introduced by co-host Dan Rowan as the “toast of

Tiny with Dick Martin on “Laugh-In,” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (both 1968) and marrying Miss Vicki on “Tonight” (1969). “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.; “The Ed Sullivan Show” © CBS; “The Tonight Show” © Johnny Carson Productions

Greenwich Village.” Rowan then left his partner Dick Martin with everyone as “Mr.” or “Miss” — seemed possessed of childlike Tiny as the singer ran through a medley of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” innocence, but he had bizarre sexual predilections, some related to and “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in a jaw-dropping performance. a hygiene obsession. (We know this, unfortunately, because Tiny “You searched high and low for that one, didn’t you?” Martin sometimes overshared in interviews.) People wondered if Tiny said to Rowan afterward. was gay, but he married three women. Yep, Tiny was a strange cat. “Kept him out of the service,” replied Rowan. “I’ll bet the Army burned his draft card.” HIS STAR FADED, BUT TINY KEPT PERFORMING, Next came the whirlwind of fame. By June, Tiny’s single hoping for that next hit. Actor/singer Michael Townsend Wright “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” from his album “God Bless Tiny got to know the crooner after he appeared on TV’s “The Uncle Tim” (another Dickensian reference), climbed to #17. The B-side, Floyd Show” in 1989, when the two dueted on “Bye Bye “Fill Your Heart,” was co-written by Blackbird.” Tiny was drawn to Wright Grammy-winner Paul Williams. In 2004, because he, too, doted on the old crooners. Williams told me it was among the first of Both were vociferous fans of Rudy Vallee. his songs to be released. Said Williams: “I Wright told me in 2016: “In the middle remember thinking, ‘Oh my God ... Tiny of the night, he would call me up and say, Tim. What kind of a songwriter am I?’ ” ‘Mr. Wright, don’t you think Mr. Vallee Tiny scored a Rolling Stone cover, and lowered his singing voice to compete with became a frequent “Tonight Show” guest Mr. Crosby?’ ‘Yes, Herbert, I do.’ ” and “Laugh-In” returnee. (Fellow “LaughWhile performing, Tiny would strum In” guest John Wayne did a bit in which and sing a raft of Tin Pan Alley ditties, one he shook the singer’s hand, feigning pain after another. Recalled Wright: “He’d say, at Tiny’s grip — another “fruitcake” joke.) very seriously, ‘Mr. Henry Burr recorded “You are a gas,” went a telegram from this song in 1909. I’d like to do it in the George Harrison, but the old guard original style.’ Of course, it didn’t sound warmed up to Tiny, too. Frank Sinatra, like the original, really. In his mind, it did.” Jackie Gleason, Johnny Carson and even What of Tiny’s mannerisms? He was Tiny’s idol Bing Crosby all got a kick out apparently “like that” all the time, but on of him. (Crosby appreciated Tiny’s encysome of his ’60s TV appearances (“Laughclopedic knowledge of the old tunes.) Tiny In,” “Ed Sullivan,” “Hollywood Palace”), met Bob Dylan, Warren Beatty and Tiny seemed to be knowingly campy. Tuesday Weld (his romantic ideal). Elvis “He did play it up,” Wright said. Presley invited Tiny to a show, and gave “Even he admitted it to me. The effemihim a shout-out from the stage. On the cover of the Rolling Stone (1968). nate thing, the powder on his face. He was But even when he was riding high, very shrewd. He was a showman. He knew © Rolling Stone Tiny felt exploited. “I always felt bad for he had to get their attention.” him,” said “Laugh-In” cast member Ruth Buzzi, “because he In October 1996, while performing at a ukulele convention in would tell us about how he was being ripped off by managers and Massachusetts, Tiny fell from the stage and was hospitalized for 11 agents and things. So you just felt sorry for him.” days. On Nov. 30, he was singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” for Tiny’s biggest publicity stunt occurred at the moment his wave the Women’s Club of Minneapolis when he collapsed. He was prowas cresting. On Dec. 17, 1969, he married “Miss Vicki” nounced dead of cardiac arrest at Hennepin County Medical Center. Budinger, 17 to his 37, on “The Tonight Show.” 21.4 million peoIf he had come on the scene 10 years later, Tiny Tim would ple gawked at the spectacle, the program’s largest audience up to have been a contestant on “The Gong Show” — one-and-done, that time. The couple had a daughter, Tulip, and divorced in 1977. then discarded. But in the late 1960s, when flower power reigned “I’ll always love Miss Vicki,” Tiny later said. and being different was celebrated, it was the perfect time for a All of this media exposure gave us a picture of Tiny Tim and weird-looking guy who blew kisses and warbled forgotten songs. his many peccadillos and superstitions. Tiny — who addressed God bless Tiny Tim.

Shopping bags are the game pieces in The Tiny Tim Game of Beautiful Things (1970). Tiny’s contribution to book shelves, “Beautiful Thoughts” (1969). Game © Parker Brothers; “Beautiful Thoughts” © J.P. Tarcher Inc.

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We thought of some bands as “singles bands.” (Seriously, could you even name an album by the Shocking Blue or Question Mark and the Mysterians?) Then there were bands we considered to be “album bands.” (We associated the Jimi Hendrix Experience with “Are You Experienced?” and “Axis: Bold as Love,” not 7-inch vinyl discs.) The bands that we listened to at 33 1/3 (as opposed to 45) revolutions-per-minute were taken more seriously. We spent more time with them. We spent more money on them. Albums took up more room in our living spaces. And we kind of had a snobby attitude about them. Like, album bands are all about the music — not the music charts. Some album bands: the Byrds, Blind Faith, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, the Experience, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, the Grateful Dead, the Moody Blues, Sly and the Family Stone, Steppenwolf, Ten Years After, Traffic, Vanilla Fudge, King Crimson. The Zombies might have gone down as a singles band, were it not for their stunning coda, “Odessey and Oracle,” a still-underappreciated psychedelic classic. (A few bands — such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — were simultaneously singles bands and album bands, owing to certain lingering music-industry practices.) With greater emphasis on albums came innovations in packaging. Album covers provided a canvas for photographers and graphic artists that wasn’t possible on 45-RPM single sleeves. The “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” cover (1967) had everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe to Marlon Brando to Huntz Hall ... the Rolling Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request” (1967) featured a 3-D photo of Mick Jagger and company ... the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” (1967) came with an album-sized book of photos from the (not so hot) British TV special of the same title ... the “Velvet Underground and Nico” album (1967) boasted a cover image of a banana by Andy Warhol ... the Beatles’ so-nicknamed “White Album” (1968) had nothing on its cover except for the band’s tiny, embossed name (which was a bit of a cheat) .. . inside were color prints of each Beatle … “Cheap Thrills” (1968) by Big Brother and the Holding Company featured cartoons by underground comics artist R. Crumb .. . George Harrison’s triple-album “All Things Must Pass” (1970) came in a bound box with a grainy poster of a long-bearded Harrison ... Yep, album covers had come a long way since the dawn of the ’60s, when they were still largely vanity portraits of a given artist. The change kind of started with “Rubber Soul.” But then, so much did.

Cream of the blues SOMETHING ABOUT CREAM’S SOUND — AT ONCE artful and organic — signaled a new direction for British rock. Formed in 1966, at a time when the Beatles, the Stones and The Who were solidifying their respective reigns, Cream was a different animal: the first wave to exploit the artistic freedom won by its predecessors. Prior to the Beatles, guys in suits called the shots and pushed for hits. (Guitarist Eric Clapton famously fled the Yardbirds after “For Your Love” went to #6.) This new band called Cream didn’t seem to care if it had hits. But Cream had hits anyway. “Sunshine of Your Love,” the band’s first, didn’t exactly sound like pop. Clapton’s repeating riff, a sweet-pain amalgam of vibrato and distortion, kicks you in the head, like a drag from a powerful joint. Something in Cream’s makeup was different, too. Cream was a band, yes, but a stripped-down band. It was a trio and, more to the point, an ensemble. With its three giant talents — Clapton, Jack Bruce (bass) and Ginger Baker (drums) — it’s no wonder Cream was labeled the first “supergroup.” The trio’s druggy, jazzy, monster improvisations paved the way for the heavy British blues bands to follow (Led Zeppelin, Free, Black Sabbath, et al). “It was Ginger’s idea to have a band,” recalled Bruce. “He wanted to play with Eric in particular.” “Eric used to come along and sit in with the Graham Bond band,” said Baker, who was then Bond’s drummer. “That’s how we got to meet Eric — he’d come along and sit in with the band. “I was leaving the Graham Bond band, and I went to see Eric, who was then playing with John Mayall, to ask him if he wanted to join my band. And he agreed. And we had Jack on bass.” Well, yes, they had Bruce on bass, but not without Clapton applying a little arm-twisting on Baker. “Ginger and myself were not the best of friends at the time,” Bruce said with a laugh. “When he asked Eric (to form a band), Eric said, ‘Yeah, I could do it, but we’ve gotta get Jack in to be the vocalist.’ And so Ginger then came to my flat and said, ‘Would you like to do it?’ I said, ‘OK.’ “So we went to Ginger’s little house at that time in London and we just set up in his front room. And it was a band instantly. There was just no question.” Not even in Baker’s mind. “It happened,” the drummer deadpanned, though he wasn’t about to imply that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. He continued: “So did it with Alexis Korner, and so did it with the Graham Bond band. I mean, if it happens, you carry on with it. If it doesn’t, you don’t.” Of course, Cream wasn’t all about virtuosity. In its songwriting, Cream achieved immortality within three short years. The group’s four albums — “Fresh Cream” (1966), “Disraeli Gears” (1967), “Wheels of Fire” (1968) and “Goodbye Cream” (1969) —

yielded such classic-rock staples as “White Room,” “I’m So Glad,” “Strange Brew,” “Badge,” “Born Under a Bad Sign” and a you-are-there live version of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” “I started to write songs,” Bruce said. “The first song was written at one of our very early rehearsals: ‘N.S.U.’ It was the first song I wrote for the band. Then the songwriting went from there.” But Cream never strayed from its less-than-lofty beginnings. “It really started off, pretty much, as a blues band,” said Bruce. “But I used to talk a lot to Eric and say, ‘Yeah, I love the blues, but it’s more the feeling of the blues, and the language of the blues, that I love.’ I didn’t want to recreate the blues, you know, in the sense that John Mayall was recreating Chicago blues in a kind of British way. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to develop the music, but using the language of the blues, really. And that’s really what we did.”

Messrs. Bruce, Clapton and Baker, from “Goodbye Cream” (1969). © Polydor

Jack Bruce

Jack Bruce bids you peace (2000). Photo by Kathy Voglesong; vintage publicity photo by Jim Marshall

An all-time great psychedelic song, Cream’s “White Room” (1968) has a lush, majestic repeating intro section. The man who sang and co-wrote “White Room,” Cream bassist Jack Bruce, said the section resulted from the band playing atypical instruments. “It was quite interesting, because I wrote all of the music down,” the native of Scotland (1943-2014) told me in 2000. “All of the songs I was writing at the time, I wrote out in notation. And then I’d take them in and try to explain what I wanted, because Eric (Clapton) doesn’t read music or anything. “The way we did the 5/4 parts was just simply to overdub. Eric played one-string guitar, I played cello, (producer) Felix Pappalardi played viola and Ginger (Baker) played ‘timps’ (timpanis). We just did as many takes of that as we could, to get it sounding kind of ethereal. The rest of it, we just recorded very much in a ‘live’ way, as we did on all of the Cream recordings. They were basically done as a three-piece band live in the studio, and then we would overdub guitars and voices.” The song has esoteric — or confounding? — lyrics. (“Silver horses / run-down moonbeams / in your dark eyes.”) Though Bruce sang the song, he demurred when asked what it means. “The song could mean anything, actually,” he said, noting that the lyrics were written by poet Peter Brown (who also co-wrote Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” and “I Feel Free”). “Peter says there was an actual white room, and he had a kind of bittersweet experience in this room, in Sheffield, in the north of England.” Cream’s dissolution in 1969 was due as much to personality clashes as to the stress of success. (Is it true Baker wanted Bruce out? “Yeah. We fell out during that band, yeah,” said Bruce.) Still, even in its last lap, Cream achieved something great. The band’s final album, “Goodbye Cream” (1969), featured only three new studio tracks, but one of them is among Cream’s best remembered: “Badge,” co-written by Clapton and George Harrison. Said Bruce of Harrison: “I knew him from well before the Cream days; we had met. We didn’t actually work together until the ‘Goodbye Cream’ album. He played guitar on ‘Badge.’ ” During the recording session for “Badge,” did the four of them — meaning, Cream and Harrison — play at once? “In fact, it was five,” Bruce said, “because Felix Pappalardi was playing piano on that. From what I remember, we did it at (recording engineer) Wally Heider’s studio in Los Angeles. “I remember it was the longest we ever worked on any track. I don’t know why. Maybe because it wasn’t just the three of us playing? Or maybe we were looking for something beyond. Usually, the previous Cream tracks were done very quickly. But this take took quite a few hours. “I think it was worth spending the time on.” Prior to Cream, Bruce played in three blues bands that influenced the British rock scene to follow: Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, the Graham Bond Organisation and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Bruce believed, however, that Mayall has since been overstated as an influence. Said the bassist: “The important guys were Alexis Korner, (harmonica player) Cyril Davies and definitely Graham Bond — which was, for me, the most important band I played in when I was starting out. “We played, oh, about 300 gigs a year for about two and a half years, three years. So we were going around, opening up the whole British scene.”

Ginger Baker: Good to the last drag (1989). Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Ginger Baker

“Aw, shoot,” said Ginger Baker with undisguised annoyance. “You want the whole story? It didn’t go bang-bang-bang, just like that.” It was 1989, and the legendary drummer — born Peter Baker in 1939 in Lewisham, a suburb of London — had just been asked how he met fellow Cream founder Jack Bruce. Baker’s ice-blue eyes darted in his skeletal face as he recounted the details. “(Saxophonist) Dick Heckstall-Smith’s an old friend of mine,” he began. “We’d been working together — I’m doing this as quickly as possible — we’d been working together for years. We had an octet, the Johnny Birch Octet. Jack was on bass. Dick joined Alexis Korner’s band and took Jack with him. “The original drummer for Alexis was (Rolling Stones drummer) Charlie Watts. Charlie was, you know, a pretty young and inexperienced drummer. He wasn’t really happening with the band. And Charlie left the band so I could join it. “Dick and I found Jack. We were playing at the Cambridge May Ball in 1962. Jack was playing with a ‘trad’ band — a traditional jazz band. He came and asked to sit in with us. We were a modern jazz band. We didn’t want him to sit in, but he persisted and persisted. When he actually did sit in, he played real good. So we got him down to London, and that was the beginning of the association with Jack: 1962. The Alexis Korner band was 1963.” A year later, Baker and Bruce left Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated to join the Graham Bond Organisation. In 1966, a certain Eric Clapton formed a trio with Baker and Bruce. In three

short years, Cream made music that has proven unforgettable. But Baker did not mince words in discussing Cream’s dynamic. “Jack and I were jazz musicians,” he said. “Eric was not. For us, what we were doing was easy. For Eric, it was hard work. Eric could have been a good musician, but he’s been sliding ever since.” Cream wasn’t Baker’s only memorable band of the period. After Cream split up, the drummer formed Blind Faith in 1969 with Clapton, Stevie Winwood (of Traffic) and Rick Grech (of Family). This was to be the second “supergroup,” but the venture only lasted one album, one tour and one year. Why so shortlived? “That’s quite easy,” Baker said. “We only did one tour, and it was a group called Delaney and Bonnie on the same bill. And Eric came to us quite early on in the tour and said, ‘They should be on top of the bill. They’re a much better band than we are.’ Stevie and I couldn’t believe it! And he went off and formed Derek and the Dominoes with Delaney and Bonnie.” Baker was asked if — as the myth goes — he, Clapton and Bruce were frequently “tripping” during the Cream years. “No, no,” he said, those blue eyes flashing ire again. “but that’s what people just like to put on things. “The ’60s was something, I think, when the young people were more or less all together in one. It was another whole thing. It wasn’t divided into things like today. In the ’60s, it was all one movement. It was, all one movement. And everybody was together, and it was great. That was a really good thing.”

Byrds in flight Roger McGuinn

The Byrds were called the “American Beatles.” That may be an overstatement, but Byrds co-founder Roger McGuinn did not deny the Beatles’ effect on the band. “When the Beatles came out, I was floored,” Chicago native McGuinn (born 1942) told me in 2002. “I loved the chord changes they were using, which were very much like the folk-music chord changes I’d been using. So I started mixing up folk and rock in Greenwich Village. I’d take it down to the Village and play for people, and do folk songs with a Beatles beat.” Alas, this innovation was not warmly received in the Village, nor in Los Angeles, where McGuinn soon migrated. “Folk people frowned on rock ’n’ roll,” McGuinn said with a laugh. “They thought it was kind of bubblegum and kids’ stuff.” Nonetheless, he was performing his folk-rock fusion one night at the Troubadour in L.A., when singer/songwriter Gene Clark was in attendance. Recalled McGuinn: “Gene came backstage after I’d finished my set and said, ‘You know, these people don’t get it, but I really like what you’re doing. Let’s write some songs together.’ We were thinking of forming a duo, like Chad and Jeremy or something. And then David Crosby heard us and wanted to join up. He sounded great on harmonies, so we let him in.” “We got At first, the Byrds — McGuinn, Clark, Rickenbacker Crosby, Chris Hillman and Michael guitars, like the Clarke — outright emulated the Beatles. Beatles,” said “We went to see the movie ‘A Hard Roger McGuinn, Day’s Night’ (starring the Beatles), and shown with his wrote down notes on their instrufamous 12-string ments and everything,” McGuinn “Rick” in 1972. told me in 2001. “We got Archive photo Rickenbacker guitars, you know, like the Beatles. Gradually, we evolved into our own sound, and kind of separated ourselves from theirs. We stopped doing the ‘oh, yeah’s’ and ‘ooh’s’ and stuff like that, and started doing more eclectic stuff. “We became the Beatles’ favorite band. That was pretty cool.” The Byrds’ debut album was a stunner: “Mr. Tambourine Man” (1965). The title track, a Bob Dylan cover, became a #1 hit. But the band didn’t have quite the same luck with a subsequent Dylan cover, “All I Really Want to Do,” which peaked at #40. Meanwhile, Cher’s solo version climbed to #14. This sobering turn of events led to an exchange McGuinn never forgot. Said he: “I remember Dylan coming up to me and saying, ‘Man, you let me down.’ Which was not a good feeling. Because, you know, we had a lot of respect for Dylan and wanted to do right by him.” The Byrds entered the psychedelic realm with the McGuinn/Clark/Crosbypenned “Eight Miles High,” a #14 hit in 1966. Were hallucinogens involved? “Well,” McGuinn said, “it was more likely a musical influence than anything. It was based on our listening to endless hours of John Coltrane’s (1961 album) ‘Africa/Brass.’ We had a little cassette recorder that was so new, they didn’t have pre-recorded cassettes. So we recorded some Coltrane on one side of the cassette and Ravi Shankar on the other. And that was the only music we had on our tour bus. So we kept flipping the tape over and listening to Shankar and then to Coltrane. “By the time we got back into the studio, we were saturated with the sounds. So that’s just what came out when we did ‘Eight Miles High.’ ”

David Crosby

They share lyrics and melody. Beyond that, two versions of the Bob Dylan-penned “Mr. Tambourine Man” — one by its composer, one by the Byrds — are like two different songs. Dylan’s version is intimate and raw: just a reedy voice and an acoustic guitar. The Byrds’ version is a crafted pop treasure, with its repeating electric-guitar riff, sailing harmonies and reverb-y mix. The Byrds made “Mr. Tambourine Man” their own, a fact that band member David Crosby was in no danger of overselling. “You know what? We didn’t plan any of it,” the Los Angeles native (born 1941) told me in 2001. “It’s just what happened organically. It just was McGuinn’s talent as a player and a singer and a storyteller, and mine as a harmony singer. “It just happened.” “Mr. Tambourine Man” is the title track of what Crosby called his first “real” album. “It was my first album with the Byrds, but I had been on a compilation album from a tour that I did earlier on,” Crosby explained. “It wasn’t very good. But, yeah, that was the first real album I was on.” Considering he was such a neophyte, Crosby can be called principled, or career-suicidal, for not giving ground in a dispute with the record company. In Crosby’s version of events, he stood firm when the record company pushed to have the Wrecking Crew — a legendary collective of L.A.based session musicians — play on the entire album. “Well, they played on that song,” Crosby said of David Crosby the title track. “McGuinn played guitar, and (keyperforming boardist) Leon Russell and (bassist) Larry Knechtel in 2001. and (drummer) Hal Blaine played the other instruPhoto by Kathy ments. And then they said they wanted to do the Voglesong whole album that way. I said, ‘No, I won’t do it.’ “And they said, ‘OK, fire him and keep the lead guitar player.’ And the manager-type guy said, ‘Well, we can’t fire him. He’s the one who sings all the harmonies.’ So they said, ‘Well, tell him he’s gotta cooperate.’ And I said, ‘No.’ And they said, ‘Well, you have to. We’re the record company!’ And I said, ‘I don’t give a s***. Either we play it, or it doesn’t happen.’ And they finally caved in, and we played it.” Crosby’s penchant for harmonies is rooted in the music he listened to while growing up in Los Angeles. “I wasn’t big on the pop music that was going on then, until the Everly Brothers came along,” the singer recalled. “I didn’t really dig Elvis (Presley). I loved the Everly Brothers. The other music that I listened to was mostly stuff that was not on the radio. It was mostly the classical records and the folk records that my mother played a lot.” Crosby — whose father was Oscar-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby (“High Noon,” “The Old Man and the Sea”) — originally hoped to become an actor. He said he observed his father at work “many times.” As for their relationship: “He wasn’t a very demonstrative kind of guy. We weren’t antagonistic at all; I loved him and he loved me. He just wasn’t very good at showing it.”

“Mr. Tambourine Man.” © Columbia Records

Opening Some bands are conceived in boardrooms; the Doors were conceived on a beach.

“That was right there on the beach in Venice, California,” said Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek of a fateful encounter with singer Jim Morrison. “We’d both graduated from UCLA. I hadn’t seen Jim for, like, 40 days and 40 nights. Just like in the Bible. And sure enough, who comes walking down the beach but James Douglas Morrison, looking great, man. Looking lean and hard and mean. We sat down and I said, ‘What are you up to?’ He said, ‘Nothin’ much. What are you up to?’ I said, ‘I’m just tryin’ to sell some film scripts.’ I said, ‘You doin’ anything creatively?’ He said, ‘I’ve been writin’ songs.’ I thought, ‘Ooh, that’s cool.’ Because I knew that he was a poet and he knew that I was a musician, but we never talked about songwriting. So right on the beach there in Venice, California, Jim sang ‘Moonlight Drive’ and ‘My Eyes Have Seen You’ and ‘Summer’s Almost Gone.’ And that was it, man. I was absolutely hooked. I said, ‘Those are great. Those lyrics are the best lyrics I’ve ever heard for a rock song. You know what we gotta do? We gotta get a rock ’n’ roll band together.’ ” The Doors — Morrison, Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore — had a trajectory which, like that of the band’s doomed singer, was fast and blindingly bright. Their indelible songs — “Love Me Two Times,” “Touch Me,” “L.A. Woman,” “Light My Fire,” “People Are Strange,” “Roadhouse Blues” — were showcases for Morrison’s fatalistic poetry. As a frontman, Morrison exuded sex appeal and a messianic aura. These earned him the media nickname “the Lizard King.” “Jim Morrison was spiritual,” Manzarek said of the singer.

Jim Morrison’s bandmates called him ‘spiritual’ and ‘a real joker’

the Doors “He was intelligent and artistic. He was a good human being.” Which is counter to what the law in Miami-Dade County, Florida, would have had you believe, when it charged Morrison “It felt like we were changing the world,” said Doors drummer with indecent exposure following a 1969 Doors show in Miami. John Densmore of the heady time when the Doors came up. “They knew they could make some political hay by busting “The seeds of Civil Rights and the peace movement and femisome rock ’n’ rollers,” Manzarek said. nism and whatever — it was all planted in the ’60s. “The judge himself was up for re-election. So he loved it. He “So even though it seems a little dark now,” Densmore told me was going to be very righteous about it and make sure that in 2005, “those seeds still have sprouted. It was the real renaisMorrison was convicted of something.” sance. It was happening in art, painting, movies as well.” “The point was, the night of the show, nobody got arrested,” For the Doors, it all started at the Whisky-a-Go-Go in L.A. said Krieger. “Nothing happened. There were no charges filed or “The Whisky was on the Sunset Strip, which was a ‘mecca’ anything like that. It was only a week later when some politicians for the hippies in Southern California,” the Los Angeles native heard something had happened, and they decided to make a big (born 1945) said. “It was similar to, say, Haight-Ashbury in San deal out of it.” Francisco or the Lower East Side in New York. All these cities So, what did happen? had these sort of Bohemian areas. “I think it was a mass hallucination,” said Manzarek. “We got a job as the house band at the Whisky, so we were the “I think it was the audience and the swamp and the Tennessee warmup for every great act coming into town, which was all of Williams heat of the place. Jim’s from Florida, and the Lizard ’em — Van Morrison, Frank Zappa, the Byrds, Captain Beefheart King had come to Florida. They didn’t know what to expect. — just all of ’em. You name it. We tried to blow ’em all off the They’d heard about psychedelic. And they’d heard about the acidstage,” Densmore laughed. “We were pretty good.” rock Doors with the Lizard King as the lead singer. They just What would he like people to know about Jim Morrison? freaked out, man. They flipped out. Jim had hypnotized 14,000 “Jim had a really good sense of humor,” Densmore said. people into thinking that it had actually happened. They saw “You didn’t find it in the movie (‘The Doors,’ 1991). I liked snakes. The Devil had made his appearance in South Florida, and the movie, but (director) Oliver Stone missed the humor. I thought of course, the Devil brought with him snakes. And snakes came Val Kilmer (who played Morrison) was fantastic, but Jim was just out of his pants. I think that’s what really happened down there.” kind of a real joker. The last few years, he The Doors weathered this and other had a problem. He was an alcoholic. storms. But something bad developed But before that, he enjoyed life. It — bad for the band and especially wasn’t quite as dire as everyone for Morrison. puts out, that’s for sure.” “About halfway through the Doors’ career, Morrison got into drinking,” said Manzarek. “That was the worst possible drug that he could have taken,” said Krieger. “Because it just pushed the wrong buttons for Jim, you know?” There are conspiracy theories surrounding the unexpected death of Jim Morrison at age 27 on July 3, 1971, in Paris. I asked Manzarek what he believed killed his friend. “I think he was just one of those guys who was genetically predisposed to alcoholism,” Manzarek said. “I think in the end, that is what probably did him in in Paris: just too much drinking. That’s ultimately the tragedy of Jim Morrison, From left: Morrison, is that he started drinking, he loved Densmore, Manzarek, it, and he couldn’t stop.”

John Densmore

Krieger. Publicity photo

On meditation: “I was actually kind of getting tired of taking acid all the time.”

Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, shown performing in 2000, played some of the most memorable riffs in ’60s rock. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Robby Krieger

The raunchy, bluesy guitar on the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” alone assured Robby Krieger’s place in rock. Decades later, Krieger was reminded of Jim Morrison’s effect on his performance. “We were looking around at some old (studio) outtakes of ‘Roadhouse,’ ” Los Angeles native Krieger (born 1946) told me in 2000. “We found this little thing that Jim Morrison was saying to us before the recording, before we played ‘Roadhouse.’ He was trying to get us in the mood for it, right? He tells this little story. “It goes (imitating Morrison): ‘Guys, guys. Here’s what we’re doing. We’re driving down the road, on the back country road, in this ’55 Chevy. We’ve got a few joints and some beers. And we’re going to the roadhouse.’ He set the whole scene for us. That’s exactly the mood that he wanted for ‘Roadhouse Blues.’ “It kind of made me play a little more laid back than I would have otherwise. ‘Roadhouse’ was a high-energy piece, but it still has to be laid back. When you hear bands play that song — most of ’em don’t get it. They just play it as hard and fast as they can.” Krieger joined the Doors after he and his drummer friend, John Desmore, had taken up TM — Transcendental Meditation. “John and I happened to be doing the meditation thing,” Krieger recalled. “It was just starting at that point. They had this meeting in L.A., and Ray (Manzarek) showed up at this meeting. So there was Ray and John and I at the meditation thing. Ray mentioned to John that they needed a drummer. So the next day, John went over and he liked what was happening; he liked the songs and stuff. He mentioned he knew me. And that was it.”

The fledgling Doors rubbed elbows onstage with many established artists during its residency at the Whisky a Go-Go. “The Whisky was, like, the place to play,” Krieger said. “Anybody who was anybody at the time would be there, from the Mamas and Papas and Phil Spector to Smokey Robinson. It wasn’t just the West Coast bands; they’d get bands from Motown, New York. The Rascals came all the time. We would play second-bill to most of these people. There was just a feel about the Whisky.” Some of that feel may have been related to recreational drug use, a subject about which Krieger was disarmingly frank. “Well, we did acid,” the guitarist said. “I used to do it, like, once a week. Then after the Doors started, I was actually kind of getting tired of taking acid all the time. That’s why I went to the meditation thing, to try something different, you know? And we always smoked a little grass here and there, but that was about it.” Krieger famously wore a shiner when the Doors performed on the Smothers Brothers’ TV show. Manzarek swore that Krieger got his black eye from “rednecks.” (Manzarek told me in 2000: “There was always a battle between the long-hairs and the shorthairs. So Robby and Jim got in a fight with some drunken rednecks here in California. Country boys. Cowboys. There’s a lot of cowboys out here.”) But Krieger told a different story. “Well, Jim and I got in a little tiff, and he clocked me one. He got me,” Krieger said with a laugh. Was that an unusual occurrence? “Um, a little bit. But it happened. It was just in fun, you know. It was a mistake, really.”

Ray Manzarek

The keyboardist for the Doors painted an idyllic picture. “It was the summer of ’66, and it was the ‘freak’ scene, as in what were called freaks back then: people who had long hair and soft garments and dressed like gypsies,” Chicago native Ray Manzarek (1939-2013) told me in 2000. “Basically, they were the hippies. They had invaded the Sunset Strip. They’d come from all over Los Angeles and had taken over the Sunset Strip over the summer of ’66. That’s where Jim wrote the song ‘The Soft Parade,’ too. Cars and people all over the place. Young men and young women just stoned out of their minds and just in love and thinking that they could change the world. In love with being alive on Planet Earth. It was one incredible summer.” It also happened to be the summer the Doors played its career-defining residency at the Whisky on the Strip. Manzarek pulled out one salient memory. “We jammed together at Them’s last night,” he recalled. “Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, the Doors and Them played ‘Gloria’ together. That was our first week there.” Manzarek’s playing style was an amalgam of eclectic influences. How did he develop it? “Growing up on the south side of Chicago, for one,” said Manzarek (who cited jazz guys such as Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane and Miles Davis). “And then boogie-woogie piano. That got me into playing music with a beat, learning how to play boogiewoogie. That left hand, and then improvising with the right hand — that’s what really got it all started. “Then I studied a lot of classical music, too. That probably helped. Russian classical music was a big influence. And Bach, of course. Playing Bach.” Improbably, it all added up to sometimes trippy music. Said Manzarek: “You combine all of those things — and add in a little psychedelic substance to it — and you get Ray Manzarek playing behind Jim Morrison in a rock group called the Doors.” There are few better examples of Manzarek’s innovative playing style than “Riders on the Storm,” in which he made his electric piano sound like falling rain. “We’d been living out here in Los Angeles and ingesting certain psychedelic substances that put you in touch with your inner spiritual god and nature,” he said. “So it wasn’t a great leap to extend myself into nature and become the rain. So what would rain sound like on a Fender Rhodes keyboard? There’d be tinkling and melodic stuff and that long descending passage right at the beginning of the song. That’s exactly what I intended to do.”

“(Boogie-woogie) got me into playing music with a beat,” said Ray Manzarek, shown in 2000. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

“I do write letters never meaning to send,” said Hayward.

WITH THE 1967 CONCEPT ALBUM “DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED,” the Moody Blues transitioned from a struggling pop band to purveyors of hauntingly beautiful music with thoughtful lyrical themes. “Nights in White Satin” and “Tuesday Afternoon” became watershed songs of the psychedelic era. And it was the new Moody on the block, Justin Hayward, who wrote both songs. “I came to the group as a songwriter, really, by sending some songs in,” England native Hayward (born 1946) told me in 2004. “That’s to (Moodys keyboardist) Mike Pinder. I was writing and Mike was writing. And we just decided — really overnight, one day — just to do all our own stuff, and to see what would happen. That was the turning point for us. “We wrote a stage show that became the ‘Days of Future Passed’ album. And then, really, our lives were different after that.” Not that there had been a demand for the Moodys’ next record. “The album was a lucky accident for us, because we didn’t have a recording contract,” Hayward recalled. “But Decca needed someone to demonstrate their stereo systems. We had a stage show we’d been doing for about eight or nine months on the road, which included a song called ‘Dawn is a Feeling’ that Mike had written but I sang. “As a counterpoint to that, looking at the day as a whole, I wrote ‘Nights in White Satin.’ I just came back one night from a gig and sat on the side of the bed and just wrote it. It was a lot of kind of random thoughts. I was at the end of one big love affair and the beginning of another. “I took it in to the rest of the guys in the rehearsal room the next day, and I played it to them. I said, ‘What do you think about this?’ They said, ‘Oh, it’s alright.’ And then Mike said, ‘Play it again.’ I played it again. He had this wonderful instrument called the Mellotron (a synthesizer) that we were just beginning to experiment with, that had kind of orchestral sounds. So I went, ‘Nights in white satin,’ and he went ...” (Hayward sang Pinder’s musical reply). “And then it became really interesting. That was really the key. It fell together then.” Still, the song had to go through some more hoops. Recalled Hayward: “First of all, we recorded ‘Nights’ for the BBC, who promptly ‘wiped’ (erased) the tape, because they used to record over stuff. It wasn’t until about nine months later that we got to record it for Decca. We were very worried that we wouldn’t have the same atmosphere as we had on the BBC tape. But I’m sure we did. And it went on to really be part of people’s lives. “It’s certainly part of mine, in so much as lyrically, I do write letters never meaning to send. And I do think that probably, just what you want to be, you will be in the end. But it’s a young boy of 19 speaking. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing. That’s just who he is.”

Steppenwolf

formed in the year of the flower child — 1967 — but forged a heavier style of rock with “Magic Carpet Ride,” “The Pusher” and the ultimate cruising song, “Born to be Wild.” “I was driven to grasp the music of the Delta blues and the In 1968 early rock ’n’ rollers, in conjunction with that whole anti-authoritarian, rebellious-attitude sort of thing,” singer John Kay said of founding the band. “Those were like two wheels on the same tracks, running parallel, side-by-side.” Rebellion is what gives “Born to be Wild” its timelessness, the native of Germany (born 1944) believed. “It is about freedom, it is about rebellion,” Kay said. “For me, rock ’n’ roll without a core of rebellion in its belly really isn’t rock ’n’ roll. I mean by definition, damn near. Rock ’n’ roll was a form of rebellion against the status quo, at least on a musical level, if not a socio-political level.” How did Kay keep the song fresh onstage? “Really, I have no interest in sitting in my living room and playing that song to myself. But when you see the people getting out of their seats — that’s the fuel on which this song runs. ‘Born to be Wild’ is really an animal that has its own life outside of Steppenwolf. It’s like the runaway child that you know is out there doing something while you’re sleeping.”

John Kay was the man in black at a 1997 gig. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Here come Their very name conjures thoughts of bombast and thunder.

This is thanks to the fiery ensemble that was Vanilla Fudge: singer/keyboardist Mark Stein, guitarist Vince Martell, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, who believed the New York-bred band’s majestic jams were born of necessity. “In those days, they had no P.A. (public address) systems,” Brooklyn native Appice (born 1946) told me in 2002. “Then they started coming out with big amps. So the amps got louder, which made it heavier sounding. And then for me as a drummer, there were no P.A.s, no monitors. So I had to

“We were pop stars, man,” said Appice, shown in 2002. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

turn my sticks around and play with the butt end, play real hard. Then I realized that maybe I should start getting some bigger drums. So I got this big bass drum that I bought in a pawn shop. So that created, like, a big sound.” The band’s debut album, “Vanilla Fudge” (1967), was heavy on the cover tunes — but nobody covered a song, and made it their own, like Vanilla Fudge. “When we went in the studio, we just basically did our stage act on tape,” Appice said. “If you listen to the first album, there’s not a lot of overdubs. When a guitar solo comes, you know, the rhythm guitar turns into the guitar solo, pretty much. Back then, we only had eight tracks to record. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how we did it.” The album went to #6, thanks in no small part to the Fudge’s improbably heavy cover of the Supremes’ 1966 hit “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” A bunch of white Noo Yawk rock guys covering a song by black Detroit chanteuses — how did it happen? As Bayonne native Stein (born 1947) told me in 2005: “Tim Bogert and myself were hanging out one day — I guess it was ’66 or ’67 — in front of the Cheetah, a big discotheque on Broadway in midtown Manhattan. They were called ‘discotheques’ back in the mid ’60s. I remember it was a cold, snowy day. We were just hanging out, listening to the radio, smoking cigarettes and smoking whatever we were smoking. “The Supremes’ ‘Keep Me Hangin’ On’ came on. We were looking at each other and saying, ‘Wow, man, this sounds like it’s so fast. Wouldn’t this be a great song to slow down?’ It just seemed like it would be a little more soulful if it had a little less pace on it.” “In those days, we looked for songs that we used to say had ‘hurtin’ lyrics’ or love gone bad — that kind of thing, where people are real emotional,” said Appice. “And then when you slow it down and sing it and put the emotion into it, it sounds like a whole different song.” “We were rehearsing at a place called Ungano’s uptown, another discotheque on the West Side of New York,” said Stein. “I just had these things that came to me creatively. Vinnie Martell had this incredible guitar lick — which is, you know, one of the Top 10 classic-rock licks — in the intro to ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On.’ So I had my approach to it, and he had his approach, and me and Tim and Carmine just kind of rehearsed, and the ideas came out.” Recalled Appice: “When we were doing it, we said, ‘Oh, it might be cool to take the bridge apart and do the dah-dah, dah-dah, dah-dah ...’ It’s sort of a section of the song that we applied. Mark Stein said, ‘Let’s do this on organ.’

the Fudge Vanilla Fudge was, from left: Carmine Appice, Vince Martell, Mark Stein and Tim Bogert. Publicity photo “Then we did one of our build-ups. So the opening was just like: hit a chord, and then let Vinnie do his Indian raga thing. And then once the band came in and played the song, we got funky. Heavy funk, I guess you’d call it. We were like heavy metal, but we were also heavy-metal funk. It was like black music we were playing.” The Fudge’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” charted at #6. “Like I always say, that was seven-and-a-half minutes that changed my life,” said Appice of the track. “The great thing about ‘Hangin’ On’ is that I’ve got so many stories from so many different places. George Harrison, he was a great fan of Vanilla Fudge. He used to play that record for everyone.” And so the world was introduced to the musical stylings of Vanilla Fudge — for instance, Stein’s spine-chilling Hammond B3 swirls. Who inspired Stein? Said the keyboardist: “Some of the influences I have: the late, great Jimmy Smith, one of the great jazz organists. Of course, Felix Cavaliere with the Rascals back in the late ’60s was one of my idols. He was the first cat I saw with that B3 sound. I used to go and see him play at the Phone Booth (in Manhattan), another discotheque. This was before the Rascals broke really big. I used to hang out and watch him play and just be totally immersed in what he was doing. “A lot of people never heard of a band called the Vagrants (Leslie West’s pre-Mountain band from Long Island). A cat named Jerry Storch had some very interesting, creative approaches to a Hammond organ. We used to hang out back in the early days before everybody started getting nuts.” Appice has been credited for influencing a generation of heavy-metal drummers — a commendation he didn’t shy away from. “Anybody who’s hittin’ drums really hard and got big drums and got a big drum sound — it all started from the ’60s, from what I was doing,” he said.

“I always say that it was me, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon and Mitch Mitchell who probably set the precedent for what was going on in rock drums for the next 30 years.” Martell — who was in the Navy before he was in Vanilla Fudge — remembered the period as an idyllic time. “What was nice about it was that people were very aware of peace and love,” Bronx native Martell (born 1946) told me in 2002. “A lot of them were taking that literally. It seemed that we had a good opportunity to make people aware of the beautiful flowers, flower power, and also trees and all the living things. People were very aware of nature, beauty, a relaxed type of spirit, along with being good to the animals, and how much they add richness to our lives.” Then, of course, there were the perks of stardom. “It was very exciting,” said Appice. “We were touring with bands who became legendary: Jimi Hendrix, the Cream. Led Zeppelin opened up for us for, like, 30 shows. The first show, they were booin’ ’em off the stage to bring on the Fudge! You tell people that now, and they can’t believe it. ‘Wow, you knew Jimi Hendrix?’ Or, you know, Janis Joplin, the Doors. I mean, all the people who died young and became total rock-icon legends, we used to hang out with them. And people freak out when they hear that. “We were pop stars, man, and had big albums. We were in all the magazines and on the TV shows. We were like ‘Top of the Pops,’ you know? Sellin’ out 10,000seat venues. The only difference was that the albums were only $2.99. So when you got 5 percent of $2.99, what did you end up getting? You got 15 cents an album.”

“Peope were very aware of peace and love,” said Martell, shown in 2002.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Time of the Zombies British Invasion band’s coda a psychedelic masterpiece

“Time of the Season” — an unusual, almost ethereal #3 hit which uses the sound of exhaling as percussion and has a killer organ solo — was everywhere in 1969. But the band that recorded it? Nowhere to be found. This cool, weird song didn’t happen in a vacuum. “Time of the Season” is one part of a beautiful whole: the Zombies’ first self-produced album and, it turned out, the band’s last album. Which is odd, because “Odessey and Oracle” (1968) sounds like a beginning. Replete with innovative arrangements and instrumentation, “Odessey and Oracle” has been called the Zombies’ answer to “Sgt. Pepper” or “Pet Sounds.” But Zombies singer Colin Blunstone recalled that prior to recording the album, the Zombies — a “British Invasion” group which had its first hit in 1964 — was in a not-so-good place. “There wasn’t that much enthusiasm about the band,” Hertfordshire native Blunstone (born 1945) told me in 2004. “Decca dropped us.” There was more. The Zombies went on an overseas tour for which they felt woefully underpaid, while back home in England, a disappointing surprise awaited.

Recalled Blunstone: “We came back to a (Zombies) record, a cover of ‘Going Out of My Head,’ the Little Anthony and the Imperials record. It had just been released, and it had been mixed while we were away, and it didn’t sound how we wanted it to sound. “So we decided we wanted to produce our own records. This mostly fell on the shoulders of (Zombies keyboardist) Rod Argent and (bassist) Chris White. We managed to break with our old producer (Ken Jones), who had been wonderful for us in the early part of our career, but he was forever trying to re-create those first sessions, and we wanted to move on.” The way Blunstone remembered it, the Zombies hadn’t yet decided to split up prior to recording “Odessey and Oracle.” “Well,” said the singer, “I must say that when various members of the Zombies talk about this, we do tend to remember things slightly differently. Some of the boys remember beginning ‘Odessey and Oracle’ and believing it was going to be our last album — that we knew the band was going to end, but we wanted to finish our album. Now, I don’t remember it like that.” Argent was one Zombie who saw things the opposite way. “It was in the air that we were going to break up,” Hertfordshire native Argent (also born 1945) told me in 2011. “There were many reasons for that. We’d been very unhappy with some of the production of the mixes of our singles around that time. Chris White and I were desperate to produce an album ourselves before we broke up. “So we went to CBS, which wasn’t our record company at the time, and we said, ‘Look, will you fund an album for us that we produce ourselves?’ They said yes. They didn’t give us all that much money. They gave us a thousand pounds, which even at that time wasn’t a huge amount of money.” “It’s very hard to record an album for that amount,” Blunstone agreed. “So what we did — we rehearsed very, very solidly. So we knew these songs very well. And then we managed to get some time in Abbey Road” — the legendary studio that the Beatles called home. Said Argent: “To walk into Abbey Road, which is where the Beatles were just finishing off ‘Sgt. Pepper’ — it hadn’t even come out by the time we started to record ‘Odessey and Oracle.’ But somehow, we walked in there. It was very hard for any bands that

The Zombies were finished. Then “Time of the Season” from “Odessey and Oracle” shot to #3. © 1968 CBS Records weren’t signed to EMI to actually record at Abbey Road, but somehow, we managed to do that.” “I don’t remember how we did this,” Blunstone said. “We were on CBS. I’ve been told since that we were the first nonEMI artists to be allowed into Abbey Road to record.” Both musicians believed that recording at Abbey Road was key to the artistic success of “Odessey and Oracle.” “We were really lucky, because we followed the Beatles,” said Blunstone. “Because we were the next band to go in, we benefited from that. In fact, some of the keyboard instruments that were used on those sessions were still there. We used those exact same instruments. And we used the same engineers, which was vitally important. (Studio engineers) Geoff Emerick and Peter Vince had worked on ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ They

worked on ‘Odyssey and Oracle.’ So we were really fortunate. “They’d made quite a few recording innovations in Abbey Road. Although there was already eight-track recording in America, there wasn’t in the U.K. And they managed to sort of link two four-track machines together to give them an eight-track recording machine. Said Argent: “It was the first multitracking above four tracks, certainly in the U.K., that was going on. Suddenly, we had extra tracks to play with and add harmonies on the spur of the moment. We had the use of things that were lying around the studio. Like, it was the first time that I had seen the Mellotron (synthesizer). So I used the Mellotron for the first time. It felt fantastic. “So it was a time when we felt, for the first time, we could absolutely express our ideas as we heard them. It was recorded really pretty quickly, because we didn’t have much money. We’d rehearsed each song really well. Most of the songs were recorded in a three-hour session. But because we had these extra tracks, it meant that we The Zombies: Hugh Grundy, Colin Blunstone, Chris White, Rod Argent and Paul Atkinson. would put down the track as we Publicity photo rehearsed it. And then if I heard an extra Then that “Twilight Zone” thing happened: A year harmony — as on ‘Changes,’ for instance. That sort of top harmoafter the release of “Odessey and Oracle,” “Time of the ny just came to me on the spur of the moment. And we had a Season” unexpectedly shot to #3 in America. track where we could do it. So it felt like a very freewheeling, “‘Time of the Season’ was a strange song to be a hit, exciting time to us. It felt incredibly liberating to us.” really,” said Argent, and few would disagree. “We actually made that record in 1967; it was 1969 by THE RESULTING ALBUM SURPRISED WITH ITS the time ‘Time of the Season’ was released in the States. And sublime harmonies and tricky arrangements. Argent and White, from there, it took six months for the record to grow in the working separately, split composing duties. way that records could back then. It was a DJ in Boise, Idaho, “Case of Cell 44” has some Brian Wilson-esque acapella harwho played it more and more, and it started to grow. That’s monies. The haunting “A Rose For Emily” is like the Zombies’ why took so long. answer to “Eleanor Rigby.” “Maybe After He’s Gone” pairs mel“By that time, we had been split up for months. Colin had a ancholy verses with sugary pop choruses. The nostalgic solo career; I’d formed (the band) Argent and was negotiating a “Beechwood Park” is, again, akin to the Beatles’ “Strawberry contract with CBS. So ‘Time of the Season’ just felt like a great Fields Forever.” (Beechwood Park is in Hertfordshire, where bonus, really. It was something we’d forgotten about,” Argent Blunstone, Argent and White were born.) “Hung Up on a Dream” added with a laugh, “and suddenly, it was this enormous hit. I is early prog rock. “Changes” features a keyboard sound used on can tell you it made negotiating the contract much easier.” “Strawberry Fields.” The upbeat, catchy “Friends of Mine” is the Blunstone sounded almost wistful when he pondered what one you would have expected to be the smash hit. Then, of course, might have been, had the Zombies still been together as “Time of there is “Time of the Season.” the Season” was climbing the charts. “I remember going into ‘Odessey and Oracle’ full of hope,” “I think I’m probably the only one,” he said. Blunstone said. “And then when the album was complete, I really “But you mentioned this earlier on — you said ‘Odessey and felt it was the best we could do. Oracle’ sounds like a beginning. I do sometimes wonder. At the “But then it didn’t enjoy the success that we had all hoped for. time, it felt like we’d come to the end of an artistic circle or a It was well received by the critics, but it didn’t sell particularly creative circle. That album was pretty different to anything we’d well. I think we all felt that possibly it was time. We moved on done before. and tried new projects. There was no animosity. There wasn’t any “I do wonder what it would have been like if instead of huge row or any fighting or anything like that. I just think we felt being the end, it had been the beginning.” it was time to move on.”

Groovy movies YOU KNOW A GROOVY MOVIE WHEN YOU SEE one. Chicks dancing in miniskirts ... “liquid projection” backgrounds . . . quick-cut editing of wildly dancing youth at weird camera angles . . . seizure-inducing strobe lights ... generic rock with rude fuzz guitar over shimmering Hammond ... accoutrements like lava lamps, protest posters, peace medallions ... Of course, in any movie released between, say, 1966 and 1971, grooviness may occur on a dime. It could be a cop drama, a James Bond flick, even a Bob Hope movie. The protagonist — in search of a clue or a missing offspring or a drink — may stumble into a hippie nightspot, and suddenly, he’s bathed in that liquid projection. It happened all the time back then, and discovering these moments is like a treasure hunt. But I’m talking about movies that are groovy through and through . . . groovy to the core. Such as? Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966) is a mod twist on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” A fashion photographer in swinging London (David Hemmings) may or may not have inadvertently captured a murder with his camera. Adding to the swinging-ness is the Yardbirds (with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page) wreaking Who-style destruction in a nightclub. The fact that Antonioni was an Italian director filming in England makes “Blow-Up” something of a voyeuristic experience. In Michael Reeves’ “The Sorcerers” (1967), 78-year-old Boris Karloff plays a marginalized senior citizen hobbling along the periphery of London’s youth-obsessed nightlife scene. When you see hipster Ian Ogilvy “chatting up birds” in a nightclub as a Yardbirds-like rock band performs in the background, you swear you’re back in Antonioni Land. Peter Watkins’ “Privilege” (1967) has Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones as a rock star who goes all cult-of-personality. Roger Vadim’s sci-fi comedy “Barbarella” (1968) sparked a debate: objectification of women or postmodern sendup? It raised eyebrows when Vadim’s then-wife, Jane Fonda, willingly bared all in what could be construed as titillation. When, in the opening-credits striptease, a weightless astronaut removes a glove, we realize that “he” is a she. More sections of the breakaway costume fall off as Fonda’s lithe figure comes into view, accompanied by a theme song worthy of Austin Powers, with lyrics like “You’re so wild and wonderful . . .” Fonda looks delectable, like cotton candy. The contoured cockpit of her spaceship — covered floor-to-ceiling in light

brown faux fur — is, shall we say, the opposite of phallic. Barbarella is a sex object, but Fonda deftly keeps the viewer in on every joke in this playful celebration of human desire. Old-schoolers Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing and Groucho Marx apparently sought to impress their grandchildren by appearing in Otto Preminger’s LSD-themed disaster “Skidoo” (1968). Christopher Jones is “punished” by a trio of randy gals in Richard Wilson’s “Three in the Attic” (1968). Blake Edwards’ “The Party” (1968) stars Peter Sellers as an awkward interloper at an elite hipster bash in an ultramodern abode. Lee H. Katzin’s “The Phynx” (1970) is a smartly written rock comedy with Leiber-Stoller songs and nods to “A Hard Day’s Night” and “The Monkees.” Plot: A government agency has spies embedded in various factions such as the Black Panthers, the KKK and the Boy Scouts. When old movie stars begin to disappear, the agency turns to a matronly robot, MOTHA (Mechanical Oracle That Helps Americans), for guidance. MOTHA’s plan: Form a band that becomes so popular, it can infiltrate enemy territory with ease. The old stars who cameo as themselves are a buff’s dream: Pat O’Brien, Johnny Weissmuller, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Ruby Keeler, et al. See also Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s “Performance” (1970), with Mick Jagger as a faded rock star who enters an unlikely relationship with a gangster (James Fox), and Roger Corman’s “Gas-s-s-s” (1970), a farce set in a world where everyone over 25 is dead. Films set on college campuses often featured anti-war hippies: Arthur Dreifuss’ “The Love-Ins” (1967), Stuart Hagmann’s “The Strawberry Statement” (1970) and Jack Nicholson’s “Drive, He Said” (1971), with Michael Margotta as a college kid who takes psychotic drugs to avoid the draft ... to the point where he actually goes psychotic. Why else would you walk into a laboratory naked, and set all the lab animals free? I wasn’t kidding about Bob Hope. Even “Ol’ Ski Nose” made a groovy movie. In “How to Commit Marriage” (1969), Hope’s daughter (JoAnna Cameron) joins a real-life rock group, the Comfortable Chair, and follows the teachings of the Baba Zeba (Irwin Corey, sending up Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). Hope in mutton-chop sideburns, Nehru jacket and love beads is every bit as uncool as it sounds.

Jane Fonda with ray gun — or is that a hair dryer? — in “Barbarella” (1968). © Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios

Hippie kids out for kicks in “Riot on Sunset Strip” (1967). © American International Pictures and Four Leaf Productions, Inc.

‘Riot on Sunset Strip’

The early hippie flick “Riot on Sunset Strip” (1967) has much in common with those old, alarmist “cautionary tales” like “Reefer Madness” and “Cocaine Fiends.” Bluntly put, “Riot on Sunset Strip” is squaresville, man. Not only that — it doesn’t even have a riot. There’s a lot of finger-wagging and “tsk tsk”-ing in Arthur Dreifuss’ film, which is calculated to alternately assuage, titillate and unnerve middle-aged audiences — to make the straights feel good about hatin’ on the hippies. “Riot” — “the most shocking film of our generation!” — employs stern narration, a la “Dragnet.” The movie’s messages are: (Most) hippies are bad. Father knows best. Especially when father is a cop. And LSD makes you a really bad dancer. The film stars Mimsy Farmer as Andy, a Bambi in the woods — an innocent, blond newcomer to a large Los Angeles high school. She initially declines the cool kids’ invitation to join them at Pandora’s Box, a raucous nightspot on the Strip. But the cool kids persist, and Andy reluctantly agrees. The comic relief in the gang is Grady, played by Tim Rooney, son of Mickey. (Is it in the genes? Rooney acts like a 1967-model Andy Hardy. He even drives a vintage jalopy that has, get this, “Rah! Rah!” painted on the back.) And so the gang descends on the Sunset Strip, which is teeming with (according to the narrator) “irresponsible, wild youths with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no goals in life.” Although, to be fair to the hippies, seeing bands like the Standells, the Chocolate Watchband and the Enemies at Pandora’s Box sounds like something to do. Meanwhile, business owners, outraged that hippies have commandeered the Strip, form an action committee. The media, in the person of heavily Brylcreemed TV newscaster Stokes (Bill Baldwin), puts tough questions to the LAPD’s watch officer, Lt. Walt Lorimer (Aldo Ray, looking sober more than half the time). Lorimer aims to negotiate with hippie leaders, and he doesn’t want cops cracking skulls. We learn why Andy is reticent about going to the dark side; she has a pink-haired mom who is constantly blotto (Hortense Petra, in the teary, wide-eyed performance of a lifetime). Plus, Lorimer is — ta-da! — Andy’s father. Partly to defy her dysfunctional parents, Andy returns to Pandora’s Box, where she

meets Herbie (Schuyler Hayden), a “movie star’s son with plenty of bread and nobody home to crack down.” That night, the kids hold a “freak-out” (an LSD party). “What’s a freak-out?” Andy asks Liz-Ann (Laurie Mock), who answers: “You mean you’ve never been on a trip? Come on, Alice in Wonderland, you haven’t lived!” Andy turns down LSD at the freak-out — she tries to protect her psychic virginity — but Herbie, a real skunk, slips some into her soft drink. When the drug hits, Farmer launches into an insane dance that lasts six minutes and 27 seconds. (I timed it.) The dance is jaw-dropping — sometimes artsy, sometimes awful. But when Farmer dances in slow motion illuminated by a red light, and the music intensifies, suddenly “Riot on Sunset Strip” isn’t so square anymore. The moment is gone, though, when Andy passes out, and then gets passed around by Herbie and his fellow creeps. This leads to vengeance-bent papa Lorimer beating up the offenders in front of many witnesses. Will Lorimer’s policy of non-violence fail now that he has used his fists? Will he reconcile with his wounded daughter? Will there ever be a riot in “Riot on Sunset Strip”? Many an old-school exploitation movie, lacking answers, has the narrator wrap things up by asking a few more. “Riot” does not buck that tradition. “One fact remains: Soon, half the world’s population will be under 22 years of age,” the narrator warns (somewhat like Kevin McCarthy screaming “You’re next!” at the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). “They must go somewhere. Where will they go? What will they do?”

Susan Strasberg and Peter Fonda are psychedelicized in “The Trip” (1967). Below: Dennis Hopper tokes up. © American International Pictures

‘The Trip’

An LSD movie starring Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper? Written by Jack Nicholson? And directed by Roger Corman for American International Pictures? That’s gotta be a slam dunk, right? Well ... Despite this high-powered talent, and the film’s catnip-y subject matter, “The Trip” (1967) is somewhat aimless. Plot: TV commercial director Paul (Fonda) is successful but unfulfilled, and to boot, going through a complicated divorce from wife Sally (Strasberg, who should have counted her lines in the script before signing on). Paul’s overly attentive psychiatrist, John (Dern), does what any medical professional would do to treat Paul’s malaise: prescribe an LSD trip. They score acid from a friendly neighborhood supplier (Hopper), whose domicile is a non-stop pot party. Back at John’s spread — with its magnificent mountain view and indoor-outdoor pool — Paul drops the acid while John hovers, smiling and observing. (Like I said: overly attentive.) Paul freaks out, splits from John’s place and runs around, loose and bug-eyed, in Los Angeles. That’s pretty much the whole movie. Although, “The Trip” gets interesting when Paul, tripping out of his mind, interacts with the real world. He infiltrates a suburban home at bedtime, pouring a glass of milk for a trusting little girl whose sleep is interrupted. Later, Paul has a whacked-out conversation with a female laundromat patron who is initially amused, but screams when he “frees” her laundry from the drier. “The Trip” is a bit too touchy-feely. Hopper’s character is so peace-andlove, you yearn for the acerbic edge of Billy, his “Easy Rider” character. But the hyper-edited trip sequences, and the trip FX overall, are cool. Corman enlisted lighting artists Bob Beck and Peter Gardiner, who used strobes, gels and liquid projection to

bring you inside Paul’s acid-addled head. It’s a weird movie. In 2012, I asked Corman if people were actually tripping while filming “The Trip.” “Not during the making of the picture, but before,” Corman said. “Jack Nicholson was a good friend of mine. His acting career was not going too well at that time. I knew he was a good writer. I knew he had experience with LSD. So did Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. “I took one trip myself, as a conscientious director,” Corman added, laughing. “But I had an extraordinarily good trip. I asked around for who had a bad trip, and everyone threw in their experiences and ideas. I did not want this to become a propaganda movie for LSD.” But Corman fell back on some old tricks. During Paul’s trip, a spacey merrygo-round sequence with Hopper looks like a flashback in one of Corman’s Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price. It makes you wonder: What if Peter Fonda had starred in a Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptation? The likely candidate would be Poe’s “A Descent Into the Maelstrom.” Which, come to think of it, “The Trip” kind of is.

Dean Stockwell wears the headband in “Psych-Out” (1968). © Dick Clark Productions; © American International Pictures

‘Psych-Out’

You can’t visit Oz, Gotham City or Mayberry. You can, however, visit San Francisco, just not the one in your mind. You know — the one with the dancing hippies on every block, the psychedelic posters in every window, the acidrock bands playing in every tavern. So here’s to an earnest, if sometimes a bit silly, movie titled “Psych-Out” (1968). If there’s one flick that can transport you back to a groovy, late-’60s San Francisco that may never really have existed, it is Richard Rush’s “Psych-Out.” Plot: Jenny (Susan Strasberg), a beautiful young deaf woman, buses it to Haight-Ashbury in search of her missing brother, Steve (Bruce Dern). New in town, Jenny falls in with Mumblin’ Jim, a rock band of fun-loving acid heads who tool around Frisco in a psychedelic van (one year before the “Scooby-Doo” gang). Mumblin’ Jim includes sardonic guitarist Stoney (Jack Nicholson), nice-guy keyboardist Ben (Adam Roarke) and perennially smiling drummer Elwood (“The Mack” star Max Julien). The band takes Jenny in like a stray, dressing her up in hippie garb, letting her crash at their filthy, overpopulated pad and helping her search for Steve, whom they know as “the Seeker.” They glean a lead from headband-wearing Dave (Dean Stockwell), a hipper-than-thou dude with a piercing gaze who lives in a box on a roof. They are attacked in a junkyard by a gang of short-hairs who are likewise seeking the Seeker. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs (who later shot “Easy Rider”) documents the hippie paradise that was San Francisco, just when it was on the cusp of extinction. (Interiors were shot in L.A.) For example, Kovacs captures the free-form look of “liquid projection,” a stage-lighting technique that was all the rage at those legendary acid-rock marathons. The Strawberry Alarm Clock is one of the bands seen playing live; their #1 hit “Incense and Peppermints” is heard on the film’s soundtrack. It’s weird seeing king of Hollywood Jack Nicholson pretend to rock out on guitar, and even weirder that he stole his stage moves from Davy Jones. (Well, Nicholson did write “Head” for the Monkees that same year.) Dern is styled as a Christ figure with a crazy brown wig, beard and flowing white shirt. Did hippies really do this? There’s a mock funeral in a park at which the Seeds perform. (Seeds singer Sky Saxon shakes some mean maracas, mannn.) Although, it’s unclear exactly where in the park the Seeds plugged in their amps.

‘Head’

A treatise on war, politics and celebrity? Or one huge mess? “Head” (1968) — starring the Monkees, directed by Bob Rafelson, written by Jack Nicholson and Rafelson — is both. No other movie has an Annette Funicello cameo and footage of the execution of Nguyen Van Lém. With its commentary on war-as-media-spectacle and the dark side of fame, “Head” is a grown-up (if stoned) alternate-universe version of “The Monkees” TV show. It seems improvised. Not the case. “There was a lot less improvisation on that movie than there was in the television show,” Mickey Dolenz told me in 2004. “We were sticking pretty close to the script. The script was well-written and finely crafted. That was Jack Nicholson scripting a movie that we all kind of came up and wrote.” “That whole movie was just something we threw together over a weekend in Ojai (Calif.),” Davy Jones told me in 1998. “We stayed at a hotel. We all met for three days and talked and discussed. We even fell out at the end of that! They took the tapes that we’d done, and they called it theirs.” Were the Monkees trying to be avant-garde in “Head”? “We weren’t trying to be anything; we were just reaching,” Jones said. “We were just trying to present ourselves in a different way, really, which was totally wrong for the occasion. We should have waited a little while longer, before we made ‘Head.’ The movie was interesting. It’s considered as either one of the classics of our time or just a bunch of stoned-out hippies just doing whatever they felt like doing at the time. “The only questionable part of it was the Monkees running over and jumping off the bridge (at the beginning of the film). We basically commit suicide, because we’re running away from something. I don’t know what it was.” “Head” had cameos by Nicholson, Dennis Hopper (in “Easy Rider” garb), Frank Zappa, Sonny Liston and Victor Mature. “All the people we had in that movie all fit those little vignettes that were pieced together,” Jones said. “We had the world champion, Sonny Liston, who I fought. Annette Funicello — ‘Davy, don’t fight, don’t fight.’ We had

Davy Jones puckers up in “Head” (1968). © Rhino Entertainment Co. the guru in there; he looked like the Maharishi (Yogi). Victor Mature was the epitome of Hollywood icons at the time.” Mature was a good sport. In his hilarious cameo, the miniaturized Monkees are lost in the movie star’s well-gelled hair. “It’s a funny thing. He, too, was in another world,” Peter Tork said of Mature, when we spoke in 1999. “Any time we were together,” Tork added with a laugh, “we were such different sizes that we didn’t actually act together.” In “Head,” a big black box in which the Monkees are trapped references an off-set recreational area the boys occupied in their TV days. But that’s not all. Said Tork: “The black box in the movie represents the binds that we — mostly Mike (Nesmith) and I — found ourselves in. I think it’s partly the box that anybody who is given a lot of fame, particularly if it is sudden, feels themselves to be in. In some ways, it’s what killed Elvis Presley. Although looking at it from another angle, he put himself in that box. “But most particularly, it was the box of corporate limitations. We weren’t allowed to break loose on our own. We weren’t allowed to do what we wanted to do. Each one of us tried to get out of the box in his own way.”

Mickey Dolenz dives deep in a psychedelic sequence from “Head.”

Pop-star politico Max Frost (Christopher Jones) and hangers-on in “Wild in the Streets” (1968). © American International Pictures

‘Wild in the Streets’

Flawed, with moments of searing brilliance, Barry Shear’s political satire “Wild in the Streets” (1968) takes potshots at both the ruling class and those pampered, know-it-all pop idols who — with a slavering fan base hanging on their every lyric — have come to believe their own hype. Christopher Jones stars as Max Frost, a 22-year-old rock star who languishes in an opulent L.A. mansion with an entourage of perpetually stoned yes-men. These include “vegetarian, mystic, acid head” and former child star Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi), and radical-turned-drummer Stanley X (Richard Pryor). Max is a born cult leader, a charismatic figure who is worshiped by the young and mistrusted by the old. Although, honestly, it’s kind of hard to see somebody for whom the Bobby Sherman shuffle is a signature move as another Jim Morrison. But Max has the ear of the younger generation — something liberal politician Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook) aims to exploit. When Fergus invites Max to play at his campaign rally, he gets a nasty surprise; Max uses the appearance as a launching pad for his own political ambitions, chiefly to lower the voting age to 14. Fergus is nervous, but his teen children are impressed. One of them borrows from John Lennon as he tells the singer: “Meeting the president didn’t mean anything, but you’re more famous than Jesus!” Top-billed Shelley Winters plays Max’s manic mama Daphne, who is disowned by the singer after she accidentally runs over a child while driving his Rolls Royce. This doesn’t stop Daphne from flaunting her association with her famous son and, before long, adopting the hippie lifestyle — fashions, drugs and all — in a desperate attempt to seem “with it.” Max’s clout expands with every new challenge to the status quo. He lowers the age required to hold office, which results in Sally getting elected to Congress. Her first words as a congresswoman: “America’s greatest contribution has been to teach the world that getting old is such a drag.”

Shelley Winters as Max’s mama, relegated to an LSD camp. The generational war escalates. Fergus tears down a Dylan poster from the bedroom wall of his young daughter (Kellie Flanagan), commanding: “From now on, you read ‘Winnie the Pooh’ or you don’t read anything! And ‘Little Women’! ‘Little Women!’ ” Her tearful reply: “I hate you, Daddy!” Stealing the movie is Ed Begley Sr. as sanctimonious living antique Senator Albright, who complains: “Youth is not only wasted on the young, it’s a disease.” But later in the film, when “LSD camps” are constructed to herd old people and keep them in an acid-induced state of docility, Albright is at the gate, wearing a robe and a smile as he bids his fellow old-timers not to fight the inevitable. Unbilled Walter Winchell cameos as himself, more or less, getting jostled by crowds of hippies as he delivers a characteristically staccato report. The old gent, whose politics were far to the right by this time, looks like he’s having a ball. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil contributed five songs. One of them, “The Shape of Things to Come,” became a #22 hit in real life, further blurring the line between real and reel.

Inventive, colorful, a product firmly of its time, with music beyond reproach. If only “Yellow Submarine” really was a Beatles film.

True, the Beatles bestowed their names, likenesses and songs by Al Brodax, a New Yorker who specialized in not-so-hot aniupon the 1968 animated feature. But the four lads from Liverpool mated adaptations of comic strips for television: “Popeye,” didn’t truly have an emotional, intellectual or artistic stake in “Beetle Bailey,” “Snuffy Smith and Barney Google.” Most signif“Yellow Submarine” — just a financial one. icantly, Brodax produced the quickie Saturday-morning ’toon It would have meant so much more if John Lennon, Paul “The Beatles” (1965-67), a curio of its time. The series was greenMcCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had voiced their lit in the days when the establishment assumed that Beatlemania cartoon counterparts. The fact that the Beatles couldn’t be bothwould be shortlived; the object was to cash in while you could. ered speaks volumes about their commitment to the project. The Beatles were unimpressed with the series, not that you The meandering story, “based on a song by John Lennon and could blame them. So why use Brodax for “Yellow Submarine”? Paul McCartney,” has the Blue Meanies attack utopian It seems the band owed one more movie in a three-picture deal Pepperland. Wearing a mockery of Mickey Mouse with United Artists, and sought release from the obligation. ears, the head Meanie employs Snapping Turtle “The Beatles wanted more than anything else to go to Turks, Apple Bonkers, the Flying Glove, India to get their lives straightened out with this guru The Blue Meanies’ clowns and anti-music missiles. The Beatles (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi),” Brodax told Bob apple bonking was are enlisted by veteran seaman Old Fred to Hieronimus in 1994. a metaphor for fight the Meanies. Along the way, they Brodax had a suggestion for the boys: While they encounter the Boob, an odd but likeable little were off achieving enlightenment in India, he could the 1940s Blitz. fellow whose theme song is “Nowhere Man.” complete an animated film. “Yellow Submarine” © Subafilms Ltd. The bombing of Pepperland is a psychedeli“All they had to do was sign a piece of paper — I’d cized revisiting of the Blitz. The head Meanie is do the work — thereby fulfilling their contract of the threeAdolf Hitler, and the apples that rain on Pepperland picture deal,” Brodax said. “So they latched onto this.” are akin to “doodlebugs” — bombs that sounded a shrill whistle He enlisted German artist Heinz Edelmann (1934-2009) to when dropped, signaling an impending explosion — which devasexecute the character design. Edelmann realized John, Paul, tated London and surrounding regions during World War II. George and Ringo as comic strip-like figures. “Yellow Submarine” was not alone in exploring this theme. “When I had seen Heinz’s work, (his) renderings of the four “British Invasion” musicians were toddlers during the Blitz, which Beatles, there was no question that he was the guy,” Brodax said. raged between 1940 and 1945. Keith Richards, who was born in “He had never done animation, and therefore, his technique 1943, spoke of a doodlebug that demolished his family abode. was not really suited for animation … they (the character designs) (Thankfully, no one was home at the time.) Wrote the musician in were very difficult to (animate), but worth the trouble.” “Life,” his 2011 memoir: “A brick or two landed in my cot. That When the flesh-and-blood Beatles finally show up at the end of was evidence that Hitler was on my trail.” Black Sabbath bassist the film, it’s a curious moment in Beatles history, and not a Geezer Butler told me that as a boy, he’d flattering one. The boys pretend to be singing along with the find shrapnel while playing in his yard. final song of the film (which obviously hadn’t yet been The Blitz sometimes shows up in the selected at the time of filming, because their lip-synching British rock of the period, like PTS put to and movements are, to coin a phrase, non-song-specific). The music. The Blitz rears its ugly head in Beatles wear matching shirts, as if the revolution hadn’t hapthe Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the pened — this was 1968, yo! And they half-heartedly deliver Devil” (1968) and Black Sabbath’s “War dialogue that references plot points in the film, in a transparent Pigs” (1970). Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a bid to connect them with it. Even that rebel Lennon comes off like Brick” (1972) largely talks about the a toe-the-line cream puff. effects of the war on the home front. In the 1995 documentary “The Beatles Anthology,” McCartney “Yellow Submarine” wasn’t the first derided the voice artists’ “terrible, fake Liverpool accents.” time the Beatles took ’toon form. The “I’m not sure why we didn’t do our own voices,” said film was produced Harrison in the same documentary. “But probably, the actors did it better, anyway.”

American movie “Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid” is what Dennis Hopper once called them. They are the motorcycle-riding long-hairs Wyatt and Billy, played by Peter Fonda and Hopper in “Easy Rider.” Hopper, who also directed the iconic 1969 counterculture road picture, always viewed “Easy Rider” as a western. There is an important difference, though. In westerns, drifters usually try to cross the plains without attracting attention. (It helps to ensure their safe travels.) Not so in the case of laid-back Wyatt and irascible Billy, who are willful magnets for the hateful stares, and worse, that they draw in the bigoted burgs along their journey. It’s the hair and wild getups, partly. But mostly, it’s ... The Bike. You know the one I mean. Wyatt’s stunning chopper is instantly recognizable as Smithsonian-worthy, with its implausibly long front forks and a teardrop gas tank decorated with a gleaming American-flag design. Just as Billy gives the finger to a yokel who taunts him to “get a haircut,” so Fonda and Hopper gave the finger to the movie-industry status quo in making the indie blockbuster, which was groundbreaking on several levels. It used contemporary songs (by Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, Roger McGuinn, the Band and others) instead of a conventional soundtrack. It used quick-cut, sometimes avant-garde editing. Sun-flares on the camera lens during riding scenes were intentional. And it has a flash-forward. Hopper (1936-2010) co-wrote the script with producer/star Fonda and screenwriter Terry Southern, though Hopper swore to his dying day that the script was his alone. It follows the exploits of two compadrés who score cocaine in Mexico, sell it to a wealthy weirdo (Phil Spector, using his reallife Rolls Royce and bodyguard), and invest in a pair of customized choppers. Into that stars-and-stripes-bedecked gas tank, Wyatt jams tubing stuffed with cash from the drug deal. Said Hopper (in 2005 commentary for the film): “The idea of putting all the money in a gas tank that had the American flag on it, the idea that we were destroying ourselves, and this beautiful chrome machine — we lived in the United States, and if we weren’t careful, we could explode and blow up and implode.” Wyatt and Billy kick-start their spiffy new rides, hit the road, and “Easy Rider” becomes part travelogue, part time capsule and, yes, part western. Need you be told that Billy is the Gabby Hayes surrogate? Their idea is to retire to Florida as rich men, but not before they take in the sights and sounds of Mardi Gras. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker (Luke Askew); visit a commune; go skinny-dipping with hippie chicks (Luana Anders and Sabrina Scharf); get thrown in jail for “parading without a permit”; meet an alcoholic lawyer (Jack Nicholson) who tags along; cruise past still-inhabited old slave shacks in Louisiana; pick up a couple of hookers (Karen Black and Toni Basil); and drop acid at Mardi Gras. Fonda and Hopper both had Hollywood pedigrees. As Henry Fonda’s son, Peter Fonda had a surname with juice, and Hopper had been a rising star in

From top: Jack Nicholson has breakfast; Dennis Hopper and Karen Black get acquainted; Peter Fonda digs deep; Mr. Billodeau. “Easy Rider” © Raybert Productions, Pando Company and Columbia Pictures

Bikers Wyatt (Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) search for America in “Easy Rider.” “Easy Rider” © Raybert Productions, Pando Company and Columbia Pictures films like “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant.” Also, both were graduates of the Roger Corman school of guerilla filmmaking. So these guys knew how to work in and outside of the system. The irony is, Fonda and Hopper had recently decided they needed to get away from motorcycles and drugs in the movies, lest they be typecast. (Fonda had starred in “The Wild Angels,” Hopper in “The Glory Stompers,” and both were in Corman’s LSD opus “The Trip.”) But then something weird happened. Newly minted MPAA chief Jack Valenti declared, at an industry function while looking directly at Fonda (according to the actor), that filmmakers needed to get away from sex, drugs and cycles, and make more movies like “Dr. Doolittle.” This set something off in Fonda. That night, the idea for “Easy Rider” came to him. DURING FILMING, HOPPER ENCOURAGED HAPPY accidents. When Nicholson, playing a deflowered pot virgin, cracked up during his stoned campfire rant about Venusians, that’s the take Hopper used. At a given location, Hopper sought local amateurs rather than actors to play small roles, to great effect. In the infamous café sequence, the hate-spewing good old boy in the CAT cap was not played by a pro. Could you have wanted a better man for the role? (Fonda always remembered the gentleman’s name: Hayward Robillard Jr.) Likewise, the fellow with the goiter on his neck who aimed to throw a scare into Wyatt was a nonactor named David C. Billodeau. Even the truck he rode in — the one Wyatt barrels toward, as if their two vehicles are locked in an old western showdown — is a real truck, not a movie prop. Nicholson’s participation was itself a happy accident. His character George Hanson — only a vague idea in Fonda and Hopper’s original scenario — was later fleshed out by Southern, according

to Southern biographer Lee Hill. Fonda wanted Rip Torn for the role. Nicholson was, at the time, planning to quit acting to concentrate on producing and writing. It was “Easy Rider” producer Bert Schneider who pushed for Nicholson’s casting. So Nicholson became George, and George commandeers the movie during his brief time within it. The character represents much. When we first see George, he is “in” with the law. Though he awakens in jail after having “tied one on,” the cops bring him aspirin and coffee, calling him “Mr. Hanson.” George, you see, is a local whose father has political pull. George can’t be touched, even in jail. His new long-haired friends are another story. As George warns Wyatt and Billy: “They got this here scissor-happy ‘Beautify America’ thing goin’ on around here. They’re tryin’ to make everybody look like Yul Brynner.” But when George tags along with these two, his fortunes change quickly. After a couple of days of riding and smoking weed around the campfire, George starts to resemble Wyatt and Billy in a way. He is certainly guilty by association in the eyes of the good-old-boy patrons of the Morganza, Louisiana, coffee shop into which the three travelers stumble for a bite of grub they never get. George is no longer protected. The locals see to that. An interesting sidelight here: When Hopper, on the spot, cast those amateurs in the café sequence, he told them a lie. He said that in the movie, the hippies had just raped and murdered a young woman. This gave the locals license to spew their hate with impunity. And — along with the grandeur of Monument Valley, the painterly purple hues of Southwestern sunsets, and the vanishing innocence of small-town America — it was recorded for posterity in “Easy Rider.”

Peter Fonda: Chopper was no easy ride

There’s an element of delicious irony to the origin of Peter Fonda’s American-flag-decorated motorcycle in “Easy Rider.” “The LAPD was auctioning off these cop bikes,” Fonda told me in 2013. “We got them for $500 apiece. Cliff Vaughs was the person who designed that bike. I mean, I designed it, with the tank being what it was with the flag, and the idea of extending the front end. But Cliff Vaughs put the big rake on the front. He was one of the Chosen Few, a motorcycle gang out of Watts. A half-dozen black people put it together. It was the height of political incorrectness: cop bikes built by guys from Watts.” How did Fonda make riding that chopper, with its outrageous front forks, look so effortless? “I studied riding,” he said. “I had ridden motorcycles, but nothing like that one.” Still, Fonda remained critical of his onscreen riding. “I didn’t master it as well as I should have,” the actor said. “I should have made that U-turn to pick up Luke Askew, the hitchhiker, but I had to walk it around. We only had two of these bikes; I had to make sure it didn’t fall. “Nuh-uh. I never mastered it. I thought I had. I just made it look good. It looked cool on film, but it was a bitch to ride.” Fonda didn’t try to hang onto the motorcycle after shooting. “I didn’t want that bike,” he said. “I think I gave it to somebody. No, it was stolen. There were two bikes. We burned one.”

Karen Black: Nightmare on Bourbon St.

Was the “Easy Rider” Mardi Gras shoot as wild as it looks? “Oh, no. The shoot was insane,” said Karen Black, who, with Toni Basil, played a hooker opposite Fonda and Dennis Hopper. “It was absolutely, like, your worst nightmare. It was an insanity.” There was a reason that she and Basil didn’t have the same, shall we say, motivation as did Fonda and Hopper. “Toni and I were the only ones who didn’t do drugs,” Illinois native Black (1939-2013) told me in 2003. “Of course, time gets all helter-skelter when you’re doing drugs, but not for Toni and myself. We sort of watched these guys drift around, you know, another avenue of life. Going (frantically) ‘I’m gonna git (unintelligible)!’ And never shooting the movie!

“We would get hysterical. We’d get the giggles so bad, we could hardly sit in one place. It was amazing.” Fonda is seen hugging a statue and sobbing, “You’re such a cruel mother and I hate you so much.” (A real-life reference: His mother, Frances, committed suicide in 1950, when Fonda was 10.) “Yes, well-l-l,” said Black, going into a thick Southern drawl, “everybody lo-o-oves that, darlin’. Talkin’ all about yer fam’ly an’ how mean they were to yew. Everybody lo-o-oves that.”

John Kay: Born to sell records

“At the time, it didn’t seem all that important.” That’s what Steppenwolf singer John Kay had to say about the prominent use of two of his songs in “Easy Rider.” “ ‘Born to be Wild’ had been a big hit in the summer of ’68,” the singer told me in 1997. “It was because of its success that Dennis Hopper was aware of it, because of the fact that our first album – with ‘Born to be Wild’ and ‘The Pusher’ on it – were in his record collection. “He and Peter said, ‘Hey, we’re running out of money. How about music? We don’t have anything left in the budget to go to the standard Hollywood music people and have them write a score. Besides, who wants to hear violins in this movie?’ “So Dennis took, basically, his favorite tunes, whether they were by (Bob) Dylan or (Jimi) Hendrix or Steppenwolf or Fraternity of Man or the Band or whoever, and plopped them all in there. He called everybody up and said (in faint Hopper impression), ‘Man, there’s not a lot of money here, but we’d really love for you to come and see this film and hear where we put your music, and see whether we can’t work something out.’ ” Did this movie exposure give Steppenwolf a career boost? “Sure,” Kay said. “The resulting success of the film caused a positive development for Steppenwolf. Internationally. Because, in parts of the world where we had, at that point, not toured, once the film became so successful and the soundtrack was released as a record — with ‘Born to be Wild’ and ‘The Pusher’ as part of that — it paved the way for us to tour places where, perhaps otherwise, it would have taken us another year or two. “Then as the years went by, the cult status that the film — and the music associated with it — developed didn’t hurt any, either.”

Many years ago, Peter Fonda gleaned some wisdom from a colleague of his movie-star dad, Henry Fonda. “At 14,” the younger Fonda recalled, “I heard Gary Cooper say, ‘If I know what I’m doing, I don’t have to act.’ “I’ve never forgotten that.” Fonda became a movie star in his own right, and applied this know-your-character philosophy to his best remembered role of Wyatt, the laid-back biker in the American-flag getup in “Easy Rider” (1969). “I wrote it and I talked it over with people. By the time it came for us to film it, I knew everything about this character,” New York City native Fonda (born 1940) told me in 2013. “It was the first time I realized that it’s better when you don’t act. Wow! It’s so easy to do if you know the character.” Fonda used another acting technique — internalization — in observing “Easy Rider” director/co-star Dennis Hopper in action. (The two sometimes clashed during filming, and by all accounts, Hopper could occasionally be something of a maniac, especially during “trial” filming in New Orleans.) “We shot the stuff at Mardi Gras first,” Fonda recalled, “then we came back and finished the script, so we could break it down and make a schedule. It’s just what happens. “During that time, I realized this is going to be a lot of fun. And I was thinking, ‘Gee, Dennis is being an a**hole.’ But I kept that for myself. I took that as an actor, and wore an enigmatic look on my face, being that person on that bike.” It was a lot of fun for Fonda, but filming “Easy Rider” was not without its downsides. Like their characters, Fonda and Hopper were occasionally hassled by “hawks” along the way. There were some physical side effects as well. “On the first day of riding, we shot while crossing the Colorado River,” Fonda recalled. “We rode 55 miles from Kingman (Arizona) to Needles (California). Dennis was all into different lenses and camera angles and stuff, which is kinda cool, but it can be overdone. Every time we’d do a (riding) scene, we’d go back and he’d change the lens size and do different camera angles. We must have crossed that bridge a dozen times. “It had been a long day, and it was hot on the road. I just wanted to get in the (hotel) pool with the crew. I peeled off my leathers, and my legs were purple from the leather dye! I thought, ‘I’m skinny enough. I don’t wanna go down to that pool with purple legs.’ ” Instead, Fonda put on jeans and repaired to the hotel bar. He recalled: “I said, ‘I want the coldest, tallest beer you got.’ They weren’t quite sure who I was, but they put this tall, frosty stein full of beer in front of me. “I slapped down my money. I’m left-handed, so I picked up the stein with my left hand, but I could not move it to my mouth. Then I picked it up with my right hand, and I still could not move it to my face.” Thankfully, this too was a temporary condition. Fonda concluded that it resulted from a day of slow riding while holding his arms high to accommodate the chopper.

“All day, I had been riding at 25 miles per hour with soft tires, so the camera could focus on the background going by,” Fonda said. “Otherwise, it would just be a blur. That’s the trick. Nobody’s ever commented on that, and you can imagine how many questions I’ve been asked about the film. “But I had no idea what would happen to my arms. I was confident about the character, but not about my arms holding down that bloody bike.” After the film wrapped, Fonda and Hopper realized they needed to shoot one more sequence, a campfire scene that sets up the climax. Hopper had a lot of dialogue for Fonda, which Fonda basically boiled down to three words — again, in the interest of keeping his character enigmatic. “I knew the strongest line in ‘Easy Rider,’ ” Fonda said. “In ‘Easy Rider,’ it was: ‘We blew it.’ No matter what else was said, ‘We blew it’ was the stunner. That was the real bag that captured everyone with, ‘What?’ and left them without an answer.”

Fonda as Wyatt

Psychedelia was a genre exclusively bound to no format. It was music. It was fashion. It was movies. It was photography. It was dance. And it was, um, recreational imbibing. But there was one medium that seemed to inform all others, one that set the crazy-colored, anything-goes tone for the genre. And that was . . . art. The wildest of psychedelic music seemed bent on evoking the visual. In that imbibing department, there was much talk of “tasting colors.” Fashions, album covers, typography and set design in film all borrowed liberally from visual themes in psychedelic art. Art was — as the hippies used to say — where it’s at. Where did psychedelic art begin? Cave paintings from as far back as 38,000 B.C. may have been inspired by hallucinogens (according to a 2013 paper published in the scientific journal Adaptive Behavior). The kaleidoscope — an enchanting invention which likely provided the earliest examples of what can confidently be called psychedelic art — was invented in 1816 by Sir David Brewster, a Scottish scientist. The Modernism art movement, which defied centuries-old art conventions with experimental, free-form approaches — originated in the late 19th century. Modernism paved the way for other groundbreaking movements, such as Dadaism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, cubism, pop art and op art. Among the best-remembered boundary-pushing artists of post-

Modernism are Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Salvador Dali (190489), Pablo Picasso (1908-73), Jackson Pollock (1912-56), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97) and Andy Warhol (1928-87). Psychedelia as we know it was commercialized for a mass market once pop and rock musicians began experimenting with hallucinogens — hence their music, hence their album covers, hence their clothes and lifestyles. Rock became the vehicle of delivery globally and locally. Posters that advertised rock concerts in San Francisco (especially), Los Angeles, New York and other cities proliferated from the mid to the late ’60s, and took psychedelic art into even crazier climes. The often distorted lettering on the posters — you almost had to be high to read it — handily weeded out mismatched potential patrons of such events. If you can’t read the poster, mannn, this show isn’t for you. Victor Moscoso (born 1936) adapted nostalgic images for modern purposes, such as his “top hat Indian” poster for a 1966 Big Brother and the Holding Company show, or his nude “vamp” (a dead ringer for silent-movie star Theda Bara) advertising a 1967 show by the Miller Blues Band. A master at juxtaposing neon colors, Moscoso was as much a graphic artist as an illustrator. The same could be said for John Van Hamersveld (born 1941), who created a memorable poster for a 1968 Jimi Hendrix gig.

The “skeleton and roses” poster designed by Stanley Mouse (born 1940) and Alton Kelley (1940-2008) — a riff on a 1913 illustration by one E.J. Sullivan — became known as Bertha, mascot of the Grateful Dead. (Bertha graced the cover of the Dead’s eponymously titled seventh album of 1971.) Likewise, a Bob Dylan poster by Milton Glaser (born 1929) endures as an iconic image of the folk singer. Wes Wilson (born 1937) and Bonnie MacLean (born 1939) did many a poster for events mounted by impresario Bill Graham. Peter Max (born 1937) turned psychedelic art into an industry, and himself into a brand. The art of Rick Griffin (1944-91) seemed like faithful depictions of his acid trips, with gnarly eyeballs and polished chrome as recurring motifs. Brooklynite Arnold Skolnick (born 1937) created the Woodstock poster. His instantly recognizable cut-out illustration of a dove perched on a guitar came to symbolize the festival and, indeed, the entire hippie movement. British artist Bridget Riley (born 1931) hypnotized with warped optics in such pieces as “Movement in Squares” (1961). You were sometimes disoriented when you looked at her work. But that was the idea.

Opposite: Posters heralding rock events include two each by Bonnie MacLean (top row, left) and Rick Griffin (top row, right). This page, top row: Victor Moscoso augmented nostalgic images with neon color schemes. Second row, from left: Three Wes Wilson posters and Milton Glaser’s iconic Bob Dylan. Right: Richard Avedon’s Beatles. © Respective copyright holders 6

To the Max WHEN YOU THINK OF 1960s psychedelia, you think of Peter Max. The artist’s “Love” poster, which shows a young woman’s face emerging from a flower stem (or does it?), is an iconic image of the era. Max’s color-saturated work was strikingly contemporary, even as it drew from nostalgic genres such as art deco. Max wore long hair and a euphoric grin, and his art conveyed childlike innocence. But Max’s flair for self-promotion and branding proved the bottom line was on his mind as much as peace and love. I spoke with the native of Berlin, Germany, in 1997. Q: In the ’60s, you were one of the progenitors of the psychedelic genre of art. Are there precedents in art history for the psychedelic look? MAX: You know, there have been. There have been precedents, always, in these Romantic periods. The NeoRaphaelites. In Japan, Hokusai. And the art nouveau period: (Antonio) Gaudi and (Alphonse) Mucha and some of the art nouveau artists. There have been those type of elements. But it’s never been so extreme, so psychedelic, where it’s really fresh. Of course, there was no media at the time. This became a national phenomenon. Q: Simplicity is a large aspect of your work — an almost a childlike simplicity that belies its sophistication. Is it done unconsciously? MAX: There has to be a simplicity in the work. It shouldn’t be effortive. It has to come real naturally. It should be a fun thing. You know, many years ago, 200 years ago, when it was the realists (art movement), there was a very big effort to make a face look like

Peter Max in 1997. Opposite: A 1969 Life cover story “really bolted me into space,” said the artist. Photo by Kathy Voglesong; magazine © Time Inc.

a face, and eyeballs look like they’re wet, and hair to look like hair and cotton like cotton and silk like silk. But that’s not necessary today; the camera does that.

Q: In your style, you often have black linework filled with color. It reminds me of comic book reproduction. Were the comics books an influence on your work? MAX: The very expressionistic kind of stuff, oh, yeah. Always. When I was very young, I discovered comic books. I saw that people drew these things. I was fascinated. I wanted to draw like that. I started drawing a lot. And drawing made it happen. Once I drew a lot, then I knew I had the instinct of making images. Q: Do you remember which comic book artists you read? MAX: I forgot the artists. It would be the regular comic books — you know, “Batman,” “Superman” and all those. Then, of course, I studied art. I found that there were things like compositions. Who knew? I didn’t know that there were such things as compositions or color combinations. Once I got a knack for compositions and color combinations, it just took off on its own. And then suddenly, innovation happened. I started innovating images. Then the public picked it up. I started getting articles and articles and reproductions. It all happened. Q: Did drugs play any part in your art? MAX: Yeah, in the beginning, there was a moment in my life. Luckily, later on, I found a swami from India, Swami Satchidananda. He’s a very holy man that I brought from India to America. He was the real thing.

Peter Max unveils his artwork of Ringo Starr in New York City So lots of us in New York who were experimenting with the psychedelics moved over to yoga and became completely vegetarian and started meditating and getting it that way. Q: Was there a “breakthrough” work of art in your career? MAX: There’ve been many, many, many breakthrough pieces. Each one took me sort of from one level to another level. The very first could have been when my Aunt Zeisel commissioned me to do a portrait of her and her husband. She lived to be over 100. I painted a portrait, and everybody in the family thought it was great. The whole neighborhood — an inner-circle type of thing from the family out. Then when I went to art school, I started winning awards. So that was another breakthrough. Q: What were some of your professional breakthroughs? MAX: I did a cover once of Meade Lux Lewis, who was a boogie-woogie pianist, which won a gold award. I did it for Riverside Records (“The Blues Piano Artistry of Meade Lux Lewis,” 1961). That started all the art directors in New York City wanting to use me to do artwork for record covers and book jackets while I was painting all the time. Then I started doing posters, and these were breakthrough pieces, because I went from zero to 600 million posters in about a year and a half. It was a tremendous breakthrough. From the posters came all the product lines: General Electric, Van Heusen, Burlington Mills, Wrangler Jeans. Q: What broke you as far as media attention goes? MAX: One of the first was “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It

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to promote the ex-Beatle’s 1999 tour. Photo by Kathy Voglesong was a tremendously popular Sunday-night show that had the Beatles and just everybody on. My good friend (actor/ comedian) Jerry Stiller got me in touch with the Ed Sullivan people, and I got on. And then I was in Life magazine (in 1969). These were all big, big, pivotal places. Imagine being in Life magazine back then, when Life magazine was Life magazine — one of 12 or 15 magazines we had in America. Back then, there was just Good Housekeeping and Glamour and Seventeen and Look and Life, right? And then maybe Popular Mechanics and McCalls and Ladies Home Journal and National Geographic. That was about it. I was an eight-page cover story (in Life), which really bolted me into space. Then my very successful licensing thing. That bolted me into outer space. So I became very, very well known. So it wasn’t one particular one. But there were little thrusts, little foot-on-the-pedals, where you went from zero to 60 in a few seconds out of nowhere. My career went on every day like a normal day. Suddenly, a cover story comes out. Of course since then, I’ve had maybe 400 or 500 cover stories. They’re all important to me and they all are exciting. Q: When you look back on your art from the ’60s, does it seem timeless? Or dated? MAX: It’s both. It’s both. You know, there was a time when I wanted to do brand new stuff. But now it’s full circle. I started to love it (the psychedelic genre) again completely. It’s timeless. It’s always very youthful, very naive and innocent and euphoric.

Cereal ’n’ 7Up: The art of branding Art and commerce have always been strange, or at least wary, bedfellows. An artist must be true to his craft, but more importantly, he’s gotta eat. In the ’60s, psychedelic icon Peter Max had a friggin’ smorgasbord. Besides the sales from his posters, which were stratospheric, there were Max’s corporate alliances with Pan Am, 7Up, General Electric and others. Max’s art was ubiquitous — not just in the hippie world, but in the retail world. “I created a billion-dollar industry,” Max told me in 1997. “By the time I was 29, I’d already done a-billion-one in retail. It was all shock and surprise and shock and surprise. All I wanted to do all the time was just be innovative and creative.” Mind you, Max’s good fortune came at a time when hippies were decrying the mainstreaming of their culture. (That’s why they called it the counter-culture.) Which side was Max on? Well, his, and he was no shrinking violet on the subject. I asked the artist if he gave any thought to the anti-commercial stance of the flower children. “I never did,” Max said. “I loved the fact that media plays a large role in this. Media does create branding. Branding is important. It’s an American phenomenon. More than anything else, it has to do with people liking things. And things are branded as being colorful or being good-tasting or good-looking. So it’s a compliment. The whole idea of commercialism doesn’t affect me, because everything in America is commercial. Whether it’s a classical piece at Lincoln Center — it’s paid for. The audience pays, Lincoln Center makes money. And on and on and on. “It’s just a means of making everything go and work.” Work, it did. There were Peter Max jeans, sneakers, wall clocks, china, a vegetarian cookbook, even Peter Max cereal. It was a Swiss import called Love — a name like Froot Loops or Cocoa Puffs wouldn’t do — and the box type proclaimed: “Love is the modern food for modern people.” For 7Up, Max designed metallic signs, even paper cups. The title of Max’s “Paper Airplane Book” was not a misnomer; inside the paperback were found paper airplane designs to cut and fold. A suggestion from the back cover: “Send love notes to the universe.” When Max’s artwork transitioned from flat reproduction to three-dimensional objects such as clocks and clothing, how far into the manufacturing process did the artist shepherd his vision? “As far as I could, usually in the design aspect,” he said. “I had a team at that time, already, of 55 people. When we would do a line of clothes, myself and my designers around me would meet with (the manufacturers’) people. We would just conference and see what they needed and what we wanted to give them, how we wanted it to look. “We always fought for the right colors and the right textures and the right product that would be good, because we were putting it out there for my fans in America. So we wanted things to look nice. So we were involved all the time.” In Max’s view, creativity was what’s behind the union of art and commerce — something the artist believed was a particularly American pursuit. “As the years went on,” Max said, “I realized that creativity is my first and foremost interest. The art is part of it. The art is in my blood. But creativity brings art into everything. Creativity brings art into business. Creativity brings art into relationships. Creativity brings art into how you eat and how you sleep. “Creativity is what really makes America really be what it is, compared to other countries. We’re the most creative country in the world.”

Peter Max worked his brand. From top: Max’s “Man Must Moon” poster, wall clock, “Love” cereal, “Love” poster detail, 1971 book, 7Up cup.

Covers for the Beatles, Blue Cheer (both 1967), Jefferson Airplane and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (both 1968). “Magical Mystery Tour” © Apple Records; “Vincebus Eruptum” © Philips; “Crown of Creation” © RCA Vctor; “A Child’s Guide to Good & Evil Vol. 3” © Reprise

Dreams by design John Van Hamersveld captured the art of rock

With its curved type and crazy color scheme, the Beatles’ record company) EMI provided the artwork for the covers. He “Magical Mystery Tour” album cover (1967) is a hallmark of the said, ‘Try to make this psychedelic, and get back to me.’ psychedelic era. Still, the cover’s designer, artist John Van “I went back to my studio. I had been working on posters for Hamersveld, described his process matter-of-factly. (the promoter) Pinnacle Rock Concerts. So I had graphic informa“It’s a photograph,” Van Hamersveld told me in 2016. “Here’s tion that I brought into the cover — the dots and the typography the whole thing: It has nothing to do with the art per se. It’s all and the curvatures and the negative-and-positive figures.” about the image being a promotion, a Van Hamersveld showed his completed campaign to sell the plastic disc on the concept to the Capitol executive. Recalled inside. It’s a piece of cardboard wrapped the artist: “I say, ‘Here it is.’ He says, ‘I around a plastic disc. It’s very political.” love it. We’re not going to show it to anyMaryland native Hamersveld also one. We’ll just print it.’ ” designed album covers for Jefferson Airplane, Blue Cheer and the Rolling THE FOLLOWING YEAR, THE Stones. He created psychedelic posters artist squabbled with Jefferson Airplane for rock concerts, and his iconic “Endless over his $9,000 fee for designing the cover Summer” poster was exhibited in the of “Crown of Creation,” which shows the Smithsonian. band floating in a mushroom cloud. Van Hamersveld explained that in “They thought because they gave me 1967, he was the personal art director for half a kilo of pot, that was my payment,” a Capitol Records vice president. Van Hamersveld said with a laugh. “He hired me from art school, “So the bill was sent to RCA. They because I was a hipster,” Van said, ‘We’ve never paid anybody $9,000 Hamersveld said. “He knew that I knew for a cover. Not even for Elvis Presley.’ ” everything about my generation.” Van Hamersveld eventually collected This executive had a problem. The EP his fee. If he had any fears of bad blood (an “extended play” record, essentially a between he and Jefferson Airplane, they short album) of “Magical Mystery Tour” were dispelled when the band’s manager was bombing in England; its U.S. release, summoned him to a 1968 Airplane show in full album format, was imminent. at the Fillmore East in New York City. “It was an EP sitting on his desk,” “He puts me in the center of the theVan Hamersveld said of his initial meetater,” the artist said. “There’s the aroma of Van Hamersveld’s Jimi Hendrix poster. ing about the cover. “The one in London © 1968 Pinnacle Concerts pot. The lights dim. A strobe is coming was attached to a TV program (also titled directly at your eyes, pulsating. The band ‘Magical Mystery Tour’). It was never an album (in England). is making a roaring noise, as if a bomb is going off. Your eyes had “What happened was this: (the Beatles’ manager) Brian Epstein to adjust once they turned off the strobe. Then they spotlighted the died (in 1967). Between the vice president and myself, his probgroup. They were set up to represent the album cover concept! lem was that the record was not a hit there. The TV movie regis“After the show, I went backstage. We smoked a doobie and tered as ‘unliked.’ He was in a bind, because normally (British we were still friends.”

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“Forget the old . . . The new Wonder Woman is here!”

So goes psychedelic lettering on the cover of Wonder Woman #178 (1968). The art, by Mike Sekowsky — once described as a “frustrated fashion artist” by fellow DC Comics artist Murphy Anderson — shows Diana Prince in an up-to-the-minute getup (complete with thigh-high boots) that would make Diana Rigg envious. Behind her is a poster in which the “old” Wonder Woman and her alter-ego, Diana (unsexy in spectacles), are crossed out with paint. For the next 25 issues, Diana fought evil wearing mod threads; ran a trendy boutique; studied martial arts under mysterious blind instructor I Ching; and generally associated with hippies, bikers and beautiful people. Very “Austin Powers” and, for its time, revolutionary in comics. More than any other artist then working for DC Comics, Sekowsky (1923-89) — the founding Justice League of America artist derisively called a “speed merchant” by one inker — captured the look and sensibility of the late 1960s. In a scene in John Schlesinger’s 1969 film “Midnight Cowboy,” Jon Voight is riding a bus to New York when he spots a little girl reading a comic. The child is clearly reading Wonder Woman #178, with that wild Sekowsky cover. To a tiny faction of comic-book geeks, the significance of the scene is deep and resonant. Here was a comic book that reflected the changing mores of society, grabbing screen time in a movie that also reflected those changes. The likely reality? Don’t tell those comic-book geeks, but Schlesinger’s assistant director probably sent a gofer to the closest drug store to buy any current comic book that a young girl might read. Perhaps Betty and Veronica was sold out, so Wonder Woman again saved the day.

OK, we’ve firmly established that Mike Sekowsky had a thing for thigh-high boots. Above: Diana rocks the Tangerine Trolley in Wonder Woman #178 (1968). Opposite: Sekowsky’s wild #178 cover. Diana pulls on some — what else? — thigh-high boots, in Wonder Woman #181 (1969). © DC Comics Inc.

Showcase showdown: As superheroes

Dolphin is in the swim, from Showcase #79 (1968). Far right: The Maniaks hold a pow-wow, from Showcase #69 (1967). Opposite: Jason is on his quest, from Showcase #88 (1970). © DC Comics, Inc.

initially neglected to keep up with the times, DC shrewdly used its “tryout” title, Showcase, to explore youth culture. Early stabs such as “The Maniaks” (#68, 69 and 71), a British pop group drawn by Mike Sekowsky, were cute, funny and a bit square. Still, authentic hipness crept in. “Dolphin” (#79), by J. Scott Pike, was a water-breathing humanoid who resembled a flower child in her flowing blond hair and cutoffs. “Jason’s Quest” (#88-90), also by Sekowsky, had a shaggy, guitar-strumming, motorcycleriding teen searching for the twin sister he never knew.

Dynamic duo: They didn’t come much

Teen dreams: By definition, the “teen” comic books were about youth culture — albeit, wholesome youth culture — and groovy fashions made their mark on the genre. You found contemporary looks in DC’s Binky, Swing With Scooter and Debbi’s Dates; Marvel’s Millie the Model and Patsy and Hedy; and all of the books from Archie. Teen Titans, not a “teen” book per se, gave Wonder Girl a kinda groovy costume. DC’s comedy titles, too, flirted with modernity. The Adventures of Bob Hope introduced Super-Hip, a parody of pop stars and an alter-ego for Hope’s nerdy ward, Tadwallader. Angel’s wardrobe in Angel and the Ape was all colored tights and miniskirts.

more “old guard” than Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the duo behind Captain America. Working separately for DC in the early ’70s, these old-timers got a bit “with it.” Simon brought out Brother Power the Geek, a quasifantasy about a clown-faced mannequin who comes to life to face the chaos of modern times. Simon was also behind Prez, the “first teen president,” which borrowed heavily from the 1968 film “Wild in the Streets.” Kirby’s Forever People looked, and sometimes acted, like hippies on a commune. Except, of course, for that constantly pinging Mother Box.

Left: The decidedly unhip Super-Hip, from Bob Hope #100 (1966). © DC Comics, Inc.

The hot-button topic of election year 1968?

Without question, it was: Are you a “hawk” (pro-escalation) or a “dove” (pro-withdrawal)? Marvel refugee Steve Ditko parlayed this bitterly debated issue into “The Hawk and the Dove” for DC’s Showcase #75 (1968). The Vietnam War is not specifically named in Steve Skeates’ script, though editor Dick Giordano name-checks the war in an afterword. The story has high-schoolers Hank and Don Hall divided over the war; Hank is pro, Don believes “violence only begets more violence.” Their father, Judge Irwin Hall, encourages his boys to support their arguments with facts and reason. (“It’s not enough to repeat slogans!”) When Judge Hall is hospitalized after a murder attempt by a gangster, the boys have a common goal. But their origin is iffy. Trapped in a warehouse, Don wishes for powers. A disembodied voice suddenly says: “You wish power? Then so be it!” This entity grants them increased strength “whenever injustice strikes.” Ditko was also the founding artist of “The Creeper,” the cackling anti-hero in Showcase #73 (1968). The Creeper didn’t share the topical resonance of the Hawk and the Dove, but his costume was quite psychedelic: green hair, yellow skin and a wild red cape with tentacles that have a mind of their own. The point was that the look of superheroes was changing, and Ditko was among those leading the charge.

Above: The tumultuous times were reflected on Steve Ditko’s Showcase #75 cover. Left: The Hawk takes a beating from a psychedelic gang. Right: The freaky Creeper (all 1968). © DC Comics Inc.

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Above: The Archies audition for Don Kirshner in Archie #189 (1969). Opposite: Josie goes antiwar on the cover of #34 (1969).

Below: Psychedelic jalopy, Reggie and Me #27 (1968). Below left: Stylish dancer, Madhouse Annual #7 (1969). Bottom right: Veronica in bloom, Pep #27 (1968).

All artwork © Archie Comics

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The underground FREDRIC WERTHAM DIED IN 1981, SO IT’S possible the self-appointed Blamer-of-All-Societal-Illson-Comic-Books may have looked at Zap Comix. But since there were no reports of Wertham’s head having exploded, it’s safe to assume he never read Zap. Wertham often saw decadence where there was none. But the underground cartoonists who proliferated from the mid ’60s on really did put the bad (good?) stuff in. In the pages of Zap Comix, Snarf, Big Ass Comics, Despair, Bijou, Rip Off Comics, Trashman, Subvert Comics, Slow Death, Wimmen’s Comix, Dope Comix, Cocaine Comix, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary and many others, no sexual act was too obscene, no language too lewd, no depiction of drug use too graphic, no idol too lofty to topple. Also, it seemed, no artist was too stoned to draw. Reading certain underground comics was like tagging along on someone else’s acid trip. Underground comics offered total freedom to artists because they were published completely outside of the mainstream. Publishers were usually fellow hippies. Distribution occurred in head shops, urban record stores, iffy cafés and book stores, even on street corners. Advertising, and censorship, were non-existent. Major underground scenes sprang up in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee and — that scene of so many scenes — San Francisco. Mere mention of the artists’ names conjures their styles and signature characters: R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat; S. Clay Wilson’s smirking demons; Kim Deitch’s Méliès-esque moons and cats; Trina Robbins’ inclusive feminism and reverence for comics history; Spain Rodriguez’s machine gun-brandishing Trashman; Jay Lynch’s Mutt and Jeff-like Nard n’ Pat; Justin Green’s über-brat Binky Brown; Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, with their motto: “Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.” These were the pen-and-pipe pioneers.

Trina Robbins

Robbins made her professional cartooning debut in 1966, in the New York Citybased underground newspaper the East Village Other. “Of course, I didn’t get paid,” the Brooklyn native (born 1938) told me in 1993. “I was just thrilled to actually be in the paper in those days.” In 1969, Robbins headed west to San Francisco. “The whole of underground comics seemed to be here in San Francisco,” she said. “There was a publishing company called Print Mint that had done all those fabulous psychedelic rock posters, and now they were doing

Robert Crumb’s cover for Zap #0 (1969). Below: Zap #4 detail by Victor Moscoso. © Respective copyright holders comics. A couple of other publishers kind of popped up at the same time, all in San Francisco. It was like San Francisco was the mecca of underground comics. Not just me, but at least five other New Yorkbased underground cartoonists all kind of migrated west. I think of it as a lemming-like migration, except we did stop sort of the ocean.” Robbins’ breakthroughs were It Ain’t Me Babe (1970), the first comic produced entirely by women, and Wimmen’s Comix (1972). “Up until that point, underground comics was very much a boys’ club,” Robbins recalled. “The guys hung out and drank with each other and networked with each other and asked each other to be in their books. And they weren’t hanging out with us and not working with us and asking us to be in their books. And so we realized that we had to it ourselves. And so we did.” Robbins was once married to Deitch, another important underground comics artist who kicked off his career in New York City.

Kim Deitch

Deitch, too, started in the East Village Other, in 1967. First, he was employed in what he called “straight” jobs. “While I was working in one of those jobs, somebody showed me the East Village Other, which had a strip in there called ‘Captain High,’ ” the Los Angeles native (born 1944) told me in 2003. “I looked at it and figured, ‘Well, I’m no great shakes as an artist, but I can draw as good as that.’ It gave me the confidence to quit my job and go down to the Lower East Side to see what I could do in the way of art. “At that particular moment in time, I wasn’t really sure whether I was going to be a painter or do comics or what. I’d been having some success doing semi-abstract paintings. When I got down to the city, almost amazingly, I got a job right away at the East Village Other, but for no money. So it was fine until my savings ran out.” Deitch sounded as if drawing underground comics was a calling. Said the artist: “The interesting thing was that when I got to the city, I was looking at the comics that were influencing me immediately at the time. Those were probably mostly Marvel Comics — the ones that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were drawing. But it was like: I just suddenly got the idea that something more could be done with comics. “I think what I’m saying is that this was an idea that a lot of people were having at about that time. It was definitely in the air. Maybe it was the influence of pop art, among other things. But there was definitely a feeling going around that there was potential in the field of comics that hadn’t really been exploited yet. It was almost as if I could say, ‘I got the idea to create underground comics.’ But then there were probably about six

Gilbert Shelton’s Freak Brothers and bong. © Gilbert Shelton or eight people all over the country who were all having that same idea, and all seemed to be inventing underground comics. Because it was just in the wind.” Deitch’s comics in particular seemed like they were concocted by an artist under the influence. “I used to smoke pot when I drew my comics, but that was a long time ago,” Deitch said. “You get to a certain point — if you’re going to grow, you can’t sit there being stoned all the time.”

Jay Lynch

When we look back at the underground comics scene, it seemed like a true movement. But was it organized? Were the artists somehow networking? “I would not call it ‘networking.’ It was more of a street gang or a mafia,” New Jersey native Jay Lynch (1944-2017) told me in 2014. “We were in contact. Shelton and Crumb were in Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! magazine between 1961 and, I dunno, ’66. Crumb sent me copy of the first issue, which I sold for $13,000 years ago. Crumb didn’t go to college. Shelton did some stuff in college humor magazines. Skip (Williamson) and I did stuff in college humor magazines. Before that, we did fanzines. Crumb did a fanzine, but we dismissed it because it was Disney-looking,” Lynch laughed. “We did imitations of Mad. Then he did Foo! (another fanzine), which had parodies and stuff, so it was acceptable to us.” Lynch and Williamson relocated to Chicago, where they kick-started their own underground scene. “We published the Chicago Mirror, a written satire magazine,” Lynch said. “This was at the time when the underground newspapers had started. We’d sell the Mirror on the street. It was satire.”

Spain Rodriguez’s Trashman takes a drag. © Spain Rodriguez

Case in point: “At the time, it was rumored that people were smoking bananas. So I published a story about people who were smoking dog poop. The best kind was in Lincoln Park (in Chicago). The people who smoked it were called ‘s***heads.’ We sold the magazine in the street. A hippie came up to me and said, ‘Thanks for the tip, man. We’ve been smokin’ dogs***, and it’s great!’ I said, ‘No! That’s a satire!’ ‘No it’s not!’ “We thought maybe we were overestimating our audience, so we decided to do it as a comic book.” Lynch and Williamson got this idea after laying eyes on Crumb’s seminal Zap Comix #1. Lynch explained: “During the Democratic Convention (in 1968), Crumb came to Chicago and stayed at my house. Shelton decided to do a comic book, too, when he saw Zap. Crumb was in (Lynch’s book) Bijou; Shelton was in Bijou.” Lynch’s flagship characters, a man and cat named Nard and Pat, resemble “Mutt and Jeff” or the work of “Krazy Kat” artist George Herriman. Crumb, too, wore these influences. It’s clear that 1930s cartoonists had a profound effect on the underground artists. Said Lynch: “The ’30s and the ’40s, that was the stuff we read when we were kids. Zap was ’30s- and ’40s-looking characters having sex and taking drugs. It was like weird images from our childhood, coming back as degenerates or something. “Viz in England became the largest humor magazine. It was the same theory of taking images from 30 or 40 years ago and having them doing insane stuff. But nostalgia in England was different. We had Snuffy Smith, they had Biffo the Bear and The Beano and The Dandy. But it had the same psychological impact as the early underground comics.” The success of Zap Comix may have spelled the end of the golden age of underground comics, in Lynch’s view. “In 1963, (writer-artist) Jack Jackson did a book called ‘God Nose,’ but the first successful underground comic book was Zap,” he said. “It was a good operation when it was just three or four books, but then there were 1,000 books. In those days, we thought we were messing around, but our circulation was higher than some magazines today, now that nobody reads anymore.”

Trina Robbins’ “It Ain’t Me Babe” cover; a Kim Deitch cat; an S. Clay Wilson demon. © Respective copyright holders

Harvey Pekar

A one-of-a-kind writer of underground comics was Cleveland-to-the-core Harvey Pekar, whose large-format comic book American Splendor depicted mundane episodes in his life. In reading American Splendor, you almost feel as if you are eavesdropping on Pekar’s actual daily existence. The writer kept things real, never jazzing up a story for the “camera.” “That’s always been one of my goals,” Pekar (19392010) told me in 2005. He explained that after meeting Crumb in Cleveland in 1962, he began to contemplate untapped potential in the medium of comics. Said Pekar: “I thought, ‘Well, what can I do about this? What do I know about?’ “The only thing I knew about was my own life, really. That was just a typical working-class life. But I found a lot of things that were interesting about it. I found a lot of amusing things that happened to me. “I thought, ‘Everybody’s life is interesting in some way or another.’ So I wanted to try and just write about the so-called ‘quotidian life,’ and see if maybe people can’t identify with what I’m saying.” Pekar’s magazine was adapted into a well-reviewed 2003 film, also titled “American Splendor,” starring Paul Giamatti as Pekar (though the writer himself also appeared … as himself.) Not surprisingly, this heady success did not cause Pekar — who famously and repeatedly dissed David Letterman to his face on the air — to go “Hollywood.” “My life since then has been remarkably unchanged,” Pekar said. “I get up and I try to set myself a goal — write a certain amount of words, different projects that I try and get involved in. I still live a pretty quiet life in the same neighborhood. It’s really not much different at all. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

Denis Kitchen

When artist-turned-publisher Denis Kitchen founded Kitchen Sink Press in 1969, it was the epitome of a grass-roots venture. “I had absolutely no money,” the native of Milwaukee (born 1946) told me in 2005. “I worked out of my apartment, which was a second-floor walkup. It doubled as the warehouse, so it got crammed to the gills. It was a real bootstrap organization. It came out of our passion for the comics culture and the antiwar movement. My form of expression was cartoons.

worked out of our homes. As the publisher, I was sort of the central clearing house for everybody. It was all done Harvey Pekar by mail — ‘snail mail’ — and, to some degree, telethrough the eyes phone. This was in the pre-email days. Communication of R. Crumb. was slow and methodical. I found out who was reliable.” © Harvey Pekar The artists’ punctuality, of course, affected Kitchen Sink’s publishing schedule, such as it was. “Publishers always like things to come in on time, but then, I wasn’t a typical publisher,” Kitchen said. “If I announced that a book was coming out in the spring, it might be May, it might be June. It came out when it came out. We didn’t have the schedules that traditional publishers had. They were dealing with big distributors, and they had to deliver on deadline. We were dealing with head shops. “A lot of our customers were fellow hippies mainly going to head shops for rolling papers, bongs and fluorescent posters. The rack of underground comics would be part of it. They didn’t need a cover date. The book would be “I found out quickly that there were kindred spirits. just as relevant if it came out months earlier. You just In Chicago, there was Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. wanted to go back to your pad, get stoned and be enterCrumb would pass through town. We all had a common tained. So we didn’t have the same imperative.” cause. At the time, I was mainly inspired by anti-war Considering the sex and drug use depicted in the sentiment, the youth movement. The media summed it undergrounds, did it ever give Kitchen pause? Was he up as a peace-and-love thing, but there was a certain idehassled by the law? Did he have sleepless nights? alism to it. Comics were the way we communicated.” “In retrospect, maybe I should have in many cases,” The undergrounds were by and for hippies, but they Kitchen said. “We flew below the radar. There were didn’t necessarily idealize hippies, Kitchen pointed out. periodic busts, and we’d hear about them. But I, person“Early on, we realized that hippies weren’t perfect,” ally, was never served any papers. We might have welhe said. “Crumb was not exactly a long-haired guy that comed it at the time, naively. Later on, I started the you’d call a hippie. So we would make fun of them, too. Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (in 1990). We’d make fun of everyone. That’s what satire is. “But back in the head shop days, the “So there was no mission statement, other than to authorities had far bigger issues on their embrace comics as medium to expose hypocrisy. It hands than to police comics. The head was also an experimental medium. When I was shops kind of insulated us. People growing up, I always heard: ‘Comics are for kids.’ who used drugs went to head But in our twenties, we still loved comshops; otherwise, you didn’t ics. We thought it was a creative tool want to have anything to do that was underused and underappreciatwith them. So I think we were ed. We saw it as a medium.” protected, in a way. Our audience Kitchen then had no aspirations to transiwas so targeted. With few exceptions, tion into the realm of mainstream comics. people on the street were unaware of us. “If we were to work for Marvel, DC We didn’t see them.” or Archie, we wouldn’t own what we As for the term “hippie”: “I had long drew,” he said. “We’d be drawing someThe Mutt hair, but I can tell you that we never one else’s creations over and over, and and Jeff-like called ourselves ‘hippies.’ That earning a flat rate. Besides, a lot Nard n’ Pat. was a term the media came of the things that the comic © Jay Lynch up with, which we found disbook industry was doing, we dainful. We called ourselves found abhorrent.” ‘freaks.’ That’s where the Kitchen Sink published Fabulous Furry Freak comics by Crumb, Wilson, Brothers came from. Green and others artists “But over the years, whose wild content reflected I’ve come to embrace wild lifestyles. As such, some the term. I’m not artists were more, shall we ashamed to say that I say, “professional” than others. was a hippie. But at “It wasn’t like we were in a the time, I would have big building with a bullpen of glowered at you if artists working from 9 to 5,” you called me that.” Kitchen said with a laugh. “We

Depicting the id

The fetishy sex. The acid trips. The objectification of women. The profanity. The racism and misogyny. The self-flagellation. These shocking elements in the work of underground cartoonist Robert Crumb certainly commanded attention. But if R. Crumb had been nothing but a shock artist, would we remember him? Whether or not you are personally offended by Crumb’s frequently raunchy comics, you must make certain concessions about his work. He is funny. He is accessible. He is deceptively sophisticated. (Allusions to earlier artists, and artistic movements, inform his work.) And above all, he is honest. Crumb seems to hold nothing back. (“Depicting the id” is how his second wife, Aline Kominsky, described his process.) Crumb’s comics are frequently autobiographical, but he never sugar-coats his twisted thoughts, nor does he flatter himself physically. The Crumb you saw in real life, and the one on the printed page, were one and the same: magnified eyes peering through “Coke bottle” specs, slouchy posture, face contorted into a perma-grimace. He was, virtually, a cartoon character come to life — and the ultimate loner exacting revenge on the cold, cruel world through the printed page. Crumb always wore his artistic influences on his ink-stained sleeve: John Stanley (Little Lulu), Carl Barks (Donald Duck), Harvey Kurtzman (Mad), even 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast (a master of the shading technique known as “cross-hatching”). Thematically, Crumb’s work betrays his fixation for big-bottomed girls, as well as his lingering bitterness over his prefame lack of luck with the ladies. Crumb’s comics may be considered pornographic by some readers, but in the artist’s defense, they were never created with the intention to titillate. Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Crumb apparently had an older sibling to thank for his career. “My brother Charles forced me to draw comics,” wrote Crumb in 1997. “If I didn’t draw comics, I was a worthless human being.” In 1952, he spotted Kurtzman’s Mad #1 on a stand, but it was Basil Wolverton’s “beautiful girl of the month” cover for Mad #11 that “changed the way I saw the world forever,” Crumb wrote. In 1962, he turned pro working for a greeting card company in Cleveland. While there, he submitted a “Fritz the Cat” strip to Kurtzman’s Mad follow-up, Help! Crumb’s work began to appear in alternative publi-

Robert Crumb revisits a life milestone in “My First Acid Trip” (1973). Below: Peddling Zap Comix in 1968, in 1992 art. Opposite: “Stoned Agin!” poster. © Robert Crumb cations such as the East Village Other and Yarrowstalks. Crumb first dropped acid in 1965. It was a milestone in his life. “The first trip was a completely mystical experience, shocking, frightening and visionary. I wanted to do it again,” he wrote in 1997. “(LSD) altered the way I drew, the arrangement of my ego, why I drew … the LSD thing was the main big inspiration of my life. I stopped drawing from life.” In San Francisco in 1968, Crumb had two breakthroughs. One was his influential underground comic book Zap Comix #1, which he sold on the streets. (Imagine time-tripping to the Haight in ’68, and seeing Crumb peddle Zap.) Another was his cover for the “Cheap Thrills” album by Big Brother and the Holding Company. (Singer Janis Joplin was a Zap fan.) Crumb’s work was now being seen in record shops from coast to coast, and posters bootlegged from his comic pages “Keep on Truckin’ ” and “Stoned Agin!” would hang in many a head shop and hippie’s bedroom. “By the fall of that year, I was already a minor cult hero,” Crumb wrote in 1988. “That’s when things really started to go

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ass-over-tea-kettle. My life turned into something quite different from then on. It got very confusing. I was still only 25 years old when fame came to me.” Though the artist became best known for “Keep on Truckin’ ” and Fritz the Cat, aficionados know these pieces represent only one phase of Crumb: the stoner ’60s. He went on to a long, productive career — the guy never stopped drawing — doing surprisingly lofty things: an adaptation of the Book of Genesis, an illustrated biography of Franz Kafka, strips in The New Yorker. At least one Crumb collaborator agreed that Crumb’s work challenged the medium. Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical comics were sometimes illustrated by Crumb in the pages of American Splendor. Pekar believed Crumb’s work demonstrated untapped potential in the medium of comics. Pekar told me in 2005: “When Robert Crumb moved to Cleveland in 1962, he reawakened my interest in comics. I saw some of the stuff he was doing and I thought, ‘Gee, you can do anything with comics that you can do with any other art form. Why hasn’t more been done with them?’ “Then I just started theorizing away. Eventually, I got into ’em, also thanks to Crumb. Because he’s the guy that, when I showed him some of my stories, offered to illustrate ’em for me.” Pekar acknowledged that Crumb was an enigmatic figure who could be prickly and hard to know. “He’s not a backslapper, that’s for sure,” Pekar said. “He really guards

Copping a feel in Fritz the Cat #1 (1969). Top: Truckin’ dudes from Zap Comix #1 (1968). © Robert Crumb

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his personal life pretty closely.” It’s a situation which came to a head with the release of Terry Zwigoff’s sometimes disturbing 1994 documentary, “Crumb.” “A lot of people heard that he was upset about the movie,” Pekar said. “It wasn’t so much the contents of the movie. He went along with Terry Zwigoff for that film biography because he thought nobody would pay attention to it. Terry made a previous film biography of a country string band. While it was very good, nobody looked at it. So Crumb thought if he let Terry do a thing on him, it would be the same thing. Nobody would care. “Then it turned out that it became something of a hit. People started to intrude on his privacy. He hated that. He even started walking around in disguise.” BUT CRUMB NEVER WORE A DISGUISE IN PRINT. To Monte Beauchamp, who edited “The Life and Times of R. Crumb” (1998), it was important to remember Crumb worked outside of the mainstream — hence the term “underground.” “He did these for himself,” Beauchamp told me in 2011. “He didn’t work for DC or Marvel. He was not censored. He was the first to take a strictly juvenile medium and do it as a genre for adults. He broke the rules, which any great satirist does. I think of him as the Groucho Marx of comics.” And he did it all without a master plan. Crumb never set out to become a famous artist. His commitment was to whatever he was drawing at the moment. “I don’t work in terms of conscious messages,” he said in Zwigoff’s documentary. “I can’t do that. It has to be something I’m revealing to myself while I’m doing it.”

A Manson-esque hippie casts his spell on a daughter of suburbia, from San Francisco Comic Book #3 (1970). Right: A despairing character from Despair #1 (1970). © Robert Crumb

An acid flashback in “Ducks Yas Yas” (1968). Right: Exposing hippie hypocrisy in “The Lighter-Than-Air Boys” (1970). © Robert Crumb

There are casualties on the road to freedom.

Four of them are Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, innocent girls, ages 11 to 14, who were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 15, 1963. Another is Medgar Evers, a Civil Rights activist who was shot in the back by a member of a group called the White Citizens Council in Jackson, Miss., on June 12, 1963. Two more are el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, who was shot 21 times by three Nation of Islam members in New York City on Feb. 21, 1965, and Martin Luther King Jr., who was shot by an escaped convict in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. Standing up for Civil Rights was far from a safe undertaking. Civil Rights marchers were subjected to tear gas, bullets and nightsticks (from the law), and rocks, bricks and bottles (from civilians). Four young black men — Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, Ezell Blair Jr. and Franklin McCain — faced jeers and threats when they sat at Woolworth’s “whites only” counter in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960. So did the “Freedom Riders,” who traveled by bus through the South in 1961 to protest segregated bus lines that were declared unconstitutional. So did Vivian Malone and James Hood, a young woman and man of color who sought college educations; when they reported to the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, the governor of Alabama personally forbade them to enter. In August 1965, following what many residents in the Watts section of Los Angeles decried as an incident of police racism, a prolonged clash with the National Guard left 34 dead, a city in flames and the provocative slogan “Burn, Baby, Burn.” THE TIDE TURNED INCREMENTALLY, PAINFULLY. Activists and legislators couldn’t do it alone. Fortunately, musicians were around to help nudge things along. The black artists who toured with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars couldn’t always stay at the same hotels or eat at the same restaurants or use the same facilities as their white colleagues. But they played the shows, winning applause ... and hearts. And every time a black artist appeared on “Ed Sullivan” or “Hollywood Palace” or “American Bandstand” or “Shindig” or “Hullabaloo,” white living rooms were invaded. But, as Dr. King might have said, these were non-violent invasions.

At some point between the early-’60s sit-ins and the bloody clashes at the other end of the decade, a slogan of sorts emerged that was warmhearted, sweet, simple and very groovy. It was three little words: “Black is Beautiful.” Like “Black Power” and “Burn, Baby, Burn,” “Black is Beautiful” had impact. But it did not convey what could be perceived as acrimony. Lingering white racists — and they lingered — thought the world as they knew it would come to an end when they heard “Black Power” or “Burn, Baby, Burn.” But in “Black is Beautiful,” they sensed no threat. “Black is Beautiful” was something that could coax a smile. Most importantly, it could correct a notion — one which black and white children of that time sometimes held — that broad noses, full lips and dark skin somehow translated into ugliness. This was a lie, but as Adolf Hitler proved with supreme mastery, if you tell a lie well and often enough, people will believe it. The antidote to that ugly lie was a fleet phrase: “Black is Beautiful.” When the “Black is Beautiful” movement was in its glory in the late ’60s, it coincided (and not coincidentally) with a renaissance during which black actresses and actors were getting better roles, playing meaty characters instead of domestics with one line. As Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek,” Nichelle Nichols played a communications officer, not a cleaning lady. (When Nichols told Martin Luther King she planned to quit “Trek” after Season 1, he said to her with all seriousness, “You cannot do that.”) Clarence Williams III as Lincoln B. Hayes on “The Mod Squad” was the coolest cat around, and he had the most righteous Afro. Chelsea Brown’s beautiful brown skin showed off body paint much better than her paler fellow bikini-clad dancers on “Laugh-In.” See also Teresa Graves, Heshimu, Diahann Carroll, Flip Wilson, Greg Morris, Ivan Dixon, Eartha Kitt as Catwoman and, in the real world, Angela Davis (speaking of righteous ’fros) and fists raised in the “Black Power” gesture at the 1968 Olympics. Naw, “Black is Beautiful” wasn’t a slogan. It was a philosophy. And this groovy movement’s legacy was pervasive. It yielded edgy fashions, art, music and attitudes. The Afro hairstyle itself was popularized during this period. Hey, man, look at what Sly and the Family Stone were wearing in 1969.

From left: Cover girls Chelsea Brown and Angela Davis; Sly Stone in flight. © Saturday Evening Post; © Leisure Books; “Fresh” © Epic Records

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The 1969 song “Sweet Cherry Wine” always makes me think of a Vietnam vet who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. His name was Billy. (I know, that sounds like fiction, but that was his name.) He was 9 or 10 years older than me. When Billy came home from Vietnam, the year was maybe 1967 or ’68. I was asked to make a poster for him. (I could cartoon a little as a kid.) I did a drawing of Billy in uniform, which I based on G.I. Joe toys and TV shows like “Combat!” and “The Rat Patrol.” I drew a rifle in his arms and an American flag behind him, with big red-whiteand-blue letters that said, “WELCOME HOME, BILLY!” The “Sweet Cherry Wine” lyric that, then and now, makes me think of Billy: “Yesterday, my friends were marchin’ out to war.” Being a dopey little kid, it never occurred to me that Billy might have been in mortal danger, or might have something they hadn’t named yet called post-traumatic stress. The “Rat Patrol” guys always won, laughed and returned the following week. What I didn’t know then: This war was begun without formal declaration ... the first U.S. military advisors were sent to French Indochina in 1950 ... the first U.S. deaths occurred in 1955 ... it was full-on war by 1964, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident ... “Draft notices arrived in the mail like death sentences,” wrote Michael Lydon ... As the war dragged on, anti-war sentiment fermented at home ... as many as 500 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, including children, were killed in the so-called My Lai massacre of 1968 ... Walter Cronkite, reporting on the Tet Offensive, said, “To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion,” to which President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” ... in 1968, LBJ did not seek another term ... in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon declared “peace with honor” ... in 1975, Saigon fell to North Vietnam as the last U.S. civilians were evacuated ... there was no kissing in Times Square ... in this war that we did not win, there were more than 58,000 U.S. military fatalities. Did Billy witness the horrors of war? Was he affected? I didn’t ask. I was 9 or 10. I just thought: Billy’s home, and that’s that.

Photo courtesy of Jim Krut

Jim Krut in front of a 155mm self-propelled Howitzer.

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DECADES LATER, I GOT TO KNOW ANOTHER VET, actor Jim Krut, who played the zombie beheaded by a helicopter in George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” (1978). I asked Krut if he felt he was in danger while shooting the scene. Krut said he had been a medic in Vietnam, and was “very used to being around helicopters. At 6-foot-4, I knew to duck in any circumstance.” In 1968, Krut was a 22-year-old writer at the Daily News of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, when he received a notice from Selective Service. Krut spoke with a recruiter, who said he could utilize his journalistic training as a “medical writer.” But it was too good to be true; Krut was instead signed up as a combat medic. “I felt like it was a bait-and-switch, a betrayal,” he said in 2017. Krut was assigned as a clerk and backup medic to B Battery, 2nd of the 35th Artillery, part of the 23rd Artillery Group headquartered near Long Binh. He described a particularly hairy incident that occurred on May 29, 1970: “An RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) tore through a 50-caliber machine-gun bunker. I exposed myself to fire a little bit and got in. It (the RPG) severed the arm of a soldier. He wasn’t going to bleed out, because his arm was cauterized from the heat. He said, ‘Can you get me out?’ I made a judgment that it was safer for him to stay in the bunker until we could suppress the fire. Then I heard another wounded man call out for help about 40 feet away. He had a sucking chest wound. I did what I could, and we got him airlifted.” For these and other actions that day, Krut was awarded the Bronze Star for “exceptional valor.” When Krut returned to his small hometown of Mt. Union, Pennsylvania, he realized that he had residual effects. “I remember looking at my mother’s house and thinking, ‘No sandbags. Terrible defensive position,’ ” Krut said with a chuckle. “There was no outreach for it (post-traumatic stress). You were expected to just go out, do these things, suck it up, come back, and not talk about it. The people I served with — nobody was a hero. Nobody was glorified. For the most part, we just tried to survive.”

Establishment figures Richard M. Nixon, Hubert H. Humphrey and John Wayne sidled up to groovy culture. Nixon, Humphrey photos: Official portraits; “Laugh-In” © George Schlatter-Ed Friendly Productions and Romart, Inc.

Even the squarest of the square got cozy with the groovy set.

Hard-liners Richard Nixon and John Wayne appeared on “Laugh-In,” rubbing elbows with godless TV liberals amid psychedelic sets. Hubert H. Humphrey enlisted Tommy James and the Shondells as the official rock combo of his 1968 campaign. Prior to the Shondells’ Humphrey association, the band was in the corner of Robert F. Kennedy, Humphrey’s Democratic rival; the Shondells played an RFK rally in Manhattan. Recalled James: “We were asked to accompany (Kennedy) on the one date that would have been at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night he was killed (June 6, 1968). We couldn’t do it because we were in, of all places, Dallas at a thing called the World Teen Fair. “Of course, when Bobby was killed, that was the end of a lot of dreams for a lot of us. I just remember going into a real funk for about six weeks. For me, that was sort of the end of the ’60s.” The enterprising HHH camp swept in, and the Shondells accepted its invitation to perform at Humphrey rallies. But on the eve of the first such rally, it happened: the televised violence outside of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Recalled James: “Three of the band members and I were up at my apartment watching this horrible thing take place, with the kids getting beat up and everything. And, oh my God, we’re supposed to be with him the following Wednesday in West Virginia! So we’re wondering: ‘What are we getting ourselves into?’” But the rallies went smoothly, and the Shondells had much face time with Humphrey. “He was just a sweetheart,” James said. “We played the rallies like they were concerts. We would play and then he would come on. We were sort of his opening act. “He explained to all of us how he was going to end the war. It was an amazing thing to listen to. He was going to have a national referendum. He also asked me if I would be the president’s advisor on youth affairs, kind of a sub-cabinet post. Of course — I’m 21 — I’m thinking, ‘Yeah! Government-sponsored rock festivals!’ ” Meanwhile, the Nixon camp cooked up a ploy to establish its candidate as a good sport, a regular guy: a “Laugh-In” appearance. “That was such a big day, when he was coming,” Ruth Buzzi, a “Laugh-In” cast member, told me in 2002. “There were a lot of people on the set just wanting to eyeball him. I only got to shake his hand very quickly, and then I stepped back out of the way, because I could tell he was a little nervous.” Why the nerves? First there was a tense negotiation over what Nixon would say; “Sock it to me” (a “Laugh-In” catch phrase) was

finally agreed upon. Then Nixon, far from comedically gifted, blundered through multiple takes of the phrase to get something usable. “It was like watching a person do a whole bunch of ‘runners,’ ” Buzzi said (referring to the “Laugh-In” tradition in which cast members improvised variations on a line for editing purposes). Some believe Nixon’s “Laugh-In” appearance, 50 days prior to the election, helped nudge him to victory — something “Laugh-In” producer George Schlatter said he’s “had to live with ever since.” Then there was Nixon’s fellow right-winger, John Wayne. Given “Laugh-In’s” liberal sensibility and Wayne’s conservative politics, it’s hard to imagine a less likely guest. But Wayne was, you could say, goaded into appearing. Week after week, co-host Dick Martin jokingly insisted on air that Wayne was slated to be on the show. Wayne called Martin’s bluff, appearing several times. Said Buzzi: “I just was so impressed with what a lovely man he was and how much fun he had doing it, you know?” EVEN IN OFFICE, NIXON WASN’T DONE BEING HIP. Gary Puckett and the Union Gap and the Guess Who both accepted invitations to perform at the Nixon White House. “Yes, I met Richard Nixon,” Puckett told me in 2011. “At one point, I was just wandering around (the White House grounds). The president and several of his Secret Service walked up to me. He said hello and shook my hand. It was a little bit overwhelming. “There was a lot of difficulty for him, what with the Vietnam War. When I met him, he just looked ashen. He looked a little blue. He just looked like a sick man. At that time, I wasn’t really cognizant, because I was — what? — 26 years old, full of vim and vigor. I was bullet-proof. I was out having hit records.” Then there’s the legend that when the Guess Who played the White House, First Lady Pat Nixon asked the group not to play “American Woman,” their #1 hit with an anti-war lyric. “We didn’t play ‘American Woman,’ but it wasn’t because the Nixons asked us not to,” Guess Who singer Burton Cummings told me in 2001. In his telling, the band’s then-manager thought it would be great publicity to circulate the nixed-by-Nixon story. “The whole thing backfired on us,” Cummings said. “Because the Nixons were not well liked by the rock ’n’ roll people or the underground. We were really raked over the coals for that by the FM people and the so-called ‘hipper than thou’ people. Really, it was a bad career move to play the White House at all.”

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“If you’re going to San Francisco ...”

That was a lyric in a 1967 #4 hit written by “Papa” John Phillips and sung by Scott McKenzie. It was also a phrase on the lips of many a long-hair in the middle 1960s, when San Francisco emerged as the epicenter of the psychedelic universe, with bands like Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service providing the soundtrack. u For Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, the San Francisco scene was a time and place of possibility. “It felt like anyone could get up and do anything,” Andrew said. “It was a community thing. It was great to be in a large family, where it felt like it was non-professional. If someone wanted to paint a picture, they could. Everyone would give him a lot of support. And then he would become good, because he’d do it over and over again. Or start a bakery. Or become a musician, get up on stage. Just anything.” u “It was like a renaissance, a new age, a ‘coming out of the dark ages into the renaissance’ kind of affair,” Jefferson Airplane founder Paul Kantner said. “Everybody just took total advantage of it.” u “I think it was just that joy of being alive and being able to do pretty much what you wanted to do,” added Jorma Kaukonen, the Airplane’s lead guitarist. u “There was creativity in the writers, in the poets, in the painters,” said Airplane bassist Jack Casady. “People would be hanging out, drinking coffee, whatever.” u According to Casady, the seeds of the San Francisco scene were planted when beatniks and folkies earlier migrated to the city. “It kind of grew out of the coffee-beatnik scene and the poetry scene from the late ’50s,” Casady said. “All of that sort of melted over from the jazz coffeehouse places, the folk music that was being discovered in the early ’60s — Bob Dylan, and Mississippi John Hurt and Son House being rediscovered and all these things. u “All of that drifted into this area: older brothers and younger people coming along with influences from the ‘Beat’ era, moving into the early hippie era. That’s why there is a lot of talk about Jack Kerouac and Ken

Kesey and these kind of people coming out. They were older guys to us; we were in our twenties. So there is a connection through time. It isn’t like something mushroomed completely, like an explosion.” u According to Andrew, these older Beat guys coined a playfully derisive nickname for the younger scenemakers. “We were trying to be hip,” Andrew said with a laugh, “so they called us ‘hippies.’ ” u There was a consensus among the musicians that the golden age of the San Francisco scene had passed b y the time the so-called “Summer of Love” was declared in 1967. “You’re right; it is ‘so-called,’ ” Andrew said. “That was sort of an ad man’s dream, to call it the Summer of Love. The Summer of Love actually happened a couple of years before that. The real part of it, of course, had kind of been over by the time someone came up with that title.” u By 1967, San Francisco had become a hippie magnet — kids were streaming in from all over the country — and a travel destination, with busloads of tourists gawking at the denizens of Haight-Ashbury. “It became diluted,” Andrew lamented, “but that’s natural with human movements.” u George Harrison, a famous visitor to San Francisco at the time, arrived too late. “I went to Haight-Ashbury expecting it to be this brilliant place,” Harrison said in the 1995 “Beatles Anthology” documentary, “and it was just full of horrible, spotty, dropout kids on drugs.” u Still, even the good times may have been exaggerated. “There’s no question that something very special happened,” said Kaukonen, “but some specifics have been colored by time and memory. What happened is that in some respects, it became larger than life. You have to remember that San Francisco was a very small town, or it was then. The scene — before it got written up in Time magazine, and people started coming from all over the country — probably had, oh, maybe 1,000 or 1,200 people. Everybody really knew each other. It was kind of like we had our own city to play in. How often does that happen?”

Freaky times call for freaky people. Jefferson Airplane were, from left, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Spencer Dryden, Jorma Kaukonen (reclining), Marty Balin and Jack Casady. Below: Kantner performing in 2000. Photo courtesy of RCA Records; 2000 photo by Kathy Voglesong

Just another night at The Drinking Gourd on Union Street? Hardly.

The legend goes, and Paul Kantner didn’t deny it, that Jefferson Airplane was born when he had a chance encounter with Marty Balin at a San Francisco club called The Drinking Gourd. “I was playing there and he was playing there,” San Francisco native Kantner (1941-2016) told me in 2001. “He walked up and said, ‘You wanna start a band?’ It was really that simple. Never heard of him before, and he’d never heard of me before.” A casual origin story, yes, but consider the time and place. The Airplane went on to become the toast of hippie society, often playing marathon concerts with “liquid projection” light shows and wildly tripping audience members — not that Kantner could recount much. “All of those years are blended into such a white-water-rafting experience of sense and sound and everything else, that it’s hard to pull out detail, really, and make anything of it,” Kantner said. “It’s a whole that we dealt with. You mentioned two or three things, but add another

hundred things going on constantly, and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. The Airplane was a creature of its time.” If only I had a time machine, Paul. “You sound like my kids,” Kantner shot back. “ ‘Oh, Dad, we’re jealous. You got to do everything. We don’t get to do anything.’ ” It wasn’t all fun and games. The Airplane spoke truth to power in their 1969 anthem “Volunteers,” with the lyrics “Look what’s happenin’ out in the streets / Got a revolution, got a revolution.” “You know, it’s almost a news broadcast,” Kantner said of the song. “People have always thought of ‘Volunteers’ as a callto-arms. Whereas in real life, the relatively intellectual called to arms had already been called. “Ever since, perhaps, Chicago (in 1968) and HaightAshbury, there was a whole new world opening up there to anybody who wanted to embrace it. It was an alert to take notice, more than anything.” And Kantner was in a position to sound that alert. “I have the great advantage of being able to deal with it through poetry and music,” he said. “Which is: You don’t go head-on into the wall. There’s no point in it. You don’t fight city hall. You don’t fight nuns, Hell’s Angels or cops. You’re not gonna win.” Although, Kantner was reminded, he fought all three. (He’d earlier told me of childhood encounters with nuns, and we all know about the unpleasantness between Kantner and the Angels at Altamont.) “I fought them all,” he said, “and I have won my little share of victories in my own curious way.”

The new arrival had talent, but lacked a few essential skills.

“I was an OK finger-style guitar player, but I knew nothing about playing electric music or rock ’n’ roll,” recalled Jorma Kaukonen of joining Jefferson Airplane in 1965. “When I came into the band, it was a band that hired me to basically learn on the job while I got paid.” But when you listen to Kaukonen’s bluesy, spacey solo on “Somebody to Love” (the band’s first single, which went to #5 in 1967), you realize: This guy was one quick study. “The ‘Somebody to Love’ song was such a great song to begin with,” the Washington, D.C., native (born 1940) told me in 2002. “I came up with that solo, as Jack (Casady) came up with the bass part for (the followup single) ‘White Rabbit.’ It’s just like a magical moment. It’s almost like it was a gift from a higher power. To me, some aspects of that whole album (‘Surrealistic Pillow’) are like a gift. It’s like somebody said, ‘Hey, here are some great musical ideas for you guys. Have a blast with ’em.’ ” As for Kaukonen’s “Somebody to Love” solo: “You know, I’m a good guitar player. I’ve been playing for years. But I listen to that and I go, ‘Man, that’s really cool.’ I almost can’t believe that that’s me. If I could have come up with stuff like that all the time, I could’ve been really famous. When you look back at stuff, you realize — ‘Gee, I wish I could have made about 10 of those albums, but all different.’ But it doesn’t work out like that.” Instead, Kaukonen changed directions. He and Casady cooked up a side project they called Hot Tuna, which leaned in a folkier direction with traditional influences. For a while, Kaukonen and Casady were playing Hot Tuna sets opening for the Airplane. “What happened was, Jack and I would get home from gigs or back to the hotel,” Kaukonen recalled. “In those days, we were still sharing rooms. And even though it’s hard to imagine today, not every hotel room had a TV. So we’d sit around and I’d start teaching him some of my favorite finger-picking songs. “And then Paul (Kantner) said, ‘Ah, why don’t you just throw ’em into the (Jefferson Airplane’s) set?’ “So we’d throw things into the set, and people really liked it. So we kind of had a captive audience when we split off. We were very fortunate.”

Above: Jorma Kaukonen does his fingerpicking thing in 2000. Left: Good vibes, but bad hair, in the late 1960s. 2000 photo by Kathy Voglesong; 1960s photo courtesy of RCA Records

What started the whole music thing for Kaukonen? The guitarist recalled that he didn’t happen to be living in America when rock ’n’ roll exploded in the mid 1950s. “Growing up, I played classical piano and stuff like that, like every kid. I played a little violin,” Kaukonen said. “When rock ’n’ roll started — what happened was, my dad worked for the Foreign Service, and we went over to Pakistan in 1954. When I came back in late ’55, early ’56, Elvis was happening. It was like: I left ‘How Much is That Doggie in the Window’ and I came back to ‘Hound Dog.’ “When I heard rock ’n’ roll, I absolutely flipped. About a year or so later, I started picking up the guitar.” Over the following decade, it all changed again. “Of course,” Kaukonen said, “we were coming out of those sort of gray Eisenhower years. The guys started letting their hair grow. Now, my hillbilly buddies down home have hair like — we used to get s*** thrown at us back in the ’60s. You know the deal.”

He joined Jefferson Airplane just as the Haight-Ashbury scene was dawning. “But,” said bass player Jack Casady, “all I remember when I first came to San Francisco was a dirty little street corner.” Casady had been crashing at the pads of Airplane members. “When I first came to join the Airplane, the Airplane had been together for two months,” Washington, D.C., native Casady (born 1944) told me in 2000. “I think it was formed in July of ’65; I came out in October. So I stayed a couple of months at Jorma (Kaukonen)’s place. And then I stayed on a couch at Marty (Balin)’s place for a while, until I could afford to get my own flat. The publicity (about Haight-Ashbury) hadn’t spread out to Life magazine yet or anything like that. So it was sort of a quiet artists’ community. Things were just starting to happen.” Many of the groovy fashions the Airplane wore were self-created, according to Casady. “During the early days of the Airplane,” he said, “I had two tailors and the guys in the band had tailors who were offering up suggestions. We’d buy material. I used to get material at clothing stores. I’d find different material and they would make our clothes. Some was out of leather, some was out of various fabrics. That was the fun part.”

Jack Casady laying down bass in 2000. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Circa 1967

Big Brother and the Holding Company from the ld. “Cheap Thrills” centerfo ’s mb Cru rt be Ro e: Opposit art from same. Below: Poster for a 1968 gig.

mbia Records; album

“Cheap Thrills” © Colu

“Four gentlemen and one great, great broad.”

That’s how Big Brother and the Holding Company were once introduced. The four gentlemen were guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, guitarist/bassist Peter Albin and drummer Dave Getz. The “great, great broad” was, of course, Janis Joplin. But Big Brother’s star performer was a late arrival. Before Joplin joined, the band formed in a very San Francisco way. “We just stood up out of the audience and said, ‘I can play,’ ” California native Andrew (1941-2015) told me in 2006. “I was the only one in Big Brother who had played rock ’n’ roll professionally before all that happened. Everyone else had come out of a folk thing or some other background. So we all had to learn how to play, and play together, which is even more important.” Gurley, a largely untrained talent with a raw, one-of-a-kind style, had been a focal point of the band prior to Joplin joining. “James brought in this vision that was really unique, really special,” Andrew said. “He was very charismatic. It seemed like he got there first — all of those ideals and that way of life.” By 1966, Big Brother decided they needed a lead singer. “When Janis came in, all of a sudden there was a woman there,” Andrew said. “It really changes everything when a woman comes in with a bunch of guys. The level of discourse rises. Everything gets better, because both genders are there. It really makes a big difference. “Janis had a lot more experience with singing, and with everything, than we did. She’d been in a lot more bands than probably all of us put together had been in. She really paid attention to her craft.” Joplin also brought in her particular strains of humor, passion, pain and fashion sense. “People don’t realize that Janis was very thoughtful, very meditative,” Andrew said. “It was like she had the dial tuned in every direction. She was a character, although, that was a band of characters, I have to say. All of us did a whole lot of laughing all the time.” Alvin Lee of Ten Years After recalled playing a gig with Big Brother in New York. “I saw Janis,” he said. “Everybody was handing her bottles of Southern Comfort, and she was swigging them down. I said, ‘That must be wine or something.’ She came offstage and gave me a bottle. Called me ‘Baby Cheeks,’ whatever that means. I drank this bottle of Southern Comfort, which tasted like sugar. I woke up backstage three hours later. Everybody had gone!” In 1968, Joplin quit Big Brother to go solo. Two years later, she was dead of a heroin overdose at age 27. Said Andrew of his onetime bandmate’s untimely death: “It was inevitable and it was a total surprise at the same time.”

photo by Elliott Landy

Festivals: Hippie heaven

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DICK CLARK’S CARAVAN of Stars and Ozzfest came the great music festivals of the late 1960s — multi-act, and often multi-day, events attended by multitudes of long-hairs carrying multitudes of marijuana. Such events happened all over the country and abroad — in Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Jose, Denver, Atlantic City, New Orleans, San Francisco, Toronto, the Isle of Wight. But the three festivals that cling to the collective consciousness are the Monterey International Pop Festival (June 16-18, 1967), the Woodstock Music & Art Fair (Aug. 15-18, 1969) and the Altamont free concert (Dec. 6, 1969). Monterey: The genesis ... “Love, Flowers and Music” . . . San Francisco meets Southern California (but they don’t always agree) ... star-making turns for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar ... Woodstock: The apex ... “Three Days of Peace and Music” (though it wound up being four) . .. the one that proved that hippies could shut down the Thruway and live happily ever after . . . that is, until . . . Altamont: The nadir … “Who’s fighting and what for?” . . . the rock festival to end all rock festivals (and not in the good way). Do we remember this particular trio of fests best because such historic things happened at them? That, plus the fact that movies — excellent concert films which doubled as anthropological documentaries — resulted from each: D.A. Pennebacker’s “Monterey Pop,” Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock,” and Albert and David Maysles’ and Charlotte Zwerin’s “Gimme Shelter.” At Monterey, organizer John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas held court wearing a crown of fur. Some San Francisco musicians cast a wary eye on Phillips for composing Scott McKenzie’s hit “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which they saw as a plastic L.A. vision of the Frisco phenom. Mind you, it didn’t stop some of them from playing Monterey, and getting a career bump in the process. Big Brother and the Holding Company walked onto that stage as locals with a chick singer who could scream. Within a year, they had a #1 album and a superstar vocalist. Monterey Pop was a groundbreaking, stylistically integrated affair with an eclectic

roster which included the Mamas and the Papas, the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Jefferson Airplane (the only band to play all of the “big three” fests), The Who, Hendrix, Redding (backed by Booker T and the MGs and the Mar-Keys Horns) and Shankar. Brian Jones attended — looking regal, if wasted, in a cape — and introduced Hendrix as “the most exciting guitarist I’ve ever heard.” Hendrix had been London’s best-kept secret, but after his cosmic set at Monterey, he belonged to the world. (What was Hendrix on that night? His eyes were bugging out of his head.) Folk went neck-in-neck with bombastic rock. Hendrix and The Who played (literally) explosive sets, but Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s hushed set put forth but three fragile instruments: two human voices and one acoustic guitar. Theirs was an amazing demonstration of intricate harmonies and arrangements that made you hear orchestras. Shankar’s hypnotic set — involving, emotional, trance-inducing — seemed to communicate in some international language, and brought down the festival.

MONTEREY MADE HUGE WAVES ON the hippie grapevine, but not so much in the “straight” world. Woodstock was another story. The traffic jam alone made national headlines. Walter Cronkite introduced a segment about the festival on “CBS Evening News.” Blackand-white footage of trash-strewn acres was accompanied by reporter Richard O’Brien’s narration: “Estimates of the crowd ranged up to more than 300,000, and it was that size that caused most of the trouble ... One youngster died of a suspected overdose of heroin. Eighty others were arrested on drug charges. Another boy was killed when the driver of a tractor failed to see him inside a sleeping bag. One of the promoters said he wouldn’t try this again unless he could rent the Grand Canyon. He may have to.” Wrote Barry Farrell in the Sept. 5, 1969, issue of Life: “It was a groovy show, all right, but I fear it will grow groovier in memory.” It did. Especially in the minds of people who weren’t there. Woodstock grew into something more than a gigantic, historically unprecedented, four-day rock concert. It was the largest Vietnam protest rally, and pro marijuana-legalization rally, ever organized. It was a wake-up call for the Establishment. And it was a validation of the hippie lifestyle — as long as you weren’t the guy cleaning up all that trash.

Richie Havens

Richie Havens ad-libbed an anthem at Woodstock. Publicity photo

“Freedom,” a song performed by folk artist Richie Havens at Woodstock, became a theme song for the festival — fittingly so, since the song was created on-the-spot by its singer. Why did Havens wing it? For a very good reason: He was out of material. “I sang every song I knew,” the Brooklyn native (1941-2013) told me in 2003. “I was only supposed to be there 25 minutes, like everyone else. But I was the only one there, so they kept saying, ‘Go back, Rich! Do three more!’ “I went onstage seven times. The seventh time when I came back, I had to come up with something. That long intro you hear on ‘Freedom’ was me stalling, trying to figure out, ‘What am I going to sing now? I’ve sung everything I know!’ ” Havens didn’t realize it at the time, but an aweinspiring sight he’d earlier witnessed would provide inspiration while he was introducing “Freedom.” He recalled: “Interestingly enough, the same thoughts I had flying over (the festival by helicopter) hit me in a different way. I said, ‘Now, I’m looking out at people who have been fighting for freedom for so long, just the freedom of being comfortable as an American and being comfortable as a young person with high ideals. And I’m seeing this freedom right here, right now. This is it. It took all the way from 1950 to now, to get to this.’ So then I basically started singing the word ‘freedom.’ “And then (the song) ‘Motherless Child’ came into my mind, which I hadn’t sung in nine years. Part of another song in the center was, ‘I have a telephone in my bosom / If I want my mother, I can call.’ That section was another hymn that I hadn’t sung since I was 16, when I sang with this family who actually taught it to me. So it happened right there.” Drenched with sweat, Havens left the stage following the draining performance. “And the most interesting thing,” he said, “is that when I left the next morning to go to Michigan — and I did get to Michigan the next morning, believe it or not — there were 30 miles of parked cars on the other side of the road. But there wasn’t one car on the entire New York Thruway all the way back to Newark. So it was a totally surreal time.” After the festival, Havens didn’t give his improvised song another thought. “When I left Woodstock,” he said, “ ‘Freedom’ was not even a song in my mind. I didn’t sing it again, because I didn’t realize, actually, in a sense, what I had done. It took until seeing the movie a year later that everyone started asking me to sing it. “So it really belonged to everyone, including myself. I was part of it, but everyone who heard it then heard it for the first time like I did, and also may not have completely remembered it until the movie came out as well. “You have to imagine the leap it took from the 800,000 people who did end up getting to Woodstock over the three or four days they were sitting there before it started — that those people went away with something that happened to all of us.”

Arlo Guthrie

There was no doubt in singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie’s mind that the Woodstock festival would be remembered. “The great thing about Woodstock,” he said, “was that we knew at the time, in the midst of it, that it was a historic event. “Most of history becomes history from hindsight. And of all of the history that becomes history from hindsight, most of it is a disaster, whether it’s earthquakes, plagues, wars, famine, pestilence. All of these historic things are tragedies. I don’t know if there’s another one event that is historic because it was a big party. So it’s a singular experience. There’s nothing to compare it with historically. And we knew it at the time.” Woodstock was a happy exception in an era when many current events weren’t so wonderful, Guthrie pointed out. “Here was, for the first time in history, a generation from around the world,” the Brooklyn native (born 1947) told me in 2004. “This was not an American thing. As a matter of fact, hippies started in Amsterdam, not in the U.S. or San Francisco or something. “But around the world, a generation faced the destruction of everything. In a real sense. Not with technology that was theoretical. We had already used it. This was the real stuff. This wasn’t just talk. The question was: Would it be used again?” Guthrie believed the anti-war movement made a difference, however slight. “You had a whole bunch of people change the way they did things — simultaneously, all around the world,” the singer said. “Not everybody. Not even the majority. But it was a critical mass. It was enough of ’em to change the course of history. That’s what the ’60s was. And the big party at the end of that change — at the end of that shift — was Woodstock.” The massive festival was also an instance of kismet, Guthrie believed. “That is just the way it worked out,” he said. “It wasn’t planned. You cannot plan those things. The people that put it on may not even have had a clue as to what it was. I don’t think they do to this day. “This was the great addition that the ’60s made to the way people think. Up until

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that time, mostly academic types and theologians were concerned about changing the destiny of the world. And they really weren’t fun people,” Guthrie laughed, “at least in a public sense. “So a great contribution that was made in the ’60s was: ‘Yeah, we have to think really clearly. We have to wonder about things. But we also have to have a good time doing it.’ Laughter and smiling is an important part of life. Just because some people are overly dramatic and over-serious about all of these things, doesn’t mean that we should abandon the joy of being a human being.”

Arlo Guthrie called Woodstock “the big party at the end” of the ’60s. Publicity photo

Melanie

There were huge stars on the roster at Woodstock. And then there was Melanie. “I was pretty much unknown,” Melanie Safka told me in 2014. “I was very shy — painfully shy, really. I had never been on a television show. They were not playing my record on AM radio. So no one in the audience (at Woodstock) knew who I was. Maybe a half of one percent had heard of me.” So how did the Astoria, N.Y., native (born 1947) get booked to perform at the massive festival? It just so happened that Melanie was earlier working in England, in the same building as the festival’s organizers. She recalled: “No one knew how big it was going to be. I said, ‘Oh, three days of love and music — it sounds like me. Could I be part of it?’ ‘Yeah, you’d be right for it.’ I’m picturing a pastoral scene of people with families and love beads.” Flash-forward to the big event. Melanie’s mother picked the singer up at an airport in New York, and the two women headed for the festival by automobile. “We began to encounter a lot of traffic,” Melanie recalled. “We figured: It’s the weekend. We were too far away from the site for it to be anything else. But the traffic was getting worse. Now, I’m getting concerned. We couldn’t go past a certain point. I get ahold of someone — this was before cell phones — and say, ‘What do I do? I’m trying to get to the festival.’ He says, ‘Oh, no, don’t go there. Go to the hotel.’ ‘What?’ So now I’m realizing this traffic does have something to do with this thing I’m a part of. “I get to this hotel. There are media trucks from one end to the other. I go inside with my mother. I’m surrounded by microphones. I’d never even met a famous person before. Then someone came up and said, ‘Melanie! Melanie! Get in the helicopter!’ ‘What do you mean? I’ve never been in a helicopter!’ “I go with my mom to this entrance. They say, ‘Who’s she?’ ‘My mom.’ ‘No, no. No mothers! Just artists and management!’ I didn’t have the sense to say that she was my manager or my bass player. So I said goodbye to my mom. We flew to this field. They led me to a tent with a dirty floor. This is where I stayed all day. Every once in a while, someone would stick their head in and say, ‘You’re next!’ and then ‘Never mind!’ I became so terrified all day that I developed a bronchial cough. I was in this weird terror all day long.” Finally, Melanie was summoned to the stage. What followed inspired one of her best-remembered songs: “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” “It started to rain,” she recalled. “I went on stage, totally terrified. Right before, an announcer, probably (Woodstock emcee) Wavy Gravy, made an inspirational announcement about passing out candles. Somewhere in there, I absorbed all of that. “And then, I had an out-of-body experience. I did. I really did. I left my body. I watched myself. At some point, I was back in my body. I felt this incredible glow of human connectedness. I was not afraid anymore. I sang my heart out for a halfhour. I was all inspired. “I left that stage with ‘Candles in the Rain’ in my head. Because I was an unknown, and went on that stage as an innocent, and I left that stage as an instant celebrity.”

If any single person embodied the concept of the “flower child,” it was singer Melanie Safka. “Brand New Key” © Neighborhood Records

Woodstock veterans Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, David Crosby and Neil Young performing in 2000. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

One of the most famous — if somewhat scatological — examples of stage banter in 1960s rock was delivered by Stephen Stills at Woodstock, during Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s set. Declared Stills: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man. We’re scared s***less.” Well, you couldn’t blame them, considering the unprecedented size of the audience. Canadian Neil Young had only recently joined the group begun by Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash. During a 2001 interview, I asked Nash if, at Woodstock, CSN&Y really was in the state so pointedly described by Stills. “I wasn’t. Stephen was,” Nash said with a laugh. “I’d already been in (the British pop group) the Hollies for seven years at that point, and I was used to people going crazy. You must understand that between 1963 and 1968 in England, there was mass fan fanaticism, and thousands and thousands of people clawing at you and screaming. I mean, it’s one of the reasons the Beatles stopped performing live, because they couldn’t hear themselves because of the fan reaction. That’s how it was. “So I was kind of used to all that. So when I walked out onto that stage with those other guys at Woodstock, it didn’t ‘space’ me at all. I was kind of enjoying it.” When I brought up the subject of Woodstock during a 2001 conversation with David Crosby, the musician whined comically. “No-o-o! Not Woodstock,” he said. Regardless, I asked Crosby if he was awed by the throng. “Aah, you know, it was more that we were under scrutiny from all of our peers,” the singer said. “They were all there. They were all standing around behind us: the Band, the (Jefferson) Airplane, the (Grateful) Dead, The Who, Sly (Stone), Jimi (Hendrix) — all these people that we really, really, really respected and thought were really fantastic. “I just think we were more nervous about them listening to us than the audience. The audience was, you know, just so big that you couldn’t really wrap your head around it. But the people

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Young, Nash, Crosby and Stills from “4 Way Street” (1971). © Atlantic Records whose opinions we really valued were standing right behind us, saying, ‘OK, the record was good. Let’s see if they can do it live.’ “That was pretty daunting. But then, you know, we got out there and it worked. So we were pretty happy.” The decision to perform “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” at Woodstock seemed fraught with peril; the three-movement arrangement was a challenge, and the song hadn’t been in CSN’s set for long. “It came together with us singing it live to each other,” Crosby explained. “We could sing that entire album (‘Crosby, Stills and Nash,’ 1969) before we ever went in to record it. So it was pretty easy. You know, Stephen just hooked those three pieces together. “Our stuff was pretty organic. It’s not like we sat there with a paper and pencil and tried to figure it out. We just did it.” Nash believed the message in CSN&Y songs such as “Find the Cost of Freedom” and “Ohio” abetted the anti-war movement. “I am proud to be associated with being a small agent of change,” Nash said. “I’ve always believed that the smallest action can change the world, and I still believe it to this day.”

The Who

What was Who bassist John Entwistle’s top-of-the-head memory of Woodstock? “Getting drunk and taking an acid trip,” Entwistle told me in 1998. “I didn’t really fancy an acid trip,” he was quick to add. Recalled the bassist: “We had to drive in, because the helicopters were being used for O.D. cases, in and out. So we got there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We were due to go on at 6. We walked into the dressing room. One of the organizers came in and said, ‘I’m sorry. You can’t use the dressing room yet. You’re not on ’til 6 tomorrow morning.’ “Everyone was playing over their time, Roger Daltrey because they were getting such a buzz from the audience. So we had 14 hours to kill.” What to do? Entwistle found out that it would not be a good idea to avail himself of the backstage amenities. Certain items were spiked. “There was acid in the ice! And there was a whole bunch of stuff in the coffee,” the native of England (1944-2002) said. “I had a bottle of bourbon, so I walked around the outside of the audience. I met some friends of mine from New York who had some ice and some Coca-Cola. So I joined together with them and we made some drinks out of the bourbon. And I said, ‘This is amazing! Where did you get the ice from?’ They said, ‘Oh, backstage. We stole it.’ ” Uh-oh. “There I was, ready to take a little acid trip,” Entwistle said with a laugh. “I felt the beginning sort of symptoms coming on. So I decided to go back closer to the dressing room and find a corner. I drank the rest of the bourbon and passed out. ‘‘When I came ’round, I was a little bit groggy, but feeling a lot better than I had before.” It was still dark for The Who’s pre-dawn set at Woodstock. In 1999, I asked Who singer Roger Daltrey if he was robbed of seeing the crowd. Could he only see the first few rows? “The sun came up during that performance,” the native of England (born 1944) said. “It came up during ‘Listening To You,’ actually. It was quite stunning. It was the most amazing light show you’ve ever seen in your life,” he added with a laugh. Daltrey — a veteran of many stages and festivals — said he wasn’t thrown by the massive scope of Woodstock. “It doesn’t make performing any different, you know, to perform for half-a-million people,” Daltrey said. “It’s not really any different than performing to one. You don’t perform any different. You give what you’ve got to give. I’ve never cheated. Even when I haven’t had it in me to give very much, what I’ve had is what they’ve got.”

“There I was, ready to take a little acid trip.” — John Entwistle on an experience at Woodstock 1998 photos by Kathy Voglesong

Sha Na Na

“We got just one thing to say to you f***ing hippies.” That was Sha Na Na at Woodstock — a fish out of water if there ever was one. The “one thing” that the 1950s tribute band wanted to tell the gathered masses: “Rock ’n’ roll is here to stay.” Woodstock was about “peace and music.” Sha Na Na was about black-leather jackets, jukeboxes, convertibles, “greasers” and gold lamé. Could there be an act less suited to the occasion? Yet, it worked. Sha Na Na lent a refreshing touch of parody to the festival, and a reminder of rock’s roots. But how did they get booked? The answer lies in the group’s origin. Sha Na Na began in 1969 as a ’50s-themed student revue at Columbia University. “That was certainly a volatile time on campuses across the country, especially Columbia,” recalled John “Jocko” Marcellino, Sha Na Na’s founding drummer. He said that for Columbia students, seeing the revue “was sort of a night off from the revolution.” After becoming a campus sensation, the 12-man group tried its luck playing clubs in and around Manhattan that summer. As Massachusetts native Marcellino (born 1950) told me in 2012: “We thought, ‘Well, it’s been fun.’ We were about to pack it in after having fun with it for six months.” Then Sha Na Na bassist Alan Cooper — “who first cussed at the audience, a brilliant guy” — got a booking at The Scene, a legendary Manhattan club owned by rock manager Steve Paul. “It was the place where the rock musicians hung out and jammed,” Marcellino said. “The Doors would come in, and (Jimi) Hendrix and (Janis) Joplin. Everybody went to this club.” Sha Na Na was booked for a two-week residency. “We had lines around the block,” Marcellino said. “We had a good buzz going on, because everybody had to go see this campy thing.” On the final night, a brawl broke out on the floor while Sha Na Na was performing. (Marcellino said it grew from a disagreement between Paul and some “protection guys.”) Into the club, on this raucous and fateful evening, walked Woodstock’s organizers: Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld. Recalled Marcellino: “Our manager says to me, ‘They want you at something called Woodstock.’ I said, ‘Go back and say yeah.’ Because I had been hearing about it on FM radio all summer. There was no social network then. Our social network at the time was FM radio. We were one of the last acts added. We

Playing Woodstock put Sha Na Na drummer John Marcellino in a class with Keith Moon and Michael Shrieve. Publicity photo weren’t on the poster for the festival, but we were in the film.” At the festival, Sha Na Na found chaos. “The challenge when we got there — it was our eighth public gig — was to get on, because we were unknown,” Marcellino said. “Any place you’d hang became an emergency area. I was out there the whole weekend. Saturday night, we tried to get on; they’d say, ‘Come back in a day.’ Sunday night, we didn’t get on, because other acts kept showing up. Paul Butterfield — the Woodstock acts kept showing up to be part of it, those who could get in.” There were so many acts that the festival, which was scheduled for Friday through Sunday, went into overtime. “Finally, it’s Monday morning, just before Hendrix,” Marcellino said. “I mean, we were sitting there, exhausted. We had slept in a van, we slept under a tree, wherever we were. And of course, I don’t remember half of it. I saw Hendrix getting ready. I said, ‘Man, this is going to be dreadful, if we’ve been here all weekend and we don’t get on.’ “But then they said, ‘Okay. Sha Na Na, you’ve got 35 minutes. Go.’ It was Monday morning, and the place looked like a refugee camp. But we had this exhausted energy. I think the tempos were too fast, but it was sort of frenetic. We did a show.” There was an advantage to going on second-to-last at Woodstock. “Hendrix (was) standing on the side of the stage,” Marcellino said, “watching us and grooving on it.”

Canned Heat

Fito De la Parra (right) with Canned Heat. © Liberty Records 136

Did Canned Heat invent head-banging at Woodstock? Maybe. Check out the band during its bombastic boogie “A Change is Gonna Come” (especially singer Bob “the Bear” Hite, from whom a stage-crasher bummed a Marlboro during the song). “The one thing I will always remember is the ovation at the end of our show, where we finished playing the boogie,” said Canned Heat drummer Fito de la Parra of playing Woodstock when we spoke in 2003. “That was the biggest ovation I’ve ever heard. I believe we did get the biggest ovation in the festival, too. It was almost like a dream, you know. Like, a ‘Wow! This is great! They loved us!’ It was overwhelming.”

Leslie West on a Woodstock perk: “We got to stay all night and see everybody.”

Mountain guitarist Leslie West, shown performing in 1999, said of playing Woodstock: “We were lucky.” Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Mountain

The band Mountain wasn’t exactly a household name, and here it was, playing one of the biggest shows in rock history. “We were lucky,” guitarist Leslie West told me in 2002. “Jimi Hendrix’s agent was our agent. That was our third show. We went on right after the Grateful Dead on Saturday night, right before it got dark. That was the first day it didn’t rain; Friday, it was ‘Mudstock.’ We got to go on at just about as good a time as you could want, for a group that nobody knew.” Travel arrangements to the concert site were tricky, though. “I remember we hired our own helicopter to get there, from 60th Street in Manhattan,” the New York native (born 1945) said. “We just came back from the Fillmore West and Winterland. I was really heavy then. This helicopter pilot had to make two trips, because I was too heavy for him to take all of us at once. “The good thing was, we got to stay all night and see everybody. (The pilot) wouldn’t fly back in the night because of the mountains up there; he was afraid to smash into the mountains. We had to wait ’til daylight, so we got to see everybody that night: The Who, Sly and the Family Stone.” But Mountain never made it into the 1970 “Woodstock” movie. “Our film burned,” West said. “There was a fire in New York, wherever they kept it. Johnny Winter wasn’t in the movie, either. “Somebody sent me Super 8 (format film) black-and-white stuff of that. I’m sure there’s other things of it.” Mountain drummer Corky Laing didn’t play Woodstock; he joined Mountain shortly after the festival. But his drumming is

heard in the 1970 concert film — during Ten Years After’s set. Huh? As the Montreal native (born 1948) told me in 2004: “What happened was, the mics fell off (Ten Years After drummer) Ric Lee’s drumset. When they went to do the album, they found there were no drums. They asked me to come in and play 25 minutes of ‘I’m Going Home.’ Which is like being on methedrine doing every Polish song ever written,” Laing added with a laugh. “Because if you listen to it, it’s just: Oompa! Oompa! Oompa! “It was probably the hardest gig I ever did.” Woodstock may have been historic for another reason. “I think that was the first place I ever saw anybody holding Bic (brand) lighters up when they wanted people to come back for encores,” West said. “I remember that.” What first inspired West to play rock ’n’ roll? The guitarist explained that an uncle, Will Glickman, had been a writer for Jackie Gleason’s TV show. “I remember going to the theater on Broadway with my grandmother (in the 1950s),” West recalled. “I thought we were going to see Jackie Gleason. I was 8. We get in there, and some guy comes out and announces: ‘Due to the summer, Jackie Gleason will be replaced by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey.’ “I was so pissed off. I started crying. ‘I wanna go home!’ But you couldn’t leave a TV theater in those days. And then they said: ‘Please welcome tonight’s first guest: Elvis Presley!’ “That’s what made me start playing guitar — seein’ him up there. That’s what did it.”

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Alvin Lee on Ten Years After’s set: “All the guitars went drastically out of tune.”

Alvin Lee, shown performing in 1999, called Ten Years After’s set at Woodstock “quite a bad gig, actually.” Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Ten Years After

“I’m Going Home’ — by helicopter,” Alvin Lee quipped from the stage at Woodstock, as the singer/guitarist for Ten Years After introduced the band’s final song. Lee and company then launched into a blistering, sweat-drenched version of “I’m Going Home” — 11 minutes of heavy blues that sealed TYA’s place in rock history. The song is a highlight of the 1970 film “Woodstock.” But the way Lee told it, “Home” was a happy climax to a dicey set. “We had, actually, quite a bad gig,” the native of Notthingham, England, (1944-2013) told me in 1999. “I remember we went onstage just after the thunderstorm. There was a big weather change and a lot of humidity in the air. We were playing ‘Good Morning Little School Girl,’ and all the guitars went drastically out of tune! I actually had to stop the song after the intro and excuse ourselves and tune up again. “Actually, that bit wasn’t in the movie,” Lee said with a laugh. “It would have been a different story, eh?” Did TYA realize it made a lasting impression at Woodstock? “No, not at all, actually,” Lee said. “I mean, it was a great version (of ‘I’m Going Home’), actually, that night. I think it was all the energy and the relief of playing the last number of the set. But it was up to: We did the gig and then we forgot about it for about a year.”

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After that year went by, the concert film’s director, Michael Wadleigh, approached Ten Years After in Los Angeles. Recalled Lee: “He came to the gig and said, ‘Do you want to come back and see your clip?’ They’d just been editing it. “The funny thing was, Michael Wadleigh told me they were having these big problems. The studio wanted to cut the movie down to an hour and a half. And he told me that Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix had all got together, and they’d all sent telegrams to the film company saying, ‘We don’t want our music cut, and if you cut it, we’ll withdraw from the movie.’ So I called up my manager and said, ‘Ah, this is great. Artistic integrity, y’see?’ And so we sent the telegram. “The studio phoned us up the next day; I was the only one that sent the telegram!” Lee laughed again. “After a bit, they (Joplin and Hendrix) thought better of it. But fortunately, the studio agreed to put it out full-length, with no compromise.” At that point, Lee still had no inkling just how strongly Ten Years After’s performance would connect with moviegoers. “It wasn’t until the movie came out that it was such a big deal,” the guitarist said. “But I was quite proud of it, because the energy came across, which was great. “When we hit the silver screen, things get larger than life.”

TEN YEAR AFTER’S DRUMMER, RIC LEE (NO relation to Alvin), corroborated much of Alvin Lee’s testimony, with added details, some of them horrific. As the native of Notthinghamshire, England (born 1945) told me in 2006: “We played St. Louis the night before. We left at 6 o’clock in the morning and flew to New York. We got a couple of limousines to take us to the Woodstock site, but we couldn’t get closer than a place called Bethel. They’d taken over the Holiday Inn there as a sort of base camp. We were all tired; we were hoping to get a bit of a snooze before we went to do the gig. But all the rooms were taken. Everybody was camping out in the place as well. So there was no privacy and no chance of sleeping. “We hadn’t eaten since we left the plane. We were told they needed us at the site, but the only way in was by helicopter, because the roads were jammed for six miles around the site. So we jumped on a helicopter. We were flying in with one of the medics. As we were flying in, the medic said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t eat anything that’s not cooked, and don’t drink anything that’s not in a sealed cap, because we’ve got hepatitis breaking out.’ So that was a good start,” Lee laughed. “We landed, and of course, there was nothing cooked, because they just had a power failure. And there was nothing to drink, because all the cans I found were opened. So we didn’t eat or drink, basically.” Exhausted and starving, Ten Years After faced another problem: They weren’t properly dressed for the infamous thunderstorm that tore through Woodstock. “We’d got summer clothes on,” Lee said. “I remember the storm coming off. It got very cold. They shipped in a whole box full of cut-off bits of material that we were kind of attaching to ourselves to keep ourselves warm, because it was very, very cold after the storm.” Woodstock’s constantly changing band lineup didn’t help matters any. TYA kept getting bumped. “We were supposed to be on in the afternoon,” Lee said. “Then Johnny Winter nipped on before we did. And then Country Joe and the Fish did. And so on. Finally, I think we got on about 10 o’clock at night.” After Ten Years After’s performance, the band faced one more huge challenge.

“We also were stuck to get out,” Lee said. “I managed to find a car and a driver. He said, ‘Well, if you can find a route out of here, I’ll take you.’ Because we were starving hungry, you know. We hadn’t had anything at all. I managed to find a state trooper who said he knew a way out, but we had to be careful not to drive over any bodies that were lying around, either doped up or asleep. “We managed to get out of there. We got back to Bethel at about 12:30 the following morning. We asked the guy at the hotel if there were any restaurants. He said, ‘The only place is a diner up the road ...’ Before he finished his sentence, we were running up the road. We streamed into there at 1 o’clock in the morning. The waitress said, ‘What would you like?’ We said, ‘I’ll have everything you’ve got.’ ”

Alvin Lee in the ’60s. RIc Lee

Publicity photos

Wild thing Like a supernova, Jimi Hendrix materialized suddenly, and blew the world away with his spacey music and look. And then he was gone. It’s hard to believe Hendrix’s stardom lasted a mere four years. His songs such as “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe” and “Little Wing” occupy an unshakable place in the rock canon, and his cosmic-blues playing style has never been duplicated. But Hendrix’s art was born of pain, his nomadic childhood touched by poverty and domestic upset. His song “Castles Made of Sand” seems to refer to the fighting he witnessed all too often between his parents, Al and Lucille: “Down the street you can hear her scream ‘You’re a disgrace’ / As she slams the door in his drunken face.” Lucille died in 1958 at 32, when Hendrix was 15. Born in 1942 in Seattle, Hendrix fell in love with the guitar before he even owned one. In 1961, he joined the Army — the law twisted his arm — and later played on the “chitlin circuit,” backing Little Richard, the Isley Brothers and Sam Cooke. Hendrix relocated to New York, where former Animals bassist Chas Chandler caught his act and essentially “exported” him to London, on a Sept. 24, 1966, flight. Hendrix began jamming with, and dazzling, the elite of British rock. Among audience members at his pivotal Jan. 24, 1967, set at the Marquee Club — home of the first-ever Rolling Stones show — were all four Beatles, most of the Stones, half of The Who and Eric Clapton. His hastily assembled band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Noel Redding on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums), followed Cream as the newest “power trio.” The Experience’s first release, the single “Hey Joe,” shot to #6 in the U.K. An unforgettable set at Monterey Pop (1967), during which Hendrix set his guitar on fire, sealed his fame. Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Woodstock (1969), with its solemn excerpt from “Taps,” seemed to articulate, via electric guitar, what a mess the country was in. Still, beneath it all was a faint ring of hope. No one on Earth played guitar like this guy.

Jimi Hendrix’s art was born of pain. Opposite: The cover of “Axis: Bold as Love.” Screen shot © Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation, Inc.; album cover © Reprise Records

JANIE HENDRIX Younger sister

“I wrote many reports in school on how Jimi was my hero. I won’t say I idolized him, because we only idolize God, but he was definitely my hero. When he’d come back home, he’d like to sit and play games. ‘Monopoly’ was one of his favorites. He’d play that all night, ’til the sun rose. You get to know a lot about people when you play games. Jimi would want to buy all of the, what we called, ‘Skid Row’ properties. Then he’d put big hotels on them, and try to upgrade the inner city, basically. Then, of course, it always happened that you landed in those areas, vs. Park Place and Broadway. He didn’t want to buy any of those places. He just wanted to buy the slums and build them up. And that really was his dream. I’ve listened to interviews of him in Harlem, when he said that he wanted to build big, round, beautiful buildings — studios and places for people to go to express themselves. Just make it a beautiful place.”

RICHIE HAVENS Folk singer

“I remember well Jimi Hendrix at the end of the Greenwich Village years. I mean, I actually sent him to Greenwich Village to become Jimi Hendrix. He wasn’t even ‘Jimmy James’ (an earlier stage name used by Hendrix) yet, you know? Which is interesting.”

DONOVAN Rock singer

“In ’67, I was the first, with (sculptor) Gypsy Dave (Mills), to meet Jimi Hendrix at the airport when he flew in from New York. Chas Chandler found Jimi in the Village playing in a blues club, and brought him over. And I was there on the very first day that Jimi set foot in a cruddy, little hotel in London where we musicians used to stay, in Bayswater. When I then saw Jimi play with the Experience a week later, my mind was blown. I heard guitar from Pete Townshend before and Dave Davies of the Kinks. I mean, I’d heard guitar before. But never like this.”

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A father’s memories

There was pain in Jimi Hendrix’s childhood, without doubt. But then, nothing came easy for his father, James “Al” Hendrix, a WWII veteran who faced racism and economic strife amid the challenges of single parenthood. I spoke with Al (1919-2002) when his book “My Son Jimi” came out in 1999. Q: What was Jimi like as a boy? Was he mischievous? HENDRIX: Well, he was kind of an ordinary, run-ofthe-mill youngster. He was kind of on the shy side. But he wasn’t all that mischievous. Q: What kind of music was playing in the household that Jimi heard while he was growing up? HENDRIX: Well, typical music of that era. We had a record player and then also the radio. But I didn’t notice where he was always listening to the music — he was playing with his toys or whatever. He started listening to music, I guess, in his adolescent years. Q: What do you recall of Jimi’s first guitar? HENDRIX: Well, his first guitar, I just paid $5 for. And he just kind of learned from there. Some of his friends, they knew how to play the guitar. He just picked up and went on from there. He was around, maybe, 13. Somewhere like that. Q: What was your first clue that Jimi was going places with music? HENDRIX: Well, I never did have a clue (laughs). I figured that he was gonna be an entertainer. He got interested in it. He played with a group around here (in Seattle), his own group. I saw where he was going to make a career with music. I figured that he’d be in one of those cabaret-type bands that travel around like that. It surprised me that he made it as big as he did. Q: Did you hear your son’s music on the radio when it was first in release? Did you see his records in music stores? HENDRIX: When he first came out with the Experience, he called me from London. He said he was on his way to the big time. He said he was auditioning for a bass player and a drummer. He was in London, England. He told me he was going to name his group the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Well, he was all excited. That was the beginning. After that, then I was just kind of listening around. I did read different articles in music magazines about the new sensation in London. They called him “The Wild Man of Borneo: Jimi Hendrix and His Experience.” So that’s the way that was. Q: In those years from 1966 on, when Jimi’s career really took off, did he always keep in touch? HENDRIX: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, he always told me about his playing. Just like when he went to England; that’s how I knew

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Above: Jimi Hendrix visits his father, Al. Left: A TV appearance. Above photo courtesy and © Experience Hendrix, L.L.C.

that he was going to be in the Experience. Yeah, he always kept in touch. Even after he was out of the service. He met some musicians there — (bassist) Billy Cox. They were traveling on the “chitlin circuit” (laughs), as they called it. Playing with different ones, backing different groups. He always kept in touch with letters and post cards. He’d call me by phone. Q: Were you surprised to learn, perhaps after Jimi’s death, that he had experimented with different drugs? HENDRIX: No. I mean, well, I used to ask him about that. He said no, he — like this time in Toronto, where he got arrested for having some drugs in his bag. They just kept letting a lot of fans get next to him when he got off the stage. But that was all squelched down. He said no, he wouldn’t promote drugs. He didn’t have any needle marks. He didn’t need all that. If he’d get loaded, he wouldn’t be able to play. Q: How did you learn that Jimi had died? HENDRIX: Well, his attorney (Henry Steingarten) called me. Told me about him dying in London. Didn’t know all the circumstances at the time. Q: Have you been listening to his music since? HENDRIX: Oh, I listen to his music every day. I have it in my car. Yeah, I listen to him every day.

PETER TORK The Monkees

“Jimi was on the road with us (in 1968). The reason we found him was, Micky (Dolenz) and I saw him in Monterey (at the Monterey Pop Festival). And Micky got it. I didn’t get what was going on. I didn’t hear the music. All I just saw was that he was doing a destruction thing that The Who had just finished doing. He followed The Who on the stage at Monterey, you know. So Micky got Jimi Hendrix’s genius and I didn’t. It was Micky who pulled the strings to get Jimi on the road with us, just because he thought he was that good. And in fact, it was wonderful to go to the shows early and catch Jimi’s set. He was such a musician. “We were pals for a bit. He’d come over to the house and we’d play together a little bit. Nothing much. He’d just say, ‘Play these four notes on the bass,’ and he’d play guitar with me while I played bass for him. He’d say, ‘Double it,’ and I’d play that twice. No big thing. He didn’t expect much of me. “One time, Steve Stills and Jimi and Micky Dolenz were in my hotel room. Jimi and Steve were playing guitar, just bangin’ away. Mickey came in — he’d been in a hot tub or something — and sat on the bed, no clothes on, picked up another guitar and just began to whack it. Not fingering it, not playing in any kind of key, nothing. Just whacking the guitar. And he stopped. And Steve and Jimi stopped. They said, ‘What did you stop for?’ He said, ‘I didn’t know anybody was listening!’ ”

MICHAEL NESMITH The Monkees

“(My) Hendrix memory is indelible and a treasure. And yes, he did open for the Monkees. I watched every show hidden in front of the stage, where I could see him from just a few feet away.”

MICKY DOLENZ The Monkees

“I did get to know him on the tour. And yes, it was a discouraging experience (for Hendrix). But it would have been a discouraging experience for anybody opening for the Monkees at that time. And it had nothing to do with the quality or the talent of the artist. It had to do with the fact that 99 percent of the audience was there to see the headliner. In the case of the Monkees, all those little girls were there, basically, to hear the Monkees. It wouldn’t have mattered who came on the stage. So I’m sure he was frustrated. Anybody would be. “We had a great time. An incredible musician. He broke his record (‘Are You Experienced’) on the tour, you know, a little ways in, and requested to be let off. Because he wanted to go out and go solo. And he was being offered solo gigs, of course. And so he jumped at the opportunity.”

DAVY JONES The Monkees

“To me, he was just another backup musician. He was a guy that covered a lot of people. He went to England and he was black and he had fuzzy hair and he played left-handed guitar and he played it with his teeth and set it on fire with lighter fluid, and it was all part of that sort of Pete Townshend breaking-the-guitars, smashing-the-amp sort of deal. To me, his guitar playing was not even considered in who he was. To me.

Heating things up at Monterey. Left: “Are You Experienced.” “Monterey Pop” screen shot © Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation, Inc.; album cover © Reprise Records

“Although, I did go sailing with Jimi a number of times when we were in Miami. He came out just as a regular guy. I did sit around in hotel rooms and listen to him play. I did sit on the side of the stage, impressed with what he was doing. “But he was vaudeville. There’s much better guitar players than Jimi Hendrix. Eric Clapton says, ‘Oh, I can’t play the guitar. Not like Jimi Hendrix.’ Well, you know, he was just like a guy who could ride a one-wheel bicycle. He was just like a guy who could walk on a tightrope. He was just all flared up, with tassles hanging off his shirt. It was a horrible noise, you know? He was a vaudevillian, really. If he had come 30 years before, he would have been looked at as some kind of freak. “So when I hear people saying, ‘Jimi Hendrix and the Monkees? Oh, man, what a bad combination that was.’ Well, what a lucky sunuvabitch he was, opening for the Monkees. It’s only over the years and since he’s died that he’s become a folk hero. He was a very short time on top.”

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ALVIN LEE Ten Years After

“I first met Jimi at The Speakeasy (in London). That was a bit embarrassing, because we were doing a showcase at The Speakeasy, so all the managers were there trying to better our career. Jimi came up to Leo (Lyons), the bass player, and said, ‘Can I go up and jam?’ Leo said, ‘Well, no. Not really. We’re doing . . .’ I went and talked to him (Hendrix) and said, ‘I’m sorry about that. It’s all these managers and things. You know what it’s like.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ The next time we played in New York, we played a gig called The Scene Club. Jimi came, and this time we let him get up. He played the bass because he’s left-handed; he couldn’t play my guitar. So he turned the bass upside-down and played. After about two minutes, he did a bass solo which was out of this world. It was like a ‘lead’ bass, a psychedelic bass solo. Sometimes I wish that I’d had a tape recorder running that night.”

RIC LEE Ten Years After

“We were the support band for their third gig in England, at Bryant University. I remember them being very, very loud. By comparison to us, they were bloody loud. And amazing. We were just awestruck when we saw them play. We didn’t really get to know Jimi then. We got to know him a bit better when he came to The Scene Club. He was a very shy person. He came to The Scene Club and jammed with us. But when he came there, he played bass. Alvin played guitar, he played bass, I played drums. And then (Hendrix’s drummer) Mitch (Mitchell) turned up and played drums for a while. That’s what we used to do. We would just sort of circulate around.”

— I gave them a ride back to the hotel, me and the bass player (Derek Moore) did. Hendrix was really nice and he said, ‘I’ll be back over here soon.’ He said, ‘I’m gonna look you guys up, and we’ll hang out.’ And actually, a few months later, he did.”

VINCE MARTELL Vanilla Fudge

“We did 13 dates in a row with him. I talked to him extensively. I talked to him at Steve Paul’s Scene on 46th Street in Manhattan a couple times. We were sittin’ around. It was nice. It was downstairs — bricks and round arches, like a cavern. Interesting place. “In fact, after a jam session there, everybody went to the Record Plant on 43rd Street off 8th Avenue. Eddie Kramer, Jimi’s engineer, ran the machines. We did a big jam session. Jimi let me do the first solo, before him.”

DAVE MASON Traffic

“I hung out quite a bit with Jimi. We were actually talking about me joining the Experience on bass, replacing Noel (Redding). Because there was something going on there between him and the rest of the band. I went to a lot of his sessions. Sometimes, we’d just get up and jam at a club somewhere. One night, we heard the ‘John Wesley Harding’ album (by Bob Dylan) at somebody’s apartment. Jimi said, ‘We gotta cut this song (“All Along the Watchtower”).’ That’s what happened. We just went in the studio and cut that song. In the studio, he was incredible. I mean, he did some great stuff live, but in the studio, he had it down.”

LEMMY KILMEISTER Hendrix roadie

“It was quite a lot of work, because there was only two of us doing all his equipSad news on the Oct. 15, 1970, Rolling Stone. ment. So it was kind of hectic. I was with © Rolling Stone him, altogether, for about eight months. It was mostly radio stuff, except when he RON HOWDEN Nektar was on tour. I was just liftin’ and carryin’ “We (the Prophets, Howden’s pre-Nekstuff. I wasn’t really involved with the guitar itself. I saw all the tar band) were playing this club (in Hamburg, Germany). Around shows for eight months. And, I mean, some of the them were ter11 o’clock, this whole slew of people came in. It happened to be rible. But when he was good, he was the best, you know.” Jimi Hendrix and the bass player from the Animals, Chas Chandler, who was Hendrix’s manager at that time. They had a SID BERNSTEIN Concert promoter big party, because Chas Chandler got down on his hands and “I did only one show (with Hendrix). It was a big benefit which knees and proposed to his girlfriend, and we all stood around in a sold out Madison Square Garden. He had taken the wrong pill or circle, cheering him on. Then we all sat down and had drinks and the wrong cigarette, and he couldn’t perform. He was introduced, got to know each other. I happened to be sitting opposite Jimi and all of a sudden, there he is slumping down. He couldn’t play a Hendrix. We were talking about different music things. note. So I asked the stage manager at the time, I said, ‘Al, do me “There was this beautiful German girl sitting next to me. a favor. Just very gently, get him off the stage. I don’t think he’s Where she came from, I don’t know; I thought she was with the gonna be able to perform.’ And we put the next act on.” entourage that came in. Anyway, we were talking all along. Jimi Hendrix slipped a note under the table and it said, ‘Who’s that ROBIN TROWER Procol Harum girl? Is she with anybody? Can you introduce me?’ And, ‘Do you “We opened for him on his second-to-last gig. I think it was a speak German?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I speak fluent German. What couple of weeks before he died. It (Hendrix’s set) was rough, do you want?’ ‘I want to get to know that girl.’ because the band wasn’t really working, it didn’t seem to me. “So basically, we swapped seats. He came over and sat next to Though you still could be in awe of his tremendous facility, abilime on one side, and the girl was on the other side of me. And for ty, or whatever you like to call it. Genius, maybe. But the band about two or three hours, I just sat there being an interpreter for itself wasn’t really a functioning unit. You could tell that.” the both of them. And then after that — they got along really well

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JIMI HENDRIX DIED IN LONDON ON SEPT. 18, 1970, OF VOMIT inhalation brought on by barbiturate intoxication. His then-girlfriend, German beauty Monika Danneman, awoke next to him, the poor girl. “The last time we saw Jimi was three days before he died,” said Ric Lee, drummer for Ten Years After. “We played together in Berlin, when he had Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums. Jimi was great. He was in good shape three days before he died. He was very pleasant, very affable, backstage. We were all having a chat and a laugh. “And then I got the phone call from his roadie, Eric (Barnett), who I knew well. He phoned me up and said, ‘Jimi’s died. I don’t know what the hell to do. He died this morning.’ He rang me within a matter of hours of Jimi dying. He was in a terrible state. But I was too far out of London at the time to help him. Not that I could have done anything. I couldn’t have brought Jimi back.” Jimi’s father, Al Hendrix, recalled his final conversation with his son. “It was the last time he was here in Seattle. He played down there at the old Sick’s Stadium. Got soakin’ wet,” Al Hendrix said, referring to a rainy show Jimi played on July 26, less than two months before his death. “We had a nice conversation about a lot of different things he wanted to do when he came home. Take a rest from touring. So many things.” A WILD MAN ON STAGE, HENDRIX COULD BE QUIET, even shy, offstage, according to some who saw him in both worlds. Said Vince Martell: “The guy was a real gentleman, a humble guy, a beautiful cat to be around. (Stardom) could go to some people’s heads. This guy had a beautiful perspective.” Said Ron Howden: “He was the opposite of being full of yourself. No airs about him or nothin’.” Micky Dolenz called Hendrix “a very shy, kind young man.” “I was 9 when he passed away,” said Janie Hendrix. “When he would come home, Jimi was really special in the way that — there could be a crowded room, and you would feel as though you were the most important person and the most important thing in his life at that moment. He had the sweetest spirit of anyone I’ve ever known. To this day.” There’s so much out there about Jimi Hendrix. I once asked Al Hendrix what he would want the world to know about his son. “Well,” Al said, “let ’em all know that he wasn’t all drugs. He didn’t die of an overdose, which they’re always saying. Jimi, he didn’t believe in drugs. He may have taken a little pot in those days. I mean, that’s not enough to blow his mind, the way they say. No, there were no drugs in him. He didn’t die of an overdose. His music was of a clean mind.”

“He had the sweetest spirit of anyone I’ve ever known,” said Jimi Hendrix’s little sister, Janie. © Warner Bros. Pictures

Altamont

“I pray that it’s all right,” sang Mick Jagger as the Rolling Stones were finishing “Under My Thumb.” It was a subconscious ad-lib.

The actual lyric, in this song of misogynistic bravado, is:“I say, IT ALL BEGAN HOPEFULLY. THE STONES DECIDED it’s alright.” But from the treacherously low stage at Altamont to cap their 1969 U.S. tour — the tour that, in essence, gave us the Speedway on Dec. 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones’ leader was resortmodern, evolved Stones, as documented on their live album “Get ing to prayer. And for good reason. Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!” — with a free concert at Golden Gate Park. The incessant violence, drug-induced freakouts and overall bad The cream of the San Francisco rock scene would join them. As vibes that unfolded before his eyes from the human circus of Stones bassist Bill Wyman explained, the Stones had a precedent. 300,000 were enough to make the Devil himself look skyward. “What we tried to do in America is what we did in England in But Jagger’s prayer went unanswered. Seconds after the Stones July (of 1969), which was the most wonderful concert,” Wyman finished up “Under My Thumb,” 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was told me in 1998. He referred to their free concert in Hyde Park stabbed to death by a member of the Hells Angels near the front honoring former Stone Brian Jones, two days after Jones’ death. of the stage, a grisly act that was captured on film. “Half a million people in Hyde Park, London. On a sunny day. Altamont. The “anti-Woodstock.” The symbolic death of the And everybody had an absolute ball. We had a great time, Aquarian Age. Decades later, the Stones’ infamous concert held in although we were out of tune. And it was always remembered as a Livermore, California, still reverberates. fabulous day. There was not one piece Intended as a “Woodstock West,” a triof violence. It was absolutely wonderumphant capper to the Stones’ 1969 tour, ful. We just tried to repeat that in Altamont remains rock’s darkest day. America. It just didn’t work.” Who knew? As a hopeful Jagger told As the San Francisco show drew reporters weeks earlier at a press confernear, long-hairs began migrating West. ence in New York: “It’s creating a sort But Golden Gate Park pulled out, and of microcosmic society which sets an so the Stones needed another venue, example to the rest of America as to how pronto. They turned to “King of Torts” one can behave in large gatherings.” Melvin Belli, the flamboyant (and More irony came courtesy of Sam expensive) San Francisco lawyer with Cutler, the Stones’ then-road manager. a penchant for getting results. As he introduced the first act, Cutler said “When I first started, the Rolling into the microphone: “I’d like to point Stones concert was to be done in a out to everybody here that this can be the speedway over in Marin County,” greatest party of 1969 that we’ve had.” California native Belli (1907-1996) How wrong he was. told me in a 1994 call from his San “The main thing we saw all day was Francisco office. “That was turned bad trips and freakouts,” said a caller down. I don’t know what happened, “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!” (1970) documented the over San Francisco’s KSAN, in a probut they kicked them out. That’s the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour. © London Records gram recorded the day after the concert reason they came to me. No one ever and hosted by disc jockey Stefan Ponek. comes to me for a wedding. They all “It seemed like there were bad vibrations from the start.” come for funerals. So, this was my funeral for the Rolling Stones.” “Everybody was in a hurry to get high now, get high fast, have Securing a venue was an uphill battle. Belli worked the phones a good time now, create Woodstock by 3 o’clock,” Ponek said for 24 hours, finally stumbling upon Dick Carter, who was seeking years later. “That’s kind of the spirit that everybody was going there publicity for his floundering Altamont Speedway. “To this day, I with: ‘Get out of my way. I’m going to have my Woodstock.’ ” don’t know whether we paid anything for it or not,” Belli said. As with Monterey and Woodstock, we have a movie to thank The festival crew, led by Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang, for giving us an idea of what attending the concert was like. The pulled off a miracle by relocating the massive amount of required seemingly omniscient “Gimme Shelter” (1970), directed by Albert sound and stage equipment to Altamont in the dark of night. and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, was conceived as a conBut this last-minute venue change didn’t bode well. Worse was cert film that would capture the Rolling Stones in their prime. the fact that, on the recommendation of a Grateful Dead associate, Alas, “Gimme Shelter” emerged as a gruesome documentary. Hells Angels were enlisted as security for the event.

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The many moods of Altamont on a “Gimme Shelter” ad: Crying girl (top left), flying pool cues (third from right in second row). “Gimme Shelter” © Maysles Film, Inc.

“I didn’t hire the Hells Angels,” said Belli who, at 62, dragged himself to the site the following day. “When I was there, someone told me that the Hells Angels were hired to be peacemakers. As peacemakers, the Hells Angels were a silly choice.” Silly, indeed. According to Belli, an Angel raised a pool cue to him at one point and said, “OK, grandpa, get off the stage.” Was Belli afraid for his life? “I was too busy to be afraid for my life,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I had a few drinks myself.” ALSO PERFORMING AT ALTAMONT WERE THE Flying Burrito Brothers and three Woodstock groups: Santana; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; and the Jefferson Airplane. The Grateful Dead was scheduled to play, but pulled out after being told of a hairy incident between the Angels and the Airplane. During the Jefferson Airplane’s set, some Hells Angels began disciplining audience members using pool cues outfitted with lead weights. Airplane singer Marty Balin jumped off the stage to come to the aid of one such audience member. “Marty, to his credit, jumped in and helped out a kid who needed some help, who was being beaten up by a bunch of bullies,” the Airplane’s Paul Kantner told me in 2001. “Marty took one of the biggest of them and was beating the s*** out of him and driving him back quite forcefully. Marty’s a good, scrappy little fighter; James Cagney’s one of his favorite characters, which should tell you all you need to know on that level. And then about six or eight of them jumped him from behind, which wasn’t too appropriate or called for.”

Kantner was scrappy, too. After Balin was attacked, Kantner said into the microphone: “I’d like to mention that the Angels just smashed Marty Balin in the face, and knocked him out for a bit. I’d like to thank you for that.” It was a scary moment. “Yeah,” Kantner told me years later with a laugh, “I should have been dead at that point, right?” Was he scared? Or too pumped up with adrenalin to be scared? “Neither,” he said. “I went to Catholic school, Catholic military boarding school with nuns. I fear nothing. I, more often than not, blunder into situations and somehow blunder out of them alive. “It has nothing to do with fear or lack of fear, really. It’s just a situation that demands a certain response, if you will. What I said was just totally off the top of my head.” It led to yet another scary moment. After Kantner’s rant, a Hells Angels member commandeered a microphone and began shouting at Kantner. But that wasn’t Kantner’s only problem. Recalled the guitarist: “There were some people holding some guy back whose name was Animal, who had a big, huge animal head on his head as a hat — not a bear, but a wolf or something. He wanted to kill me. But then, shortly thereafter, I went back and he sort of came up and apologized. And the guy who hit Marty did, too. They were sort of like little schoolchildren coming to the principal, saying, ‘Uh, gee, man, I’m sorry. Uh, I didn’t know it was the lead singer. Gee, uh, wanna come back to the house and party or something?’ And that whole sort of thing. “So I think, yeah, I was in danger there briefly, probably. But so what? Rock ’n’ roll should be dangerous.”

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From left, as captured in “Gimme Shelter”: Melvin Belli gives counsel; the crowd settles in; Jefferson Airplane performs. “Gimme Shelter” © Maysles Film, Inc.

Through much of the turmoil, singer Grace Slick tried to assuage all factions, and the Airplane continued to make music. “What I remember is, we just tried to keep on playing,” Airplane bassist Jack Casady told me in 2000. “We said it as a joke later on. If you look, Jorma (Kaukonen) and I never stop playing. We felt that was necessary at that point, to have some sort of continuity to it. Now, how much of it was just sheer hanging-onto-the-edge-of-the-ship, I don’t know. “In the Stones’ set, they had to stop a couple of times just to calm the crowd down. And then they’d try to start it back up again. Our philosophy was that if some groove and some beat is going on, hopefully the more violent elements would calm down rather than get stirred up by it. Because don’t forget, a lot of what was stirring things up was just the sheer pressure of the crowd pushing in on each other. It was very chaotic in the crowd.” For his part, Kaukonen said he wasn’t scared at the time — something he chalked up to youthful ignorance. As the guitarist told me in 2005: “First of all, when you’re younger — and of course, we were in a popular band at the time — you think, ‘Who would possibly want to do anything to harm me?’ And I didn’t get punched like Marty did, so I didn’t quite have the same negative experience. But I guarantee you it’s a scary thing when you are surrounded by real, no-bulls*** violence. It took a while for me to realize what was really going on. It was like, ‘How could that possibly happen,’ you know?” After the Airplane’s final song, the band didn’t dawdle. “Frankly, when we finished our set, we left,” Casady recalled. “We were used to having, really, all of the shows go pretty well. At most of the shows back then, people stayed and hung out and heard all the other acts. In this case, it was so ill-prepared that as soon as we were finished, we basically heard one song of the Stones and got out of there.” Which, Casady pointed out, was far from easy. “It was very tough getting out,” he said. “Some people were able to leave by helicopter. If I remember correctly, we hitched a ride with somebody. We were supposed to have transportation in and out. But it was so chaotic, you got out any way you could.” Said Kaukonen: “As soon as we finished our set, Spencer (Dryden) and I and my ex-wife hitchhiked to San Francisco.”

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WHEN THE ROLLING STONES FINALLY TOOK THE stage, such as it was, they knew immediately they were in trouble. Mick Taylor was then in his fifth month with the band. In a 2003 interview, I asked Taylor if he saw the horrible things that were happening in front of the stage. “I did,” Taylor said. “Not in sort of graphic detail. We saw it a couple of days later, when we were looking at the film. But it was a nasty atmosphere. There were fights going on all afternoon.” Was Taylor afraid for his physical well-being? “Yeah, I was a bit scared,” the guitarist admitted. “So were the rest of the band. In fact, we always used to play songs faster onstage. But I think, if you hear any bootleg recordings of that show, the tempos we play are really fast. You can tell we wanted to get through to the end of the show. Because one thing that we didn’t want to do was stop playing. Because we thought if we stopped playing, there may have been a full-scale riot. A lot of people would have gotten seriously hurt. So we just rushed through the set as quick as possible.” Wyman concurred. “We were all really scared and worried,” he said. “It was totally out of our control. I can only relate it to something in the ‘Wild West.’ It was just mob rule, you know? Get ahold of somebody, and they’d just — 40 people would just string her up or something. It was that kind of thing. “We were like bystanders. There was absolutely nothing we could do to change it! I mean, the only thing we could do was walk off. If we’d have walked off, it would have just been probably 10 times worse. Pandemonium. “Oh, it was horrendous. I mean, it’s one of the most disturbing things that I ever recall, you know. If anybody says, ‘What was the worst moment,’ that is it. There’s no doubt about it at all.” “There was more pot and more booze than I’ve seen this side of a fraternity reunion,” said Belli. “I was sitting on the stage, I remember, when someone was killed just off the stage. It was all the fracas that was going on.” Belli said he didn’t actually witness the stabbing death of Hunter. Nor did any of the Stones. That Hunter was brandishing a gun, there is no doubt; it is visible in “Gimme Shelter,” in footage later used to clear Hells Angels member Alan Passaro of murder. Meanwhile, back onstage, a helicopter pilot threatened to leave

From left: Hell’s Angels wield pool cues; Mick Jagger performs (or tries to); Meredith Hunter in the final moment of his life. “Gimme Shelter” © Maysles Film, Inc.

before the Stones’ set was through, according to Wyman. Recalled the bassist: “He walked on the stage while we were halfway through that show and says, ‘If you come offstage in the next three minutes, I’m leaving, and I’m the next helicopter. You’re on your own.’ We had to persuade him to stay.” The threat didn’t end there. The Stones, and many in their entourage, finally crammed into the helicopter, which struggled to get off the ground, judging from the Maysles’ and Zwerin’s film. “Trying to get, like, 26 people into a helicopter that’s only supposed to take 10 — I mean, frighteningly dangerous,” Wyman said with a laugh. “The guy said, ‘You were lucky to ever get off the ground.’ I think we left sideways! We didn’t go up; we went sideways! And the guy said that he would never do it again.” “It was seriously overloaded,” Taylor agreed. “I don’t know how many people it was supposed to carry. It was scary.” DID THE OTHER BANDS ON the Altamont bill somehow blame the Rolling Stones for the whole fiasco? “No,” said Kantner, for one. “Actually, we talked with Mick when they were putting the movie together. I think maybe they were more just a victim of their own incompetent circumstances at that moment. I don’t think you could point a finger of blame, because they wouldn’t have anticipated that nor encouraged it, I don’t think. I’m sure. “Things just got out of hand. And they didn’t know what to do. I mean, when poor Mick was up there at night trying to sing, he looked like a scared little child.

You can see it in his eyes as he’s looking around.” Of course, there were attendees who had a good experience at Altamont — usually those who weren’t so close to the stage. “There were people I talked to in the back who said they had a great time,” Casady said. “They didn’t realize anything was going on. They couldn’t figure out why the bands were starting and stopping. The stage wasn’t 30-feet high, so the back of the audience could see; the stage was very low, so they couldn’t see a thing. “So when you talk to people who were beyond a few rows from the stage, they all thought everything was going great. So you have a lot of different perspectives than the retrospect of historical aspect to it.” For example, Belli — despite his closer vantage point — seemed to be talking about another concert altogether in summarizing the event. “I’ll certainly not forget the show that the Stones put on. The people loved it,” Belli said. “I’ll never forget the commotion the people were making down in front of the stage. I’ve never seen so many people milling around and, at the same time, paying attention to the performance. A hell of an interesting thing. But I’ve never staged anything that took as much to do in such a limited time and made it as much of a success as that thing was — except for, of course, the guy that got killed.” After the smoke cleared, there was a lesson in Altamont, Casady believed. “It taught a lot of people how not to put on a show,” he said. “The physical elements, I mean. People feeling trapped, not having water for three days, the venue changing at the last minute, having it in the middle of what seemed like a desert.” As ever, the sardonic Kantner could be counted on to add a bit of black humor to the conversation. Said the musician: “Like I always say, I’m waiting for the Altamont reunion. Like MTV’s Woodstock II and III? C’mon, let’s have Altamont II. Bring your switchblade.”

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The original hippie “One thing I’ll say for him: Jesus is cool.” – Caiaphas in “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1970)

Picture, if you will, a dude wearing long hair, a beard and sanIn print media, there was “The Way” (1971), an earnest Bible dals, preaching a message of peace and love. for cool kids with contemporary photography, from the editors of That would either be a Woodstock refugee or Jesus, right? Campus Life Magazine and Youth for Christ International. From Which is why so many long-hairs seized upon redundancies its introduction: “So much of our modern experience echoes the between hippie philosophy and the teachings of Christ. Scripture … Is there a way to life? Is there a way to joy, peace, In the 1960s and ’70s, Jesus was, you might say, wholesomeness, health, direction, purpose?” “rebranded” as a hippie figurehead. Some “cults” or “The Way” outlined its novel approach: “Instead of Opposite: Time “sects” popped up that took the idea very seriously translating the original Hebrew and Greek texts word reported on the — so much so, that Time magazine devoted a cover for word, the ideas are expressed here as ordinary “Jesus revolution” story to “The Jesus Revolution” in its June 21, 1971, Americans in the late 20th century would say them — in 1971. Below: issue. (The gorgeous pop-art cover was created by with our idioms, word-pictures, and expressions.” “The Way,” a Bible Polish graphic artist Stanislaw Zagorski.) As promised, “The Way” used hippie vernacular for the cool kids. This phenomenon took many forms. “Jesus (even quoting Bee Gees lyrics) in recommending per© Time, Inc.; © Tyndale Christ Superstar” alone was a rock double-album, a tinent Biblical passages for situations faced by young House Publishers Broadway play and a movie. Another stage smash people in those turbulent times. was “Godspell,” a “musical based on the gospel When you’re hassled: Isaiah 26, Philippians 4. according to St. Matthew.” So-called “folk masses” were held at When you feel like copping out: Jonah. Catholic churches, during which guitars, rather than organs, When you’re afraid: Psalms 27, 91, 121, 139 (accompanied by accompanied hymns, adding a hint of grooviness to the ritual. a photo of combat in Vietnam). At times, Jesus made improbable showings in pop music. When you’re trying to figure out what’s right and wrong: In 1968, Mick Jagger evoked Christ with a lyric in “Sympathy Matthew 5-7, Colossians 2 (accompanied by a photo of a young for the Devil”: “I was around when Jesus Christ / had his man in hippie garb holding an urn marked “OPIUM”). moments of doubt and pain.” On the 1969 hit “Sweet Cherry That Time cover story reported of the burgeoning movement: Wine” (#7), Tommy James sang, “He gave us sweet cherry wine,” “Jesus is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual fervor of which James later acknowledged was a reference to his Christian a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an faith, albeit a candy-coated one. Ocean’s 1970 hit “Put Your Hand extraordinary religious revolution in his in the Hand” (#2) was anything but cryptic, invitname.” The report named Christian ing listeners to put their hand in the coffeehouses: The Way Word in hand of the man who “stilled the Greenwich Village, the water” and “calmed the sea,” the Catacombs in Seattle, I Am in man “from Galilee.” Spokane. “It’s like a glacier,” Brewer and Shipley’s “One Larry Norman, identified as a Toke Over the Line” (#28 in 1970) 24-year-old “Jesus rock” singer, invoked “sweet Jesus” continuousis quoted. “It’s growing and ly in its chorus. Coven’s “One Tin there’s no stopping it.” Soldier” (#10 in 1971) is an antiThe report also quoted humorwar song, but one with unmistakously ironic copy from a parody able religiosity: “Do it in the name of a “wanted” poster published in of Heaven / You can justify it in the an unnamed underground end / There won’t be any trumpets Christian newspaper. blowin’ / come the judgment day.” On it, Jesus was identified as a The entertainment behemoth “notorious leader of an under“Jesus Christ Superstar” yielded ground liberation movement” two songs which charted in 1971: operating under the aliases “the “Superstar” (#14) and “I Don’t Messiah,” “Son of God,” “King of Know How to Love Him” (#28). Kings” and “Prince of Peace,” who “Day by Day” (#13 in 1972) by the is wanted for “practicing medicine, cast of “Godspell” was likewise not winemaking and food distribution diluting its message: “Day by day / without a license,” “interfering Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray / with businessmen in the temple” To see thee more clearly / Love and “associating with known thee more dearly / Follow thee criminals, radicals, subversives, more nearly.” prostitutes and street people.”

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Hosanna, heysanna

The title alone — “Jesus Christ Superstar” — was a magnet for controversy. To some, it broke the Third Commandment: Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain. But the larger problem that establishment Christians had with the 1970 doublealbum was that Jesus is not expressly depicted as the son of God, but rather a cult figure whose followers are so fervent, they deify him. This is borne out in lyrics from the “rock opera” about the last days of Christ written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (book). Judas: “I remember when this whole thing began / No talk of God then, we called you a man.” Herod: “And now I understand you’re God / At least that’s what you’ve said.” u As for the character, Jesus never calls himself the son of God, though he talks to God in “Gethsemane,” his prayer of doubt and acceptance following the Last Supper (“God, thy will is hard / But you hold every card”). Jesus even demurs when he is called, mockingly, the “King of the Jews.” Pilate: “We all know that you are news / But are you king? King of the Jews?” Jesus: “That’s what you say.” u Of course, Webber and Rice’s intention wasn’t to appease any group except those who might be entertained by their treatise on celebrity, politics, power, mob psychology, betrayal and, yes, faith. u “Rock opera” is not a misnomer; “JCS” is rock, and it is an opera. All dialogue in the piece is sung — acted, if you will — by the cast. (This is apart from another self-described rock opera, The Who’s 1969 double-album “Tommy,” which does not consistently feature interactive dialogue among its characters.) u The principles are Ian Gillan as Jesus, Murray Head as Judas and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. Judas, not Jesus, is the fuel that powers “JCS.” Is it due to righteous indignation

or jealousy that Judas slams Jesus at every turn? Judas impugns Jesus’ faithful (“All your followers are blind”); his ego (“You’ve started to believe / the things they say of you / You really do believe / this talk of God is true”); even his taste in female companionship (“That a man like you / can waste his time / on women of her kind”). u The musicians on “JCS” have strong rock pedigrees. Gillan was the newly minted singer for Deep Purple. Head and Elliman, of course, scored Top 40 hits with “Superstar” and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” respectively. Elliman soon became Eric Clapton’s go-to backing vocalist, and scored a #1 hit of her own with “If I Can’t Have You” from “Saturday Night Fever” (1978). u Michael d’Abo, who sang on Manfred Mann’s #1 “Quinn the Eskimo,” played Herod. Johnny Gustafson (the Merseybeats, Roxy Music) played Simon Zealotes. Alan Spenner, who backed Joe Cocker at Woodstock, played bass. Soul chanteuse Madeline Bell sang backup. Saxophonist Chris Mercer was in Juicy Lucy. Guitarist Chris Spedding later backed Paul McCartney and Roger Daltrey. u The point is that these were rock voices, not Broadway voices. “Superstar” began life, not as a stage show, but as a rock album. And it was largely rock listeners who bought the record, listened and responded. By the time “Superstar” deigned to ascend the Broadway stage, it had a ready-made audience.

Ian Gillan: Good Christ

Yup, the guy who sang “Smoke on the water, the fire in the sky” also sang “Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, nail me to their tree.” Ian Gillan spent more than 30 years as the singer for Deep Purple but, he said, only three hours creating the title role in “Jesus Christ Superstar.” As Christ on the original 1970 double-album, Gillan made an indelible contribution to the rock opera. Seriously — after Gillan, has anyone in the role thrown the merchants out of the temple with quite the same level of unbridled fury? Because, Gillan felt, he wasn’t merely singing on “Superstar.” “It was acting, in a way,” the native of England (born 1945) told me in 2004. “Although, my contribution was only on the original studio recording. I was asked to do the movie and the stage show, but I preferred to spend my time with Deep Purple. I’m not an actor.” Gillan was counseled by lyricist Tim Rice prior to recording. Recalled the singer: “Tim told me to interpret the part, not as if it was a religious icon, but more as an historical figure. So just the same way as I would interpret Henry VIII or someone like that — not to be overwhelmed with the religious side of it. Because, as you know, it was seriously satirical about the whole thing.” The music was recorded prior to Gillan’s participation. “I went in, it was all pre-recorded, and I just sang over the band and the orchestral parts over a three-hour session,” Gillan said. “Then I came back the following week and tidied up a couple of other bits. But mostly, it was done pretty much off-the-cuff. “Pretty much everything, the entire album, I recorded all first or second take. In fact, normally the second take, because for the first take, I’d sort of stretch my imagination,” Gillan laughed, “and try something out. I would look through the glass. If I got nods of approval, I would do it a little more confidently the second time. Because as you can tell, most of it was improvised.” Take, for example, the aforementioned clearing of the temple. In this early career instance, Gillan pulled out some of the full-throated, tonsil-rattling, high-pitched screams for which he would become famous. (That same year, he recorded the song “Child in Time” with Deep Purple, another early example of what Purple freaks affectionately call “Gillan screams.”) While outlining the genesis of this vocal technique, Gillan goodnaturedly quibbled with the term “scream.” He explained: “In the previous band — Episode Six, the band I was in with (Purple bassist) Roger Glover — we had a girl singer (Sheila Carter). She used to come out and sing a few numbers. Of course, there was a huge gap in the harmonies. So I used to sing in the high register, which is how I discovered — well, apart from when I was a boy soprano in the choir — my ‘adult’ high parts. So I used to scream; I never called it ‘screaming,’ ” Gillan laughed again. “It was just singing the high part.” “Jesus Christ Superstar” was released a few months after “Deep Purple In Rock” — Gillan’s first proper album with Deep Purple. “I think it was a wonderful moment,” the singer said. “It came at exactly the right time for me, because I just started testing my range with ‘Deep Purple In Rock.’ “And so when I got this opportunity, it was really — as Tim says now — my interpretation which kind of set the tone for everything. Deep Purple’s “So it was complete and utter freedom. Ian Gillan They gave me an outline of the melodies they wanted, and then told me to improvise sang the title around it as if it was, I don’t know — role on the ‘acting,’ I suppose, is a good word. I original album didn’t see it that way. I saw it more in “Jesus Christ terms of interpretation, really.” Superstar.” Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Jesus wasn’t the only long-haired peacenik on Broadway. There was a veritable hippie invasion on the Great White Way. “Hair” — the “American Tribal Love Rock Musical” — debuted at the Biltmore Theatre in 1968. It carried a strong antiwar message, but also took shots at racism and sexual mores. La La Brooks, best known as the lead singer on the Crystals’ “Da Doo Run Run” (#3 in 1963), was in the original cast. “It was the craziest — enlightening, fresh, motivating,” Brooks told me in 2012. “It was amazing to be in the original cast. Diane Keaton was the first Sheila in ‘Hair.’ It was Melba Moore, myself, Diane Keaton and Lori Davis. We were all in the dressing room together for two years. Diane Keaton was the sweetest, kindest woman you would ever want to meet. Keith Carradine was in it with me. So I was around great people.” Though Brooks came up in a girl group, “Hair” was not a stretch for her. “I was always a hippie at heart,” she said. “I always related to that. When I was a girl, I’d go down to the Village and take off my shoes and just go. My mother would say, ‘What are you doing?’ ” “Oh! Calcutta!” — with its buzz-generating nudity — premiered off-Broadway in 1969, graduating to Broadway’s Belasco Theatre within 19 months. Not a hippie-fest per se, “Calcutta!” was a reflection of the sexual revolution, baby. “Godspell” had hippie types, and brought patrons back to Jesus territory. (Imagine, two rock musicals about Jesus in that short span.) “Godspell” debuted off-Broadway in 1971, re-purposing the gospel of St. Matthew as hip philosophy, liberally sweetened with humor, color and song.

THE STORY OF HOW CARL ANDERSON went from an unknown to playing Judas on Broadway in “Jesus Christ Superstar” (a role he repeated in the film version) has twists and turns. His initial ambition was to be a recording artist. “I had a rock band in Washington, D.C.,” the Virginia native (1945-2004) told me in 1993. “We played in a club every now and then, because we had to, because we needed the money. We hated working in this particular club, but they paid better than anybody else. People danced in this club, and we didn’t like people dancing to our original music. We wanted you to listen to the lyrics, because they were important. “As a joke, we put together a 45-minute medley of songs from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ with the 5/4 rhythms and the 7/8 rhythms and the two-measure stuck in the middle of a four. We just decided: ‘We’ll watch you dance to this, pal.’ ” The first night Anderson’s band played the “Superstar” medley, an Episcopal priest happened to be in the audience. He invited the band to perform it at his church the following Palm Sunday. In the meantime, according to Anderson, producer Robert Stigwood acquired the rights to “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and sent

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cease-and-desist orders to companies across the country that were performing the show unauthorized. “He happened to send one to this church,” Anderson said. “I don’t how he found out they were doing it, but he sent one. The priest called a press conference and said, ‘I refuse to bend to this. Because I’m telling the story of Jesus in the church, and I don’t see how that would bother the Stigwood organization.’ When he called attention to it, it was covered by all the press in Washington, including the NBC-owned station, which sent a 12-minute segment to the ‘Today’ show the next day. “The guy who was casting the (Broadway) show — who was having a problem finding Judas — woke up the next morning. He’s having coffee and looking at the ‘Today’ show, and there I am singing all the parts in ‘Superstar.’ He called up the next day, I went to New York, auditioned, and got the part 15 minutes later.” Anderson believed it was fate that he won the role of Judas. “It wasn’t something that I set out to scuffle and fight to get,” the actor said. “This part went out and found me.” “Superstar” played at Broadway’s Mark Hellinger Theatre for 89 weeks and change beginning in 1972. (For a time, Anderson alternated with another newcomer, Ben Vereen, as Judas.) Anderson believed that “Jesus Christ Superstar,” though firmly a product of the ’70s, is timeless. “First of all, the story of Jesus is 2,000 years old,” the actor said. “When you say ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ you cannot negate the ‘Jesus Christ’ part. “I did the original concert version that preceded the New York show. In that show, we wore our own clothes, the set was nothing, we had a choir and an orchestra onstage. We played in arenas — like, 20,000-seat arenas. And the power of that piece reached the back row. Because you can close your eyes and have your own Jesus experience.” Anderson’s future co-star in the film adaptation of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Ted Neeley, understudied as Christ on Broadway, and actually got to play the role on two occasions. (Neeley had been in “Hair” under director Tom O’Horgan, who also directed “Superstar” and suggested that Neeley audition.) “I was hired in the New York production as the understudy for the role of Jesus,” Texas native Neeley (born 1943) told me in 1993. “My billing actually read: ‘Ted Neeley: reporter/leper.’ And I was the best reporter/leper who ever graced the stage.”

Ted Neeley as Jesus, above, and Carl Anderson as Judas in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film “Jesus Christ Superstar.” © Universal Studios WHEN “JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR” WAS ADAPTED to the screen, it was filmed in a most apropos locale. “It was in Israel, and it was the first trip that I had taken abroad that I knew that I was out of town,” said Carl Anderson, who played Judas. “When the language written on the side of the bus is clearly not English or not of our alphabet, you’re out of town.” Ted Neeley, who played Jesus, said that director Norman Jewison had a clear vision for the film adaptation. “He had a wonderful insight, because he wrote the screenplay for the piece as well,” Neeley said. “So he knew specifically what he wanted to do with the project. He hired all of us based on our singing abilities, so that he knew we would be able to deliver the characters that he wanted.” “It was a very closely knit group that did that film,” said Anderson. “Norman Jewison put us in costume the first day and just let us walk around — all day, every day — for about three days. Number one, so that we would tan evenly, so that we wouldn’t play with the continuity by being darker in some scenes; he gave us time to get dark. “But also, what that did was, it gave us that sense of play that was essential in creating our characters. We all had our characters. We knew who we were as apostles.” Yvonne Elliman repeated her role of Mary Magdalene from the original double album. Jewison and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe took full advantage of the Israeli locales for the production, which made ironic use of modern dress. The desert was hot and the work was tough, but no one was complaining. “It was grueling, but who noticed?” said Anderson. “It was so much fun, so exciting. And we were young. It didn’t matter about the stress and the grueling schedule.” Said Anderson of working with Neeley: “Ted has a Jesus-like quality in his natural state. He brings some of that to

the character. He deals with everybody one-on-one, and he has a very calming personality. You just wanna talk to him.” Neeley was impressed that Jewison — who had just come off of the Oscar-nominated “Fiddler on the Roof” (1972) — did not treat this cast of neophytes as ... neophytes. “He could have, if he so desired, wiped the Israeli desert with us, because we were all new at that experience,” Neeley said. “Instead, he treated each of us as a contemporary, as someone on an equal plain in terms of the work. I mean, here we are, working with this Academy Award-winning director, and it was our first time around. He was incredibly nurturing. He made us feel like we were really important to the piece. “So technically, he kind of spoiled me for the rest of the industry. Because he set a precedent there that made all of us feel that that’s the way the business was, and it’s not always that way.” Neeley said he grew from the experience, not just from the filmmaking, but also the travel. “In essence, I had a chance to go to Israel to see the Holy Land with a lot of my friends, and we got this really good home movie that we brought back with us,” he said. “That’s really what we did. Later on, when I saw the film, I was remembering things we did while we were there, and I’ve got a great record of it. Norman Jewison just happened to be there, making this great home movie for us.” Neeley kidded that the movie had kind of stopped time for him. “As far as age is concerned,” he said, “I’m real lucky because of the film ‘Superstar,’ playing that character. I shall always be exactly what that character was, at least visually. So as far as that’s concerned, I shall always be 33.”

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Tommy Chong: Drag comic

With Marin in 1972

He did inhale. Tommy Chong — one half of the pothead comedy team Cheech & Chong, along with Cheech Marin — said audience reaction dictated the direction of the duo’s comedy. “When Cheech and I first got together (in 1969), we started in a topless nightclub for a lot of biker-type people — bikers, hookers and bouncers,” Canada native Chong (born 1938) told me in 1998. “Then when we started doing concerts, it was all young kids, and we had to change our act. When we got down to L.A., we had a lot of Chicanos, a lot of people who grew up with Mexicans, so we developed the Pedro character. “So it was really the crowd that developed our act for us. That’s what you do. It’s just like making love. The girl says, ‘I like this, I like that.’ Then you do it.” Cheech & Chong attained national prominence with comedy albums such as “Cheech & Chong,” (1970) and “Big Bambu” (1972), which goes down in burner history as the album with the giant rolling paper. Considering the pot- and sex-themed material on the albums, did C&C do battle with record-company censors? “Not at all,” Chong said. “That was the whole point of it all. That’s what made recording so much fun. How crazy can we get? You know, people usually censor themselves.” Hollywood beckoned, and C&C made a half-dozen films beginning with “Up in Smoke” (1978). The duo broke up in 1985, occasionally reuniting. Chong walked the walk as an outspoken advocate for the legalization of you-know-what. “The purpose of the law is to harass poor, ignorant people,” he said. “I really believe that it’s an out-and-out racist law designed to have something to hold over poor black people. The law was designed to scare the white people away from the pot. I think they’re afraid you’re going to find out how much fun it really is.” But in 2003, Chong was snared in a sweep of drug-paraphernalia dealers known as “Operation Pipe Dream” (which sounds like the title of a Cheech & Chong movie). He admitted to selling novelty bongs over the Internet, and served nine months in federal prison. Chong had found himself in a lose-lose situation: He was a comedian by trade, but when he joked about his case to the media, he was accused in court of making light of the charge. “Well, it was all an excuse,” Chong said when we spoke again in 2006. “It just showed me, and it should show America, how frightened the (George W.) Bush administration is of people like me, that they would have to spend that kind of money, go to that length, to try to shut me up. I’m not the first. Lenny Bruce went to jail. I’m not the first, but I feel honored to be in that crowd.” Chong resumed performing, and it seemed ballsy of him to again make pot jokes onstage after serving time. “Well, I have to,” he said. “I took a vow, when I became an American citizen, to uphold the Constitution of the United States. If I don’t, then I’m in dereliction of my duties, because freedom of religion and free speech is a cornerstone of our Constitution.”

Tommy Chong, still tokin’ and jokin’ in 1998. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

Here’s the story... Where did groovy culture go to die? The living room.

In real life, the scene was waning after the crash-and-burn of Altamont and just the plain, old passing of time. In great numbers, young adults were losing their love beads and seeking respectable employment. Grooviness started to feel like ... nostalgia. Except on TV. Always somewhat behind the times back then, TV still mined grooviness long after its relevance began to fade. Weirdly, it did so with family fare. “The Brady Bunch” (196974), a series about six kids in a blended family, got progressively groovier as the children grew older. In later seasons, they formed a pop band. In real life, the actors who played them toured as a pop band. “The Brady Bunch” starred Robert Reed and Florence Henderson as Mike and Carol Brady, a newly wedded widower and widow with three kids each — his three brunette boys, her three blond girls — of corresponding ages, yet. The boys: hipsternerd Greg (Barry Williams), wise guy Peter (Christopher Knight) and little squirt Bobby (Mike Lookinland). The girls: blossoming Marcia (Maureen McCormick), mildly neurotic Jan (Eve Plumb) and lisping kewpie doll Cindy (Susan Olsen). Making the meatloaf was live-in housekeeper Alice (Ann B. Davis), who apparently only removed her blue maid’s uniform in the company of boyfriend Sam the butcher (Allan Melvin). “The Brady Bunch” was created by producer Sherwood Schwartz, whose other major contribution to culture was “Gilligan’s Island.” “That was an instant flash in my head,” Passaic native Schwartz (19162011) told me in 2004. “That came from just three lines in a fill-in column in The L.A. Times in 1965 or ’66. This little item said that 39 percent of all marriages had a child, or children, from a previous marriage. And, boy, the bell went off in my head. I said, ‘Since I’m a writer — and a comedy writer by designation — that opens the door to all kinds of new stories.’ Because that’s the big search for a writer. Where do you get the key to unlock new stories? And there it was, staring me in the face, with those three lines. “I had originally written in radio. I wrote ‘Ozzy and Harriet.’ I’m an old man now. And here, not only was there sibling rivalry, there was cross-sibling rivalry, if there are kids from both sides of the fence, so to speak. “So I went to my typewriter — I type with one finger — and I typed out the script. It was the first time I ever wrote the whole

script. I was afraid someone would beat me to the punch. But nobody else saw those simple three lines.” The show was far from wall-to-wall grooviness — mostly, “The Brady Bunch” was kids’ stuff that played off of sibling and gender rivalries — but the fashions, color schemes and plots groovied up after the turn of the decade. Among pertinent installments: Episode #43, in which Greg tricks out his bedroom with psychedelic lights and dresses like Sly Stone; Episode #59, in which Paul Winchell plays an aging hippie; Episode #63, in which Davy Jones takes Marcia to the prom; Episode #64, in which the newly formed Brady Six aims to record “We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter,” but due to Peter’s cracking voice, instead records “Time to Change,” a song all about the whimsicalities of puberty (it’s so painful to watch); and Episode #98, in which Greg morphs into his ultra-hip alter ego, pop star Johnny Bravo. In 1972, when the young actors toured as the Brady Bunch Kids, they wore wild fringed outfits, played “Ed Sullivan” and “American Bandstand,” and once co-headlined with the Fifth Dimension. Which really makes you feel sorry for the Fifth Dimension.

ONE YEAR FOLLOWING THE Bradys’ debut came “The Partridge Family” (1970-74), which cut to the chase: The Partridges were a pop band out of the box, touring the countryside in a Mondrian bus, wearing matching velvet costumes with lace dickeys. Shirley Jones starred as Shirley Partridge, yet another widow, who defied child labor laws by playing nightclubs with her kids: 16 Magazineready Keith (David Cassidy), cutie pie Laura (Susan Dey), fast-talking Danny (Danny Bonaduce) and nondescript kidlings Chris (Jeremy Gelbwaks and Bryan Foster) and Tracy (Suzanne Crough). All were shepherded by skittish manager Reuben Kincaid (Dave Madden). Cassidy sang lead vocals, and Jones sang backing vocals, but otherwise, the cast couldn’t even convincingly pretend to play their instruments. Nevertheless, the Partridges had seven real-life Top 40 hits between 1970 and ’73, including “I Think I Love You” (#1), “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted” (#6) and “I’ll Meet You Halfway” (#9), all bouncy, well-crafted pop songs. The songs were so good that Cassidy — who became a teen idol, to his chagrin — continued to perform them at his shows decades later, even as he fled the spectre of Keith Partridge.

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The hot mama TV MOMS IN THE 1960S WERE A MIXED BAG: perfect housewives (June Cleaver), nose-twitching witches (Samantha Stevens), neurotics in Capri pants (Laura Petrie), vampires (Lily Munster). Along came Carol Brady in the blond, lithe person of Florence Henderson. Carol was sexy (she took good care of Hubby #2), talented (she sang in the Christmas recital) and above all, she effortlessly slid into the tricky role of Understanding Stepmother to her three rambunctious adoptive boys. I spoke with Indiana native Henderson (19342016) in 1993 and 2000. Q: Do you mind being identified with Carol Brady? HENDERSON: I realize that it’s such a part of our culture, of our television culture. It seems to mean so much to people. The show keeps coming around. It’s never been off television since it began. It’s on in 150 countries around the world. I think it represents what everyone dreams of: a family that works. A family that loves you unconditionally. A family that takes the time to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Q: What was going on in your life when you were cast? HENDERSON: I had four small children at the time. I was a parent, and I was struggling with a career and motherhood. I was determined that I wanted to be in the business, I wanted to be a good mother and a good citizen. Q: What of yourself did you bring to Carol Brady? HENDERSON: A love for life. I just feel every day is a great day, and tomorrow is going to be an even better one. I’m not a Pollyanna; I’ve had a lot of hard times in my life, a lot of tragedies in my life. But I’ve never really lost that joy. I think that comes across. You can only build on your character from what you are, and Carol Brady was not so dimensional. Q: You also made Carol Brady a sexy mom — no small feat, considering the holdover mainstream morals of the era. HENDERSON: That was kind of tough, because we were restricted by the times and the codes of television. There were many things we couldn’t do and many things we couldn’t say. But I could infer, for instance, when we would have a scene in bed, that Mike and I were going to go to bed and have sex, and that Carol Brady was really going to enjoy it.

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Q: Your best-remembered hair-do as Carol Brady was the flip, but you had several looks over five seasons. HENDERSON: When we started, I had just come back from Norway, doing the movie “Song of Norway” (1970). My hair was very, very short. I had so little time. I had to catch up on six episodes. So they were saying, “Wear this, wear that.” They put this big wig on me. I called it my “Miami bubble-do.” I mean, it was just not me. And then they wanted me to wear aprons, and I said, “No, I won’t wear aprons.” And then little by little, I was able to establish more of myself. And of course, the ’70s — if you look back, you go, “My gosh. What were we thinking?” But, yeah, I created those hairdos. Some of those clothes, I was not totally responsible for. But certainly by the last year, I was much more comfortable and able to bring more of myself to what I was doing. Q: What are some of your fondest memories of shooting the series?

HENDERSON: At King’s Island (Amusement Park in Cincinnati), we came to realize the popularity of the show. Because that park was filled with people, and we simply could not leave our rooms. They had to get security guards when we were in the park performing! They’d find out our hotel rooms and come banging on the doors. We were totally surprised by that, because we were pretty insulated in the studio. Q: And, of course, you really did shoot at the Grand Canyon. HENDERSON: I loved that, because I love mountains. It was my first trip there. I couldn’t get over the beauty of it. They made us get on those mules. Have you ever seen those mules? They’re gigantic! I thought it was going to be this little mule. I had to get on a ladder to get on it. They put the mule skinner first, then Robert Reed, then Ann B. Davis, then the six kids, and I was last. And when we started down the trail, you look straight down to the bottom of the canyon. My mule kept leaning over and eating, chewing leaves and things. I thought, I can see the headlines: “Florence Henderson falls off mule and falls to her death in Grand Canyon.” And I kept yelling — the mule skinner’s name was Al — I’d go, “Al! Al! He’s eating!” Al would say, “Jerk his head up! Jerk up his rein. He won’t fall.” I was scared to death. By the time we got done that scene and I got off the saddle, it was not dry.

Q: Did you ever “play mother” to any of the kids? HENDERSON: One of the things I was always a real stickler for was being on time. You don’t show up late for work and you don’t show up not knowing what you’re doing. And I remember a couple of times with Barry — Barry and I have always been close; we did not date. I’d always been kind of his mentor. I think he’s such a talented kid and a very nice person, a very sensitive one. And a couple of times when he was goofing off, I’d pull him aside and say, “What the heck do you think you’re doing? Get your act together.” I wouldn’t hesitate to do things like that over the years.

Q: What’s behind “The Brady Bunch’s” staying power? HENDERSON: It seems the more violent the times become, the more successful that show becomes. “The Brady Bunch” represents a little speck of hope in a sea of a violence and drugs. This show is really, I think, seen through the eyes of a child. That’s what makes it so gentle and sweet.

Q: Robert Reed fought with Sherwood Schwartz over what he saw as a lack of realism in the scripts. Did you witness this? HENDERSON: Bob was always in conflict. He loved everybody on the show and he loved it when we all got back together. I think we were Bob’s family. And yet, at times, I think he was frustrated that he wasn’t doing Shakespeare. He never quite accepted the fact that “The Brady Bunch” was a simple little show, and it was sometimes funny and sometimes touching. He always wanted to make more out of it, which would have been wrong for the show, I think. But I do believe Bob’s heart was always in the right place. He argued because he thought he was improving the show, improving scenes. And sometimes, he did. But he got carried away from time to time. Q: The feuding reportedly got heated. Were you ever on the receiving end of Reed’s ire? HENDERSON: He and I were always great friends. I could always get Bob to calm down, kind of smooth things over. I don’t think he ever did things with great malice. I just think that was Bob’s way of doing things, and I accepted him that way. He never could stand to be mad at me, or have me be mad at him, for any length of time. Q: You’ve always sung, so I’m guessing “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” (1976-77) wasn’t a stretch. HENDERSON: When we did the variety show, some of the kids, to be honest with you, didn’t know how to move or sing. So it was kind of a struggle for me. My background was musical. We would really work hard to try to make everybody look as good as possible. I was working, like, 17 and 18 hours a day on those shows. We decided to memorize everything. Any scene that we had, we all memorized. Today, they don’t do that (in variety shows). When you think about it — with that huge swimming pool and all those things — it was just kind of insane.

Florence Henderson as Carol Brady. Opposite: Romance on “Brady Bunch” card #10 (1969). “The Brady Bunch” © Paramount Pictures; trading card © Topps Co.

The big brother TALK ABOUT AWKWARD STAGES. WHEN WE FIRST met Greg Brady in 1969, he was a typical American kid who loved sports and endured two little brothers (not to mention three “instant” sisters). Five seasons later, Greg morphed into a rocking, rolling ladykiller wearing a “Brady” fro, flying fringe and polyester bells. And the actor who played him, Barry Williams, went through every in-between stage in front of millions of viewers. Still, Williams always seemed willing to oblige fans who wished to time-trip back to the Bradys’ AstroTurf backyard. I spoke with the Santa Monica native (born 1954) on four occasions between 1992 and 2004. Q: I always related to Greg Brady. I was the oldest of three in our family. WILLIAMS: So you know the demands and the challenges. Did you treat your little siblings as well as Greg did? Q: Not always. When you moved into the den and turned your room “groovy” — I had a groovy bedroom just like that, with the lights and posters and all. WILLIAMS: Did you have a lava lamp? Q: No, but I had spinning lamps and a faux black-light bulb. WILLIAMS: Did you have any fluorescent posters? Q: Tons. WILLIAMS: That’s key. Q: When I see the episode today and the camera pans across the room, I have a flashback. WILLIAMS: I’ve been having those myself. Q: Of course, the six of you were children when the show began. You were the oldest at 14. WILLIAMS: Exactly. You’ve got these kids who are really ahead of their times. You’ve got this split consciousness. It’s not just being a kid, running around — it’s learning how to play being a kid. Q: Were you serious about acting as a child? WILLIAMS: I was very serious. I was ambitious. I mean, I really wanted to be 35 when I was 15 years old. I really kind of carried the weight of the world, in terms of the way I approached things. Q: You were rocking a “Brady” fro in later seasons of the show. Did you get a perm? WILLIAMS: Nope. I hit 15 and my hair went wild.

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Q: The “Brady” kids recorded a few albums, but not all of you were natural-born singers. How did you deal with that?

WILLIAMS: I asked, “What happens if half of us cannot sing?” “No problem,” I was told. “We’ll fix it.” That got me wondering what, exactly, they had in mind. How were they going to fix that? I didn’t find out until we got into the recording studio. Their idea of fixing it, for those of us who were a little bit off-key, was to turn some of our microphones up and others off completely. Q: What do you remember about the Brady Bunch Kids tour? WILLIAMS: That was the best part of all. We went to a state fair out in Ohio; Atlantic City Steel Pier; amusement parks like Knott’s Berry Farm (in Buena Park, California). We wore, like, the white polyester pants and the orange DayGlo shirts with matching boots, singing our little hearts out. Q: When did you start to have a sense of humor about “The Brady Bunch”? WILLIAMS: When I “fit the suit” (in the 1973 episode “Adios, Johnny Bravo”). That was an episode where Greg becomes a rock star. The producers wanted me to dump the gang, the other five, and make me a star. I was all excited about that. And then I found out the only reason they wanted me is because the guy they had before quit, and I “fit the suit.” Q: Was the feuding between Robert Reed and Sherwood Schwartz over scripts a common occurrence? WILLIAMS: It was pervasive and ongoing. It was very difficult for the two of them, and everyone they affected indirectly. And also, there was always the nagging question: “Well, Bob, if you really don’t like the show, why do you keep coming back?” Q: Was the feuding a source of stress for you kids? WILLIAMS: No. I was around it more. We were restricted by (child) welfare laws about the numbers of hours we could work. Most of these blowups happened after the kids were gone. But I — wanting to be an adult even at 16 or 17, wanting to be in on it — would hang around the studio, around the set, when some of this stuff was going on. But I was more curious and fascinated about it, and wanting to be included. So it didn’t really have the kind of negative impact that it might have, directly. And Bob was very protective of his actors. He reserved his venom for the producers and the creative team.

Q: Bob was written out of the final episode. I wonder if Mike Brady would have been recast, if the show was renewed. WILLIAMS: Sherwood told me he was going to put him (Mike Brady) in Siberia if we had gone into Season 6. Q: Of all the “Brady” reunions, which was the lowlight? WILLIAMS: The lowlight? Without question, the variety series was the lowlight. To say it was an embarrassment doesn’t begin to do it justice. Why the network felt that we were the appropriate family to host a variety show escapes me still. Q: There was some, um, memorable choreography. WILLIAMS: You can’t fake that. Our choreographer built the choreography around our lowest common denominator. In our case, that would be Peter Brady (Christopher Knight). Chris is a wonderful guy, but basically tone-deaf and, at the time, a bit of a klutz. He only ever mastered two dance steps. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Bradys shake their collective booties, or do their version of the “Brady Hustle.” Eve Plumb basically bailed on doing the variety show. Ever since, my respect for her has grown. Q: In your memoir (“Growing Up Brady”), you wrote about shooting a “Brady” scene after smoking pot, and being overcome with paranoia. A lot of pot smokers can relate. WILLIAMS: I’m glad. Because for a long time, I was so paranoid, I thought I was the only one who had it (paranoia). Everyone else was, like, hanging around going, “This is really groovy.” Q: You also wrote about your off-camera passionate clinches with Maureen. Was she OK with that? WILLIAMS: We talked about that. In fact, when I interviewed Maureen, we went over all of that just to make sure she remembered it the same way I did, or had anything to add. It was an important part of our development. Q: Why do folks still love “The Brady Bunch”? WILLIAMS: I think it’s the relatability — Jan getting glasses or Marcia getting braces or me meeting Don Drysdale or things like that. And, I think, the communication that the Bradys had. Nobody really has a family that communicates as well as the Bradys, but I think people are touched by that, or by the idea that it could happen.

Barry Williams in 1997. Opposite: Greg Brady as a cartoon character. Photo by Kathy Voglesong; “The Brady Bunch” © Paramount Pictures; cartoon © Filmation Assoc.

Marcia memories Maureen McCormick made peace with Marcia (and herself) THE “UGLY, UGLY, UGLY” RESULT OF BRACES … a football to the nose … encounters with Davy and Desi … a jealous sibling who exclaims: “Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!” Some of the more memorable “Brady Bunch” moments centered around eldest sister Marcia, played with hair of gold by Maureen McCormick. Marcia, and McCormick, blossomed before our eyes over five very “Brady” seasons. But the actress later revealed she struggled with depression while shooting “The Brady Bunch.” I spoke with the Encino native (born 1956) in 1995 and 2008, and found that McCormick’s perspective on Marcia Brady changed sharply in that 13-year period. First, our 1995 conversation ...

McCORMICK: Obviously, it was really, really fun for us. But, it was hard, because some of the people couldn’t sing. And that was painful, because singing has always really been a love of mine. But we had a great time. Q: Florence Henderson said certain “Brady” kids couldn’t sing or move too well, which made “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” painful for her. Was it painful for you?

McCORMICK: Painful? Well, it was really fun. Again, it was hard, because not everybody could really sing and dance. And of course, for the most part, they had us as a group. So that was frustrating. It was what it was. Q: I was surprised that in 1973, you cut a duet album with Christopher Knight.

Q: Do you mind being asked “Brady Bunch” questions?

McCORMICK: Yeah! He was the one that couldn’t sing! Isn’t that amazing?

McCORMICK: Not at all. Q: When you were 14 and the show premiered, when did you realize “The Brady Bunch” was a phenomenon?

Q: What genius dreamt that one up? McCORMICK: Don’t — ask — me. I guess it was, you know, because of the (teen) magazines. Who knows?

McCORMICK: I don’t think I really realized it until I was in my 30s and 40s.

Q: Of all the “Brady” albums, was there any one track that you were proud of?

Q: Because people still remembered it? McCORMICK: It goes on and on and on.

McCORMICK: I don’t even really remember them. I think that they’ve been put out of my mind.

Q: Why do you think that is? McCORMICK: I think one of the reasons why the show did do so well was because we all really cared about each other on and off the set. Whenever you have love and friendship, it really helps the whole feeling. And I think people feel that. But, it’s still amazing to me, the longevity of it. Q: Which “Brady Bunch” episode was your favorite? McCORMICK: I think the Hawaii episodes, probably. After all, we went to Hawaii. Q: Who do did you enjoy working with more, Davy (Jones) or Desi (Arnaz Jr.)? McCORMICK: Oh, God. I can’t answer that. But his name begins with a “D.” How about that? Q: You authored an advice column for 16 Magazine called “Dear Maureen.” Did you really write those? McCORMICK: I think I helped with it. Q: What is your perspective now on the time you all toured as the Brady Bunch Kids?

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Q: Your likeness appeared in coloring books, on paper dolls, lunchboxes, even a Saturdaymorning cartoon. That must be freaky. McCORMICK: I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. It amazes me. I’ve moved on. I don’t really think about it. But I’m reminded all the time by people that will come up to me, or buy these products, or see the (“Brady Bunch”) movies. Q: In his memoir, Barry Williams wrote about makeout sessions you two had as teens. He told me he checked with you first . . . McCORMICK: You know, actually, he really didn’t. Q: Uh-oh. McCORMICK: Yeah. I guess I’m just — I don’t really understand how things get so bent out of shape. But they do. And, I mean, everywhere I go, people say, “Ooh! So, how was it with Barry?” There was really never anything between us. So it upsets me that sometimes things like that get taken out of context, and they get blown way out of proportion. Q: OK, we won’t talk about that anymore.

McCORMICK: Do you know what I’m saying?

Getting to the other side

Q: Sure. Adolescence is a painful time ... McCORMICK: Yeah! Thank you. Q: . . . and a lot of us were going through puberty at the same time you were, but we didn’t have to do it on television. Do you think that had any lasting effect, going through that awkward stage in front of millions of viewers? McCORMICK: Well, I spent of lot of time there (at the studio), but I just really had a normal life. My father was a schoolteacher, my mom was a housewife and we didn’t know anybody in show business. And I had three brothers. Q: That’ll keep you normal.

I SPOKE AGAIN WITH MCCORMICK ON THE occasion of her 2008 memoir “Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice” (William Morrow), in which she recounted her battles with depression, cocaine use and bulimia. Redemption came via a happy home life and a transforming moment on, of all things, a reality TV show. Q: Did you ever get the impression that people in the “Brady Bunch” cast knew you were in trouble at certain points? McCORMICK: Well, no one ever came forward and said, “Mo, You should get help,” or anything like that to me. No one ever did from “The Brady Bunch.” Q: But do you think any of them had an inkling of what was going on? McCORMICK: Yeah. I mean, I think it would have been hard not to know it. Q: What put you on the road to getting help? McCORMICK: I didn’t want to do (the 2005-10 reality show) “Celebrity Fit Club.” I did it because my daughter (Natalie) told me to. It was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. Because I went on the show, I was fat, and I had to stand on a scale in front of the world. It was hard, but at the same time, it was great. It was very freeing. That freed up a lot more in my life. Q: I imagine you meet people who are grateful that you’ve told your story — that in a way, you’re telling their story. Do people sometimes say that? McCORMICK: They do. It’s wonderful. They’re so glad that I’m speaking out. Q: Are you now an ambassador for getting help? McCORMICK: If I’m the new ambassador for depression — yay! Go, team, go! Q: You say that you are now at peace with being called Marcia by fans. McCORMICK: I even smile now when I hear the name (laughs). Q: Previously, was it an annoyance? Was it a thorn in your side for decades? McCORMICK: Yeah, it was. Q: When were you able to come to peace with Marcia? McCORMICK: When I came to peace with Maureen.

Maureen McCormick as Marcia Brady. Opposite: Marcia in ’toon form. “The Brady Bunch” © Paramount Pictures Corp.; cartoon © Filmation Assoc.

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The middle sister

OF THE ORIGINAL “BRADYS,” EVE PLUMB SEEMED THE MOST aloof on the subject. It’s not as if she rolled her eyes when asked about the beloved 1969-74 sitcom. You just sensed there were more pressing matters in her thoughts. Mind you, Plumb — remembered as “middle” sister Jan — endured my “Brady Bunch” questions with a smile, a sincere smile that was only a tad weary at the edges. I spoke with the Burbank resident (born 1958) in 1992. Q: Do you have a favorite “Brady Bunch” episode? PLUMB: I don’t even have a favorite color. Q: Do you have any theories why so many identify with Jan, the “middle” sister? PLUMB: Not really. I’m not a sociologist. Q: Did you agree with Robert Reed that the scripts were often under par? PLUMB: Well, I think they were what they were, you know? But I’m proud of him, because he always cared about the scripts and scenes. Q: Not much documentation exists of the live singing engagements you all did as the Brady Bunch Kids, when the original “Brady” children embarked on a tour in 1972. For one thing, none of the shows were filmed. PLUMB: Thank God they weren’t. It was not great. It was like low-level Osmonds (laughs). You know, they beat us into shape to take us on the road, and we did a lot of one-nighters and county fairs. Q: But Barry Williams said that sometimes, you kids had a good night. PLUMB: Oh, yeah! It was extremely popular. Q: Where did you get the outfits you wore on that tour? Super-’70s fringeand-beads in blinding reds, oranges, greens and yellows? PLUMB: (Sarcastically) Yes, it was wonderful, wasn’t it? I can’t remember. The stuff just sort of appeared. Q: In 1976, you passed on “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour,” a show which a lot of your old “Brady” colleagues lived to regret. Are you glad you did? PLUMB: With that one, I was. With that one, I think I made the right decision. Q: In “The Brady Brides” (1981) and thereafter, your character evolved more than the other “Brady” kids. Jan became a yuppie, almost a snob. Did you have anything to do with that arc? Did you press for it? PLUMB: Nope. Uh-uh. They just wrote it that way. Q: What would you call your personal highlight of all the “Brady Bunch” spin-offs that you participated in? PLUMB: Gosh, probably (the 1990 drama series) “The Bradys,” believe it or not. It was sort of fun. I got to wear some nice clothes. Q: Though you’ve done reunions, you’ve never allowed yourself to be pigeonholed as Jan Brady. That must be important to you.

Eve Plumb in 1992. Photo by Kathy Voglesong

PLUMB: Well, imagine if people thought that, OK, you’re a writer, so you must not be able to cook.

King-Seeley Thermos’ lunchbox (1970); Whitman’s paper dolls (1972) and coloring book (1974).

The Topps Co.’s trading cards display box and wrapper (1969); more Whitman paper dolls (1973). “The Brady Bunch” © Paramount Pictures

“I remember I couldn’t wait to hear my voice back, because I had never made a record. Interestingly enough, the first song I cut was ‘I Think I Love You.’ A great record.”

David’s Goliath Keith Partridge loomed large in Cassidy’s career

AFTER HANGING UP KEITH PARTRIDGE’S RED velvet suit in 1974, David Cassidy spent his career recording, touring and mounting glitzy Vegas productions. But he still encountered fans clutching “Partridge Family” lunchboxes. The problem: Though Cassidy played a fictional character, he really sang all of those “Partridge Family” hits such as “I Think I Love You” (#1), “Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted” (#6) and “I’ll Meet You Halfway” (#9). Cassidy, however, was grateful for the early exposure, and maintained a sense of humor about his “Partridge” past. The singer had larger concerns. After several DUIs in the 2010s, he owned up to a drinking problem and sought help. “Getting behind the wheel when you’re impaired is a horrible, horrible thing to do,” he told me in 2011. “Call a cab.” In 2017, Cassidy announced that he was living with dementia. The singer had earlier told me that his mother, actress Evelyn Ward, also suffered with the debilitating condition. “It needs to be addressed,” Cassidy said of dementia. “It’s going to be an epidemic. We need to be very proactive about it.” The New York City native (born 1950) and I spoke of happier topics during four interviews between 1991 and 2011. Q: Was there much common ground between you and Keith Partridge? Some people thought you were playing yourself. CASSIDY: He’s totally the antithesis of who I was. I lived in Southern California during the ’60s as a teenager. It was an amazing time to be alive. I was pretty much on the cutting edge of what was going on all over the place. I was accused of being a hippie by a lot of people. I tended to be a rebel. I went to three different high schools; I was kicked out of two of them. I was pretty wild during my teenage years. Q: What was your introduction to music? CASSIDY: I grew up around musical theater with my mother and father (Ward and actor Jack Cassidy), both of them. My father did 40 Broadway shows; my mother did probably 20 of them. We had a lot of (George and Ira) Gershwin and (Frank) Sinatra and the (Count) Basie band. Q: How about your introduction to rock ’n’ roll? CASSIDY: I saw the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Sunday night. Monday, I begged my mother and my step-dad to take me to the music store. I bought a Fender — what was my first guitar? I’m trying to remember. A Fender Jazzmaster? No. A Fender Jaguar. I started learning to play guitar. I played drums. I had a couple of friends of mine. We started to play. We were all learning Beatles songs off the first album and the second album.

Strummer: David Cassidy on the cover of Life in 1971 (above) and performing in 1991 (opposite). Photo by Kathy Voglesong; Life magazine © Time Inc.

As the ’60s evolved, we became a little better. Most everybody stopped playing after a few years, and their musical careers were over. I just kept playing and enjoying it, not ever assuming that I was going to ever record. Because I was an actor. I was working with the L.A. Theater Company and went back to New York. Anyway, I kept playing. Some of the highlights of my teenage years in Los Angeles — the Buffalo Springfield played an assembly at my high school, which was unbelievable. A friend of mine that I grew up with, Jim Densmore, his brother was in this group called the Doors. Q: I’ve heard of them. CASSIDY: Yeah. John Densmore’s brother, Jim, was a couple of years younger than him. We went and saw the Doors at the Whisky (in West Hollywood). I saw B.B. King at the Whisky. I saw (Eric) Clapton and Cream at the Santa Monica Civic. Q: Were you a Romeo before you became a “heartthrob”?

CASSIDY: I was a very adventurous guy. I was not a very naive guy. I was somebody who was pretty active when I was young. And it was a time, fortunately, that you didn’t have to worry about what people have to worry about now. Q: Back then, did you imbibe in any recreational mood enhancers, if you get my drift? CASSIDY: Yes, but it was a different thing. It’s not like it is now. It was fun. Turn on, turn in, drop out — that kind of thing. It was still very innocent, and kind of about a love thing. It had nothing to do with machine guns and South America and billions of dollars and murder. It was a totally different concept and a different time. People’s attitudes about it were much different. Q: You did a lot of episodic television early on. How did that lead to your landing the “The Partridge Family”? CASSIDY: I had flown out to Los Angeles to do a screen test. From that screen test, I got a number of dramatic shows like “Marcus Welby,” “Ironside,” “Bonanza,” “Medical Center” — all of those really successful one-hour dramas. In a very short period of time, actors can become kind of relevant and hot. At the end of the season, they do pilots. I had to do a number of different auditions for a half-hour situation comedy with music. They filmed screen tests, although they knew I could sing and play guitar. Even though the network and the studio didn’t care, I started off playing (the Jimi Hendrix song) “Voodoo Child.” Because at first, there wasn’t any music (in the early stages of developing “The Partridge Family”). Nobody knew what the music was going to be like. They knew I could sing, they knew I could play, but I was cast as an actor, as everybody else was. So it was fascinating how quickly it evolved, just by fate. It was obviously God’s intent. I feel very, very fortunate to have had all of the stars align to do that. Because I was able to not only become very successful, but to touch people’s lives and bring light into their lives. It means a lot. Q: Keith Partridge always seemed uncomfortable to be in a band with younger siblings. Did you ever feel uncool, lipsynching alongside children? CASSIDY: I mean, when you’re 19, you want your other friends who are 19 and 20 to think you’re cool. You don’t want to be with 12- and 13-year-olds. Imagine! It was hard for me. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the people I was with. I believed in what I was doing. I knew I was good. I knew that the music we were playing was good. But the music was pretty much focused on an audience that was younger than me. I wanted to make records for people my age.

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Q: What do you recall of your very first recording session? CASSIDY: I remember I couldn’t wait to hear my voice back, because I had never made a record. Interestingly enough, the first song I cut was “I Think I Love You.’ A great record. Q: You were a green kid working with top professionals. CASSIDY: Something I will forever be grateful for is that I learned from the greatest songwriters, in my opinion, in the history of pop music: Carole King, Barry (Mann) and Cynthia (Weil), Gerry Goffin, Tony Romeo. They wrote material for me. After I would be on the set, I would work every night with (drummer) Hal Blaine, (bassist) Joe Osborn, (bassist) Max Bennett, (pianist) Larry Knechtel, (pianist) Mike Melvoin, (guitarist) Louie Shelton, (guitarist) Larry Carlton. That was my band, working with that kind of talent. I was 19 when I started. I soaked it up like a sponge. We would record 20, 25 tracks. I would sing live with them. We would work the arrangements out. I leapt from being just a garage player in pickup bands to a whole other level. It was an education I couldn’t buy anywhere. If you had $10 million, you couldn’t get those guys together and do that every night. So I was given one of the greatest gifts that anyone could ever have as a young guy.

It has lived and breathed in me for all these years. I think the arrangements and the recordings, for what the music is, hold up today. I think the songs do, as well. Q: They are great songs. Not everybody realizes that. CASSIDY: You know, people tend to look at that and say, “Well, it’s bubblegum” or “It’s kids’ stuff.” Some of the arrangements are so sophisticated and so hip, that it’s a wonderful thing to go back and listen to it. Q: What was your most ludicrous teen magazine headline? CASSIDY: (Laughs) Oh, God. I couldn’t possibly remember one. There were so many of them. “David near death.” I try to block most of that stuff. “Be David’s lover.” “Win a trip to Hollywood, be David’s lover.”

as I can recall. But I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it except getting up in the morning, taking a shower and having to spend half an hour drying it. But, you know, (sighing resignedly) I really can’t talk about my hair. Q: Do you still own your red velvet suit? CASSIDY: Oh, my crushed velvet. Um, sadly, I don’t. I sure wish I did, though. The crushed velvet was one of those magical outfits that went along with the bus and Mondrian that is that style. I think that depicts a very, very happy time in a lot of people’s lives. It certainly does in mine, too. Q: You took off in that bus once or twice. Was it difficult, being 19, driving that gigantic thing?

Cassidy’s single “Cherish” (1971). Opposite: Armpit hair on Rolling Stone and grinning on a paperback (both 1972).

CASSIDY: Yeah. No, I didn’t drive it a long time. It was a 1958 International, I think. It was a beat-up, old, real seriously no-power, nonothing. It was a grinding old hunk of junk that they painted to look good. The inside of it was a mess. It was really a retired, beaten-up, old school bus. Because in those days, they didn’t want to spend any money. I think they paid $250 for it, and I’m not exaggerating; I think that’s what they paid for it. You know, studio execs go, “Ah! Find some old school bus and we’ll paint it. Let’s not spend any money on this!” That’s the way they did things in those days. That was a different world than we live in now.

Q: Please talk about your friendship with John Lennon in the ’70s.

Q: What was the most annoying lie told about you in the teen mags? CASSIDY: (Laughs) That I love wearing David Cassidy (brand) love beads. “David sleeps with his love beads.” I really have no idea. Q: Do you remember a scariest mob moment? CASSIDY: I have had so many that it would be hard for me to distinguish and to really point one of them out as being “the” one. They wrecked and destroyed five limousines when I played Madison Square Garden. They turned one of them over. I wasn’t in any of them. But when you get that kind of mass hysteria — that was pretty intense. Q: Do you have a favorite piece of memorabilia or ephemera bearing your likeness?

CASSIDY: Yeah. There was a great piece in Mad magazine, about “The Putrid Family.” I was Teeth Putrid. It’s brilliant. Q: Did it feel weird seeing your likeness on lunchboxes, etc.? CASSIDY: When you have a company that owns your name and likeness, they can make a David Cassidy doll — which they did — they can make David Cassidy lunchboxes, comic books and all of that. Q: How many times per week — counting touch-ups between shots while filming the show — was your hair cut? CASSIDY: I never got it cut. I just would let it grow. Like, you know, once every couple of months, I’d cut it, probably,

CASSIDY: I wouldn’t say I was best friends with him, but I had dinner with he and Yoko a number of times. I jammed with him. He came over my house on New Year’s Eve. I think it was 1975. We got drunk together in my bedroom and played songs all night. I got to sing all of Paul (McCartney)’s parts. That was the greatest musical night of my life, because those guys are the reason that I picked up a guitar in the first place. Q: Looking back on your years as a teen idol, it must have been pretty crazy. Do you have a sense of humor about it? CASSIDY: I do have a sense of humor about the past. And I don’t take myself too seriously. But I know it (“The Partridge Family”) was a great time for all the people who saw it, dug it, loved me and loved the show. In its time.

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On the red-velvet suits: “Now it’s become such a bone of contention, that five white kids dressed up like Super Fly.”

The wise-cracking kid HE PLAYED A TROUBLEMAKER NAMED DANNY so convincingly that it wasn’t too much of a surprise when Danny Bonaduce got into hot water as an adult. (Substance abuse . . . busted with a hooker ... said hooker wasn’t a chick . . . that kind of stuff.) Bonaduce was the first to poke fun at his own bad choices. He could have blamed it all on childhood abuse wrought by his father, the TV writer Joseph Bonaduce. But the actor who played pint-sized, wise-cracking, freckle-faced bassist Danny Partridge didn’t excuse his behavior by invoking the so-called “child star syndrome.” I spoke with the Pennsylvania native (born 1959) in 2002. Q: The “Partridge Family” cast had such chemistry. Do you remember the moment when you all first clicked? BONADUCE: I remember the very first table read that we did. I was a little kid, but I remember Shirley (Jones) and Susan (Dey) had a scene together that was just really great. The chemistry between them clicked. And then I did a scene with Dave Madden, who played Reuben Kincaid. We just got these huge laughs. And I remember the executive producer, Bob Claver, leaning over to one of the other producers and saying to him — but I could hear him — “Oh my God, do we have a hit.” So I think it was from the very first table read. Q: Do you remember the moment when you first tried on the red crushed-velvet costumes? BONADUCE: (Laughs) Sure! It’s funny, because now it’s become such a bone of contention, that five white kids dressed up like Super Fly. But at the time, it didn’t seem that outlandish. I mean, look at the Bay City Rollers. Look at all the glam rock of the ’80s. Rock stars of that era wore rockstar uniforms. So they didn’t seem that ludicrous at the time. Q: When you saw each other in the suits, did you feel funny? BONADUCE: You’ve gotta realize: You’re standing there in these matching suits. Not only are they red-velvet suits, but they’ve got the big frilly collars and stuff. I think it was David Cassidy who said, “Oh, my God, I’m a gay pirate.” Q: Did you get any kind of coaching at all in the lip-synching or bass-playing department? BONADUCE: Only from David. I had no idea what a bass guitar was. A guitar was a guitar. And I remember about the third episode, I was sitting there playing the guitar like I would a regular guitar, and David turned to me and he said, “I can’t take it anymore! You pluck a bass, you don’t strum it!” And that’s the advice I got. Q: Do you ever watch the old “Partridge Family” episodes? BONADUCE: You know what? I don’t, really. It was a good little show, and I’m happy it’s still on. Q: You’ve been candid about your father. He almost seemed like a Jekyll-and-Hyde, because he was an accomplished pro-

As Danny Partridge (above) in 1971 and backstage at a nightclub prior to performing standup in 1991 (opposite). “The Partridge Family” © Columbia Pictures Industries; 1991 photo by Kathy Voglesong

fessional. But not, in your estimation, such a great dad. BONADUCE: My dad was a very brilliant man. My dad did one thing that, in my estimation, was horrendous. The way he raised his children was just the worst of all possible calls. But my dad did a hundred other things that were just amazing. His ability to speak languages and amass information and write are truly admirable qualities. But they are outshined in my world and, I think, in most people’s worlds by the way he treated his family. Q: What’s your theory on the so-called “child star syndrome”? BONADUCE: My theory is that there is no child star phenomenon. My theory is that if you go to any given penitentiary, (inmates) for any particular industry, I think, will outrank, statistically speaking, people who were in show business. I think if one guy who was in show business is in jail, there are three teachers. There are four dentists. There are nine stockbrokers. So I don’t really think there is a child star phenomenon. I think it’s a created phenomenon that child stars create by going bad and getting in the press. Like me. And the press runs with it, because it’s good copy that the guys from “Diff’rent Strokes” are lunatics. Q: So it all goes back to the way one is raised? BONADUCE: I’ve always believed firmly that it is parenting. That with the appropriate parenting, your child is going to turn out okay. Parenting is certainly more important than occupation, in my belief.

Mother, rocker, bus driver DEPENDING ON YOUR AGE, SHIRLEY JONES IS either A. the gorgeous young blonde who sang in widescreen, Technicolor musicals in the 1950s wearing frilly period garb, or B. the still gorgeous, but not-as-young blonde who sang in a small-screen musical sitcom in the 1970s, wearing a redvelvet suit with a frilly collar. In the movies, Jones won an Oscar for “Elmer Gantry” (1960) and counted James Cagney, Marlon Brando and James Stewart as leading men. Jones lent her Rodgers-andHammerstein-trained voice to pop music as Shirley Partridge, who kept house . . . and drove the Mondrian bus. I spoke with the Pennsylvania native (born 1934) in 1992. Q: Prior to “The Partridge Family,” you’d done a lot of singing, to be sure. Suddenly, you were singing in a new genre —

pop music — although you were singing mostly backup.

JONES: The music was built around David Cassidy and selling records. Still, a couple of times I had my own solos — on the Christmas show, and I did a thing about the whales, “The Whale’s Song.” But it was basically teeny-bopper time. Q: Was it an adjustment, singing pop? JONES: It was like a foreign language to me (laughs). It’s one of the reasons I didn’t really do much singing. I was basically background for David. That was fine, because it wasn’t my milieu at all. It still isn’t. Q: Was it at all awkward playing the birth mother of your real-life stepson? (Jones was then married to Cassidy’s father, actor Jack Cassidy.) JONES: I was always kind of the “wicked stepmother” in David’s eyes, even though I tried in every way possible to win favor with him. He was very bitter about his father’s divorce (from Cassidy’s mother, Evelyn Ward, in 1956). Only when we worked on “Partridge” — until we had a close, daily relationship on an adult level — did we get to know each other. Q: The haircut you wore on the show really became you. JONES: I actually did it for the show. I had long hair up to the “Partridge Family” time in all my movies. I had very long hair, in fact. And then I cut it for the show and found that was the only way I’d ever want to wear my hair again. I still have that haircut. Q: When you heard about all of the trouble that Danny Bonaduce has gotten into over the years, did you ever have any maternal feelings toward him? Did you want to call him up and talk some sense into him? JONES: I did talk to him a couple of times. But, you know, I had my own children to raise. I know a lot of performers, when they work with kids, do that. But I think mostly it’s because they don’t have their own kids. And I had my own responsibilities here, so I never really took it on. Q: Did you ever regret doing “The Partridge Family”? JONES: I don’t regret it. At first, I had misgivings about doing it. In retrospect, perhaps, I would have had a longer movie career had I not done five years of television. But at that point in my life, I was really eager to have some routine, a normal life. I had been traveling all over the world on movie locations, and I had small children. The work (on “The Partridge Family”) was hard, but it was a half-hour show, so it wasn’t that difficult. Six months work, six months off. I really enjoyed the five years we had, I really did. And we had a wonderful, wonderful group. We really loved each other and enjoyed working together.

Shirley Jones as Shirley Partridge.

“The Partridge Family” memorabilia includes, from top left, the single “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted,” the lunchbox and the board game (all 1971). “The Partridge Family” © Columbia Pictures Industries; record © Bell; lunchbox © KingSeeley Thermos Co.; game © Milton Bradley

‘Family’ comic books

Charlton was a lowerrung publisher, without doubt. But its specialty in the romance genre suited “The Partridge Family” — as did the superb light-table work of artist Don Sherwood. Eventually, David Cassidy spun off into his own title “as” himself. Clockwise from opposite: Six lovely portraits on the cover of The Partridge Family #13 (1972); rocking out on the #3 cover (1971); a David Cassidy #2 panel (1973); a Partridge Family #13 panel. “The Partridge Family” © Columbia Pictures Industries; comic books © Charlton Publications Inc.

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Above: Aiming for the heartstrings. Opposite: Freak Out, U.S.A. added the suggestion of sex and drugs. © 16 Magazine; © Warren Publishing

Teen magazines were for girls who liked cute boys.

And, in the largely-still-repressed 1960s, closeted boys who liked cute boys. Whether or not you belonged to either demographic of this wonky print-media genre, there was grooviness to be found behind the covers of 16 Magazine, Spec Magazine, Tiger Beat, Teen Keen, TeenSet, Flip, Fave! and others. That’s because pop stars accounted for the largest percentage of teen magazines’ subject matter. The mags typically presented interviews, features, photo layouts and pin-ups of, let’s say, the “prettier” musicians and actors of the era. (Don’t forget, screaming girls gave the Beatles their start. And the cover boy of the debut issue of 16 Magazine back in 1957? Elvis Presley.) Stories aimed straight for the heartstrings with tabloid-style come-ons: “Jack Wild: I need someone to love me” … “Mike Cole: My lonely nights” … “Davy (Jones): My secret love list” … “Share Bobby (Sherman’s) first kiss” … “Bobby bares all!” Warren Publishing put out at least two issues of Freak Out, U.S.A., which updated the teen mag formula via the suggestion of sex and drugs. For example, “Jefferson Airplane: One girl, five guys … See how they make it work!” and “The Monkees talk about LSD and other hairy things!” In the latter story, purported to have been penned by Davy Jones, the singer said of LSD: “From what I’ve heard about it, it’s a rotten high.” Did Jones write that? Did Bobby bare all? The larger question: Did the teen magazines practice anything approaching journalism? Opinions on the reliability of the reporting varied. Mark Lindsay, singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders, said there was good reporting in the pages of 16 Magazine and cited its editor, Gloria Stavers (1927-83), as a conscientious pro. “For a lot of the interviews in 16 Magazine, Gloria tried to be pretty accurate with her stuff,” Lindsay told me in 2010. “But Tiger Beat and some of the others — we were pretty busy. We were on the road 200 nights a year, and then we did the television show (‘Where the Action Is’). So between that and the recordings in the studio, we didn’t have a lot of time for interviews. So some of the magazines did make things up. I would hear about special relationships I had with people I never met,” Lindsay laughed, “and various things like that. So it was kind of amusing. It was almost like reading about somebody else.” Peter Tork of the Monkees said the magazines could be accurate, depending. “It wasn’t faked; it was just selective, if you know what I’m saying,” Tork told me in 1999. “Basically, what they said about us was more or less true. You

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sort of discounted it when they said, ‘Oh, he’s real groovy and he has a groovy pad and he sees really groovy people and he’s got groovy friends.’ But when they say, ‘This one likes his motorcycle’ and ‘That one likes to stay home and read’ and ‘This one likes to go out dancing at night’ — that all was pretty accurate. “The fact of what kind of lives we were leading at home under covers wasn’t anybody’s business. They didn’t care and the kids didn’t care. So I guess it was equal parts selective, real and hype. I just discounted the hype, thinking that anybody would.” One of Tork’s fellow Monkees, Davy Jones, said that at first, the magazines were paying for access — an ethical no-no in serious journalism. But, said Jones, this situation didn’t last long. Recalled the singer: “They (the Monkees’ handlers) were charging 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat magazine to take pictures of us and to do interviews with us. “Then, after a few months, all of a sudden they (the magazines) said, ‘Wait a minute. We’re giving you free advertising. We’re taking pictures of your boys. We’re putting them in our mags. We don’t see them in Time, Life or any other place.’ ” “They were manufacturing a lot of stuff,” Donny Osmond, who sang “Puppy Love” (#3 in 1972), told me in 2001. “I’ll never forget one headline: ‘Have a shower with Donny.’ Then you read the article, and it’s as innocent as can be. ‘If your sister is having a baby shower, invite Donny. He might come.’ ” Tony DeFranco sang the DeFranco Family hit “Heartbeat, It’s a Love Beat” (#3 in 1973). “It’s interesting, because women to this day feel like they know me based on what they read in Tiger Beat, and a lot of it was total fluff,” DeFranco told me in 2000. “Like, they (Tiger Beat) would call me and say, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ I would say, ‘I don’t care.’ They’d go, ‘Well, tell us a color,’ I’d say, ‘Blue.’ And then the next month, they’d ask me, ‘Do you have a new favorite color?’ I’d go, ‘I don’t care.’ They’d day, ‘Well, pick a color.’ And I’d go, ‘Orange.’ ” One of the biggest teen idols of the 1970s didn’t hesitate to disparage the veracity of the teen magazines. “It was completely and totally contrived and made up to promote an image that was selling a lot of magazines for them,” David Cassidy told me in 1991. “It was frustrating. I would sit and have an interview with them and say, ‘Really and truly, my favorite music is (Jimi) Hendrix or (Eric) Clapton.’ They’d write, ‘David loves the Monkees.’ I could tell them that I was into bondage, and they would have written, ‘David loves to go to sleep with his puppy at night.’ ”

Once again, you can blame it on the Beatles.

The songs in 1964’s “A Hard Day’s Night” were like little movies that could be enjoyed as stand-alones. Then TV’s “The Monkees” swiped the format, punctuating episodes with songs acted out using improvisation, choreography and slapstick. Finally — here’s where end-of-days theorists perk up — Saturday morning kiddie shows got in on the racket. Series like, well, “The Beatles” (1965-67), “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles” (1966-67), “The Archie Show” (1968-69), “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” (1968-70), “Josie and the Pussycats” (1970-72), “Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp” (1970), “The Jackson 5ive” (1971-73) and “The Brady Kids” (1972-73) had characters performing pop. The “Scooby-Doo” kids (1969-70) drove the Mystery Machine, a psychedelic van. “H.R. Pufnstuf” (1969-70) had Jack Wild, a long-haired Brit who looked like Davy Jones’ poor cousin. And millions of Lucky Charmseating rugrats came to the same conclusion: “When I grow up, I’m gonna be in a band and have groovy adventures like the Archies.” Oh, the agony that was in store for them.

‘The Impossibles’

In the year 1966, “Batman” exploded on TV, while the British Invasion was still in the ether. Those astute trend-spotters at Hanna-Barbera combined the two crazes with “The Impossibles,” a clever, candy-colored parody. The Impossibles were a rock trio — in this sense, more like Cream than the Beatles, let’s say — with secret identities. Off stage, and away from screaming girls, they were a superhero team called, um, the Impossibles. (That would be like the Justice League forming a pop group called ... the Justice League.) Their powers? Coil-Man had Slinky-like legs; Multi-Man could clone himself endlessly; Fluid-Man could take the form of gushing water. Yeah, these guys were never gonna get in the Avengers, but their songs were actually pretty cool. “Hiddy Hiddy Hoo” coulda been a hit, yo!

‘The Archie Show’

The passage of time had little effect on the gang at Riverdale High. Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead and Reggie were virtually unchanged from their 1940s beginnings in Pep Comics, until two non-comics formats — pop music and animation — finally instigated change. In Life With Archie #60 (1967), the Archie gang reinvented itself as a pop band called . . . the Archies. The animated TV series “The Archie Show,” which debuted the following year, favored this shift. (Suspiciously, your chances of getting a letter published on Archie Comics’ fan page, The Archie Club News, increased greatly if you raved about “The Archie Show.”) The Archies had four real-life, Don Kirshner-shepherded hits: “Sugar, Sugar” (#1), “Jingle Jangle” (#10), “Bang Shang a Lang” (#22) and “Who’s Your Baby” (#40).

‘Josie and the Pussycats’

In the comics, Josie was the female Archie — a red-headed teen with colorful friends. And, as with Archie, Josie’s gang reinvented itself as a pop band, which television soon made the focus of an animated series. But at heart, the leopard-print-wearing Josie and the Pussycats did not mirror the Archies so much as the “Scooby-Doo” gang: hip girls and guys, with no (apparent) romantic entanglements, righting wrongs on the road. An important distinction: the Scooby-Doo gang traveled randomly, while the Pussycats were cruising from gig to gig. The Pussycats were a trio with scant instrumentation. Pretty much, the whole group was guitar (Josie), tambourine (Valerie) and drums (Melody). Valerie beat Fat Albert as the first regularly appearing black character on a Saturdaymorning cartoon series. Sexybut-dimwitted Melody was akin to Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot.”

‘Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp’

Simply put, “Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp” was a 007 parody starring chimpanzees. Besides being a superspy working for A.P.E. (the Agency to Prevent Evil), Lancelot fronted a rock band: the Evolution Revolution. The organist played a wicked Hammond B3. The tambourine player put Davy Jones to shame. The attention to detail was remarkable. The monkeys were precisely dubbed, impeccably styled and, it must be said, talented. There were ingeniously utilized exteriors, vehicles, props — anything to make this planet of the apes believable. But the musical “performances” were the big draw. For these sequences, the show’s creators went full-on psychedelic, with wigs, costumes and accoutrements that made you swear these chimps were plucked from an allnighter in the Haight. There was even a Lancelot Link album, from ABC Records. But unlike the Archies, the Evolution Revolution never had a real-life hit.

‘The Jackson 5ive’

All sorts of wonderful collisions happened with “The Jackson 5ive.” Pop met soul. Real life met animation. And Motown met children’s television. Even the companies that collaborated on the series were strange bedfellows. Rankin/ Bass were the animators behind “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.” Motown Productions was a subsidiary of the record company that brought us the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Supremes . . . and the Jackson 5. Bolstered with the Jacksons’ pop confections such as “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “The Love You Save,” the series followed the fictional exploits of Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael Jackson, who then ranged in age from 13 (Michael) to 20 (Jackie). The credits implied that the Jacksons provided their own voices, which was too good to be true. However, Diana Ross indeed provided the voice for her likeness in the debut episode.

“The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” made “The Howdy Doody Show” look like “King Lear.”

There was barely any script in a given segment. Mostly, it was four guys in big fluffy costumes who probably couldn’t see too well, running into walls accompanied by cartoony music, silly sound effects and a laugh track. (An unsavory irony is that many decades later, the wearing of similarly fluffy animal costumes during intimacy became a trend in the realm of kink. Eww.) There was a thin premise, however. The Banana Splits was a pop band made up of animals which, species-wise, was quite integrated. Fleagle, the dog, tried to keep order (voice: Paul Winchell). Drooper, the lion, was a myopic hillbilly (voice: Allan Melvin). Snorky, the elephant, was the Harpo Marx of the band (no voice). Bingo, the gorilla, was the enigmatic one (voice: Daws Butler). No matter what calamity visited the Banana Splits, Bingo’s toothy, banal smile never wavered. It was kinda creepy. The weirdest, most watchable segments featured the Sour Grapes Bunch — talented little girls in lavender miniskirts and tights doing groovy dances. For some unexplained reason, the Splits cowered in the Sour Grapes’ presence. The Banana Splits traveled via Banana Buggies which, after all, went “over hill and highway.” (Of course, the vehicles were customized by George Barris.) But where did the Banana Splits travel to? You never saw them in regular places like supermarkets or laundromats. Usually, they just went to amusement parks. (They seemed drawn to funhouse mirrors, slides and bumper cars.) Did the Splits rock? You bet your giant plastic mallet! “The Tra La La Song,” the show’s theme, is indelible bubblegum — once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it. “Wait ’Til Tomorrow” is the coolest psychedelic song you never heard; the Mamas and the Papas should have recorded it. “Doin’ the Banana Split” is a popsoul classic sung by none other than mack-daddy baritone Barry White (“Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Baby”). Another musical contributor was Al Kooper, the very guy who played the shimmering organ on Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Yep, some accomplished folks worked on this dopey show. Director Richard Donner (“The Omen,” “Superman”) helmed several episodes — speaking of people you’d assume wouldn’t be caught dead with “The Banana Splits” on their resumé.

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Clockwise from top left: Kellogg’s giveaway record sleeve (1969); Fleagle mug (1969); Kellogg’s giveaway record (1969); Kellogg’s giveaway Snorky doll (1969); Whitman coloring book (1969); Kellogg’s fan club ad (1968); Kellogg’s giveaway Fleagle doll (1969). Center: KST lunchbox (1970). “The Banana Splits” © Hanna-Barbera Productions

It’s Saturday morning in 1969, and children all over America are having breakfast — say, a bowl of Quisp and a glass of Tang. They do so while sitting inches away from a warm, humming, radiation-emitting color TV. On comes a new show that’s something like “The Wizard of Oz” on acid. It’s “H.R. Pufnsuf,” and it’s a real groovy trip of a live-action kiddie show. There’s a long-haired lad with an English accent interacting with crazylooking characters on a psychedelic island, including Pufnstuf himself, the island’s big, multicolored mayor. The show looks like a cartoon in 3-D, which is just what its creators — brothers Sid and Marty Krofft — intended. “I wanted it to have the look of a cartoon,” Sid Krofft (born 1929), a native of Athens, Greece, told me in 1996. “That’s why the sets were done like that. Actually, it was animation, but in dimension.” As for the show’s psychedelic look: “Well, I’m the original hippie.” The Kroffts created “Pufnstuf” and other colorful kiddie shows such as “The Bugaloos,” “Lidsville” and “Sigmund and the Sea Monster.” Sid described himself as a “fifth-generation puppeteer” who was playing all over the world at age 7, and toured with Judy Garland — a thrill for Sid, since his favorite film was “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). “The land of Oz, to me, of course, was really ‘Pufnstuf” and all of our shows, with the talking trees and everything,” Sid said. “Because you were transported, as a kid — and that was Judy Garland — into this world, this incredible world. That’s what I always felt that I needed to do for children.” The genesis of “Pufnstuf” dates back to a live show titled “Kaleidoscope,” which the Kroffts created for the San Antonio World’s Fair of 1968. “That’s where Pufnstuf was created,” Montreal native Marty (born 1937) told me in 1996. “We called him Luther at the time. He was in a big show, which was a fantasy. The character was so popular — I mean, we were doing the biggest business at that World’s Fair.” The success of “Kaleidoscope” led to the establishment of the Kroffts’ production shop — puppets, costumes, props, amusement rides — in Sun Valley, California, which they called ‘The Factory’ (no relation to Andy Warhol’s headquarters). The Kroffts’ chief client was the Six Flags amusement park chain; but, said Sid, “We started building stuff for everybody. We did the Jackson 5 concert, the Ice Capades and Ringling.” Another client was Hanna-Barbera, who ordered a set of four costumes for a live-action kiddie show they were developing titled “The Banana Splits.” “They came to us to build the suits,” said Sid, “because we were the only people who did that. This was before Disney put Mickey Mouse in a suit.

“And when they walked out with the costumes, I looked at my brother and said, ‘They’re gonna make millions.’ ” Recalled Marty of that moment: “When they left with the Banana Splits, I kind of said, ‘Oh my God.’ We got paid $1.40 to do it, but then they walked out with the whole thing. “But then the head of programming at NBC told us, ‘Why don’t you create your own thing?’ So we figured, well, that was a simple idea. We were always wanting to do bigger things. We wanted to create a production, with a bigger fantasy.” The Kroffts developed a premise about an innocent lad lured to Living Island by the evil Witchiepoo, who covets his magic flute. (Yeah, it sounds pervy.) Soon, the search was on for a young actor to play Jimmy. Coincidentally, Sid was in England watching a rough cut of “Oliver!” (1968), which had an unknown actor named Jack Wild in its cast. Sid had found his Jimmy. He recalled: “When I saw that kid with an accent, I thought, ‘Oh, America’s gonna just embrace that.’ Well, we couldn’t even find the kid! Columbia did the movie — it was a kid that they picked out of a schoolyard. He was 15 years old. I think they paid him a coupla hundred bucks a week to do the Artful Dodger.” Wild was eventually located, and then exported to California, where he lived with Marty while filming “H.R. Pufnstuf.” “I, unfortunately, kind of adopted him,” Marty said. “He came to live with us, and I had two little kids at the time. That was a disaster. He brought his brother (Arthur) with him. So I wound up stuck with this kid. That was a tough one for me, personally. I had him for a year in my house. And, I mean, the kid still calls me. I still hear from this guy.” (Marty sounded like he was joshing, but wouldn’t crack. Years later, Wild said in a video interview for a “Pufnstuf” box set: “Marty has always treated me like a son. He still does now, even, irrespective of the fact of all the chaos I caused in his family home.” Sadly, Wild died of cancer in 2006 at age 53.) Wild soon became a teen idol, landing on the cover of 16 Magazine — and in the hearts of teen and pre-teen girls. “He was the hottest kid in America at the time,” Marty said. “I’ll tell you where that stuff started. He used to say, at the end of the show, ‘Keep the cards and letters coming in.’ So we got about 500,000 letters, and we had no way of answering them, because there were no computers then. So I think that these fan letters turned into these magazine things. I think they were radical about this kid. I still hear people that are grown up talking about Jack Wild, how they had a crush on him.” Also in the cast were Billy Hayes as Witchiepoo and three alltime great little persons in film: Angelo Rossitto (“Freaks”), Billy Barty (“Circus Boy”) and Felix Silla (“The Addams Family”). For the Kroffts, TV production presented a steep learning curve. “We didn’t know zip about it,” said Sid. “As a matter of fact, we did it on film, at Paramount Studios, and we lost over a million dollars. We almost lost our company because of ‘Pufnstuf.’ ” “We were kind of run over the coals financially on the thing,” Marty said, “but we survived.” Marty was most proud of the opportunities he and his brother gave to aspiring young talent over the years. “My father left me with no cash, but some words to live by,” Marty said. “The best thought he gave me was the following. He said, ‘On your worst day, always help somebody else.’ That’s how I live my life.”

From top right: Witchiepoo in flight; Jimmy and Judy the Frog; Shirley Pufnstuf belts one out; Cling and Clang to the rescue; Dr. Blinky’s feathers get ruffled. “H.R. Pufnstuf” © Sid & Marty Krofft Productions

Clockwise from top left: Alladin lunchbox (1970), Collegeville Halloween mask; Whitman book; Milton Bradley game; Remco Jack Wild and Cling puppets (1970). “HR Pufnstuf” © Sid & Marty Krofft Productions, Inc.

Zoinks!

Who was the first hippie in Saturday morning cartoons?

Who else but Shaggy? u Consider the evidence: He has long hair and a scruffy beard. He begins each sentence with “like.” He always has the munchies. And he does most of his conversing with a Great Dane. Another clue: How often do you see Shaggy at the wheel of the Mystery Machine, the Scooby-Doo gang’s psychedelic van? u Shaggy — resident freak on Hanna-Barbera’s “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” — was voiced by disc jockey Casey Kasem. Appropriately so, since Kasem was the longtime host of “America’s Top 40,” a syndicated radio show. He broke into the cartoon biz in 1968. u “The first big job that I got was playing Robin on the cartoon show (‘The Batman/Superman Hour’),” the Detroit native (1932-2014) told me in 2005. u “Right after that, I got very hot, just months after I began doing voice work. Before you knew it, I was doing four, five, six, seven different cartoon shows. u “I did ‘Hot Wheels,’ ‘Cattanooga Cats.’ On ‘Josie and the Pussycats,’ I played the manager of the band, the brother to the girl Alexandra in the band, Alexander III. In ‘Battle of the Planets,’ I was Mark, the commander of the spaceship. Then I did three different characters — one called Bluestreak — in ‘Transformers.’ Oh, there are so many of them. I can’t even remember them all,” Kasem laughed. u “But once I started doing them — my first one being the part of Robin on about 75 shows — shortly after that, I auditioned for ‘Scooby.’ I came up with a character that they liked, and they called me back three different times. Then they cast me as Shaggy, and I’ve been doing it ever since.” u (It turned out to be quite an “ever since.” Kasem voiced Shaggy for 44 years, until the year before his death.) u But Kasem didn’t take all the credit for the voice of Shaggy, who yelled his catchphrase “Zoinks!” in a shaky, high-pitched exclamation whenever he and Scooby encountered various hobgoblins and bogeymen. u “The credit, I think, goes not so much to me as to the fact that I borrowed the feeling of a character created by Richard Crenna in ‘Our Miss Brooks,’ which was a radio and television show,” Kasem explained. “Eve Arden played a schoolteacher who was friendly with a boy named Walter Denton. His character sounded like this (in high-pitched voice): ‘That’s right, Miss Brooks.’ He was very breathy. And he talked like this. And he was going to do better on the next math test. ‘Right, Miss Brooks?’ That was Richard Crenna.” u Did Kasem sometimes feel as if Shaggy was within him? u “Well, he really is,” Kasem said. “Once I latched onto the character, it was very easy for me to do it. I didn’t have to think twice. I just became the character.”

it was in cons y u g s g r tant pu Sha osts, goblins d o o f a h nd junk of g

“The Brady Kids” live in a treehouse and ride around in a dune buggy with zero adult supervision. Perhaps their parents, Mike and Carol, and their housekeeper, Alice, were murdered? That would explain why the kids are living in a fantasy world of magical mynah birds and chattering pandas. The Bradys’ stage moves suspiciously resemble those of the Archies. (Jan works the organ foot pedals exactly like Betty; Peter’s guitar jams are exactly like Reggie’s.) Hey, once a bunch of kids start playing rock amid psychedelic graphics in Saturday morning cartoons — dude, the revolution is over. “The Brady Kids” © Paramount Pictures Corp. and Filmation Assoc.

Epilogue Grooviness never really died. But the trend’s glory days were numbered once its greatest practitioners began to vanish. Four icons of ’60s rock — Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison — died substance-abuse-related deaths at the same age, 27, within two years of one another. Literally, two years to the day. (Jones died on July 3, 1969; Hendrix on Sept. 18, 1970; Joplin on Oct. 4, 1970; and Morrison on July 3, 1971.) “A lot of people were dying then,” said Joplin’s onetime bandmate in Big Brother and the Holding Company, guitarist Sam Andrew. “They didn’t know about dosages and tolerances and that kind of thing. So people around us were dying. We were concerned — about ourselves, too. We were doing the same things.” YEAH, MUSICIANS PARTIED HEARTY THEN, BUT the smart and/or lucky ones navigated the dangers and survived. Was there a happy medium, a sweet spot, between overdoing it and death? Fito de la Parra got a bit defensive one time, when I asked if drugs were “a necessary evil” to Canned Heat’s sound. “Absolutely, if you want to call it evil,” he said in 2003. “You see, I have never believed that it’s the drugs that are evil. It (depends on) the person. See, I’ve always believed that if you use drugs responsibly, drugs can be a wonderful thing. And I’m quoting Timothy Leary with this phrase. He said using drugs responsibly is a different thing. And here I am. I’m alive, I’m well, healthy, playing. And I’ve used every drug there is. But I didn’t change my life for any drug, or become a slave of a drug. “It’s more that we as humans are not equipped to deal with it somehow — some of us, not all of us.” Another sign that the hippie dream was starting to go horribly wrong — in the eyes of the “establishment,” at least — was the 1969 slaying of eight innocent people over a two-day spree by members of the Manson family. Why tie Charles Manson into this? The media and the law certainly did. Manson cult members were referred to as “hippies”; Manson was called a “guru”; their setup was compared to a “commune.” The implication was that the murders were an inevitable result of the hedonistic hippie lifestyle. Bob Dylan’s lyric which rang in the movement — “The times, they are a-changin’” — came in just as handy for ringing it out. Like, Woodstock was the apex. And Altamont, which followed only four months later, was the nadir. But again, the trend never really died. “Almost cut my hair,” David Crosby sang. Well, he never cut his hair, nor did he lose the walrus ’stache. (The guy never had to work in an office.) But even as the hippies got haircuts, put on ties and entered the work force — the establishment — the dream did not die. Some of the more “flower power-y” artists believed this.

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“ALL OF THE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS THAT were going on in the ’60s are now part of everyday American life,” Arlo Guthrie told me in 2004. “The concerns for nuclear power, the concerns for intervention, the concerns about pollution, air and water — all of those things that were big issues in the ’60s are now normal.” Guthrie cited attitudes he observed while making the one and only movie he starred in, Arthur Penn’s “Alice’s Restaurant” (1969), which was based on Guthrie’s best-remembered song. Said the singer: “The movie was the ’60s from the view of an older generation. And it was almost a forecast that the ideals of these young people would fall apart. In other words, Arthur Penn — and all of those guys who made that movie — were convinced that the idealism of that generation would eventually fade. “There’s a wonderful moment in the movie when a guy unfurls this banner and says, ‘We’re gonna re-consecrate the church!’ In other words, we’re going to make sacred what these ideals were all about. But Arthur Penn was convinced this was doomed to fail. At the end of the movie, everybody goes their own way. “In real life, that church became re-consecrated. We’re there. And we succeeded to make sacred those important parts of the revolution that was the ’60s. It was a success, in real life, that could not be foreseen by people making the movie in ’69. So the movie is a great example of what normal people viewed that scene as. And it was a lighthearted look at it. It was not a ‘Let’s kill all those hippies,’ but it was, ‘Doomed to fail.’ And they were wrong. It didn’t fail. It succeeded.” Not every musician from the period held so sunny a view. The Doors’ Ray Manzarek believed these values fell by the wayside as Americans grew more money-conscious. “Back in the ’60s, people used to actually be in love with the planet,” Manzarek told me in 2005. “They tried to spread a message very much like Jesus the Christ spread a message of love 2,000 years ago. Of course, you know what they did to him. The hippies tried to do the same thing with the message of Jesus, but it didn’t work. We’re back to where we were before the psychedelic revolution. Back to the ’50s. “The environment is last on everybody’s list of concerns. I mean, it’s the only thing we have, is the environment. We live on a planet — 365 days to go around the sun, spinning at 1,000 miles per hour. It’s green and it’s blue and it’s fabulous. “What’s interesting is: Now, we’re in the 21st century and there’s not a lot that’s changed. You know, we’re still at war. People are still trying to ruin the environment. The same things go

Four icons of 1960s rock music died at the same age, 27, within a two-year period ... to the day. From left: Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Jones, Hendrix, Joplin images © Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation, Inc.; Morrison image: Doors publicity photo on today. So for Robby (Krieger, the Doors’ guitarist) and me, it’s a real deja vu. It’s like, ‘Didn’t we go through this from 1965 to 1973?’ It’s still going on. It’s strange days, indeed.” Manzarek sounded gloomy, alright, but he held out hope that one of these days, another generation might take up the cause. “That message is here today for any other person who wants to discover it,” he said. “The young people can join us in the fight to save the planet. We welcome their participation.” Said Donovan of the legacy of the period: “When I looked at it closely again, what were the benefits? People say, ‘It didn’t work, The dream of peace. Look at the wars. Nothing has changed.’ ” Donovan, a dedicated proponent of Transcendental Meditation, felt that TM made possible an awareness that — no pun intended — transcended the good and bad stuff of the time. “What I learned was that something happened above everything,” he said. “Above the music, above the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, above the riots and the torments, those great wars and Vietnam, and the pain and the suffering that was obviously there in the ’60s. But one thing came through, and is working.” GOOD FOR YOU, DONOVAN AND MIKE LOVE AND George Harrison, but it ain’t gonna work for everyone. I don’t know about y’all, but I can still achieve grooviness via a few simple pleasures. Like, if I hear “Incense and Peppermints” by the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Gawd, those forboding backing vocals . . . that weirdly fuzzed guitar ... that insistent cowbell. Or “Crimson and Clover” by the Shondells. Or “Day in the Life” by the Beatles. Or “White Room” by Cream. Or if I see a Peter Max poster. Or a lava lamp in a darkened room. Little things like that. And I realize I must use these mantras judiciously. If I listen to “Incense and Peppermints” every day, its effect will wear off, like that of any drug. But that’s life, baby. Despite what Spinal Tap’s keyboardist preached, you can’t have a good time all the time. There are fans of the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Peter Max yet unborn. Grooviness won’t die unless the human race dies. Which, of course, is a distinct possibility. Right, Mr. Manzarek? Never forget what Wyatt said to Billy: “We blew it.”

IT WAS JULY 13, 1972, A FEW WEEKS AFTER I HAD graduated from Holy Rosary School. My family was riding through downtown Detroit after visiting an uncle. I was 14. Traffic was crawling. The reason: The streets were crowded with longhairs. People still called them “hippies” in ’72, but not for much longer. There were thousands of them, packing block after block. I still felt that weird pang. My hero — that is, my father — was at the wheel of our brown Chevy Kingswood Estate station wagon with fake wood paneling on the sides. But I wished I was old enough, and my hair long enough, to jump out and join the freaks in the street. (Some of the long-hairs pointed at us and laughed. We really were like the Brady Bunch driving through Woodstock.) But why were all these long-hairs congregating in Detroit? The answer came when we got closer to the belly of the beast: Cobo Hall, where the Rolling Stones would take the stage within hours. I never got to witness a festival like Monterey or Woodstock, but seeing mobs of vintage-1972 long-hairs sticks in my memory as, perhaps, a last gasp of the movement. It was dumb luck that we happened to be driving through Motor City that very evening. I saw the Stones on their next tour, in 1975, at ye olde Philadelphia Spectrum. Only three years later, this was a different world. We had entered the era of stadium rock. A Flyers game one night, a Blue Öyster Cult concert the next. Safe and sanitized. Uniformed security frisked you for weapons (or dope) on your way in. No mud, no murders, no babies born, no “freakout tents.” Around this time, we went to see “Woodstock,” the movie, at a midnight matinee after our shift as dishwashers at the Echelon Mall ended. We were fired up on something illicit, and ready to get blown away. We went nuts for Alvin Lee playing “I’m Going Home” and Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But we thought Joan Baez singing “Joe Hill” was boring. Baez’s song was about the exploitation of the working man, and the sacrifices made by those who went before us. It’s something that we dopey dishwashers might have related to. But we were all about: “Ah’m goin’ home / to see my bay-beh / Ah’m goin’ home / to see my bay-beh ...” Once again, some messages got through immediately, while others took longer than they should have.

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Index 1910 Fruitgum Co.: 21, 33 Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated: 70 , 71 Alpert, Richard: 10 Anders, Luana: 92 Anderson, Carl: 154, 155 Andrew, Sam: 124, 129, 188 Animals, the: 20, 21, 38, 130, 141 Appice, Carmine: 80, 81 Arden, Eve: 38, 185 Argent, Rod: 20, 82, 83 Arnaz, Desi: 38 Arnaz, Desi, Jr.: 162 Askew, Luke: 92, 94 Association, the: 21, 24, 30, 49 Avedon, Richard: 97 Bachman, Randy: 35 Baez, Joan: 12, 13, 189 Baker, Ginger: 69-71 Balin, Marty: 125, 127, 147 Band, the: 92, 94, 134 Barris, George: 180 Basil, Toni: 92, 94 Beach Boys, the: 10, 16, 21, 25, 49 Beatles, the: 7, 9-11, 14-18, 20, 21, 25, 30-32, 36, 38, 41-43, 45, 48, 54, 68, 69, 72, 82, 83, 90, 91, 97, 103, 134, 141, 167, 176, 178, 189 Beauchamp, Monte: 118 Beck, Jeff: 84 Bee Gees, the: 151 Begley, Ed Sr.: 89 Belafonte, Harry: 55 Belli, Melvin: 146-149 Berry, Chuck: 32, 48 Big Brother and the Holding Company: 21, 68, 96, 117, 124, 128130, 188 Billodeau, David C.: 92, 93 Black, Karen: 92, 94 Black Sabbath: 18, 69, 90 Blaine, Hal: 30, 73, 168 Blind Faith: 68, 71 Blue Cheer: 21, 103 Blues Image: 21 Blues Magoos: 21 Blunstone, Colin: 82, 83 Bogert, Tim: 80, 81 Bonaduce, Danny: 157, 170-172 Bond, Graham: 69, 70 Booker T and the MGs: 130 Boyce, Tommy: 41 Brando, Marlon: 68, 172 Brewster, David: 10, 96 Brigati, Eddie: 37 Brodax, Al: 90 Brown, Chelsea: 57, 121 Brown, Peter: 70 Bruce, Jack: 69-71 Buckinghams, the: 21, 24, 32 Buckley, William F.: 57 Budinger, Victoria Mae: 11, 66 Buffalo Springfield: 49, 54, 167 Burdon, Eric: 20 Burroughs, William S.: 36 Butler, Geezer: 90

190

Butterfield, Paul: 136 Buzzi, Ruth: 57-59, 66, 123 Byrds, the: 10, 12, 21, 34, 38, 49, 54, 68, 72, 73, 75 Campbell, Glen: 41 Canned Heat: 21, 130, 136, 188 Carne, Judy: 57, 60, 62 Carradine, David: 39 Carson, Johnny: 27, 57, 66 Carter, Dick: 146 Casady, Jack: 124-127, 148, 149 Cassidy, David: 27, 49, 157, 166-169, 171, 172, 175, 176 Cavaliere, Felix: 37, 81 Chad and Jeremy: 38, 72 Chandler, Chas: 141, 144 Channing, Carol: 30, 84 Cheech & Chong: 156 Cher: 72 Chocolate Watchband, the: 85 Chong, Tommy: 156 Clapton, Eric: 18, 69-71, 141, 143, 152, 167, 176 Clark, Dave: 42 Clark, Dick: 25, 37, 121, 130 Clark, Gene: 72, 73 Cocker, Joe: 24, 38, 152 Cole, Michael: 39, 176 Collins, Judy: 12, 13 Coltrane, John: 72, 77 Cordell, Ritchie: 24 Corman, Roger: 84, 86, 93 Cornish, Gene: 37 Country Joe and the Fish: 139 Cowsill, Bill: 27 Cowsill, Bud: 27 Cowsill, Paul: 26 Cowsill, Susan: 26, 27 Cowsills, the: 7, 21, 26-29, 38, 154 Cox, Billy: 142, 145 Cream: 10, 21, 33, 68-71, 141, 167, 178, 189 Cronkite, Walter: 122, 130 Crosby, Bing: 57, 65, 66 Crosby, David: 12, 72, 73, 134, 188 Crosby, Stills & Nash: 21, 24 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: 21, 38, 134, 147 Crough, Suzanne: 27, 157 Crumb, Robert: 9, 68, 112-119 Cummings, Burton: 35 Cutler, Sam: 146 Dali, Salvador: 96 Daltrey, Roger: 5, 135, 152 Danelli, Dino: 37 Dave Clark Five, the: 42 Davies, Dave: 141 Davis, Angela: 121 Davis, Ann B.: 157, 158 Davis, Jack: 27-29 De la Parra, Fito: 136, 188 Deep Purple: 21, 152, 153 Deitch, Kim: 112, 113 Delaney and Bonnie: 71 Densmore, John: 74, 75, 167 Derek and the

Dominoes: 71 Dern, Bruce: 86, 87 Dey, Susan: 157, 171 Ditko, Steve: 108, 113 Dixon, Ivan: 121 Dolenz, Micky: 41, 42, 44, 45, 49, 88, 143, 145 Donovan: 11, 21, 36, 38, 54, 141, 189 Doors, the: 10, 20, 21, 24, 38, 54, 68, 74-77, 136, 167, 188, 189 Douglas, Chip: 34, 41, 43 Douglas, Mike: 26, 54 Dreifuss, Arthur: 84, 85 Dryden, Spencer: 125, 148 Edelman, Heinz: 90 Eden, Barbara: 38 Edge, Graeme: 78 Electric Flag, the: 35 Elliman, Yvonne: 152, 155 Elliot, Cass: 49, 54 Emerick, Geoff: 82 Entwistle, John: 135 Epstein, Brian: 11, 103 Everly Brothers, the: 73 Faithfull, Marianne: 18 Farrow, Mia: 36 Feldon, Barbara: 38 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence: 36 Field, Sally: 39 Fifth Dimension, the: 21, 154, 157 Flying Burrito Brothers, the: 147 Fonda, Henry: 92, 95 Fonda, Jane: 84 Fonda, Peter: 4, 86, 92-95, 122 Foster, Bryan: 157 Funicello, Annette: 46, 88 Garfunkel, Art: 130 Garland, Judy: 182 Gary Puckett and the Union Gap: 21, 31, 123 Gelbwaks, Jeremy: 157 Gentry, Bo: 24 Gernreich, Rudi: 38 Getz, Dave: 129 Giammarese, Carl: 32 Gibb, Barry: 49 Gibson, Henry: 57 Giguere, Russ: 30 Gillan, Ian: 152, 153 Ginsberg, Allen: 36 Glaser, Milton: 7, 97 Gleason, Jackie: 66, 84, 137 Glover, Roger: 153 Goffin, Gerry: 41 Graham Bond Organisation, the: 70, 71 Graham, Bill: 97 Grass Roots: 21, 31 Grateful Dead, the: 68, 97, 124, 130, 134, 137, 146, 147 Graves, Teresa: 57, 121 Green, Justin: 112, 115 Grech, Rick: 71 Grier, Rosey: 55 Griffin, Rick: 97 Grill, Rob: 31 Grossman, Albert: 13 Grundy, Hugh: 83 Guess Who, the: 21, 35 Gurley, James: 129 Guthrie, Arlo: 12, 132, 188 Guthrie, Nora: 12 Guthrie, Woody: 11, 12 Harrison, George: 9, 14, 36, 49, 66, 68, 70, 81, 90, 124, 189 Hart, Bobby: 41

Havens, Richie: 12, 13, 38, 131, 141 Hawn, Goldie: 57 Hayes, Billy: 183 Hayward, Justin: 78 Head, Murray: 21, 152 Henderson, Florence: 157-159 Hendrix, James “Al”: 141, 142, 145 Hendrix, Janie: 141, 145 Hendrix, Jimi: 11, 12, 33, 36, 49, 60, 92, 94, 96, 103, 130, 134, 136138, 140-145, 168, 176, 188, 189 Heshimu: 121 Hillman, Chris: 73 Hoffman, Abbey: 11 Holbrook, Hal: 89 Hollies, the: 21, 134 Hope, Bob: 84, 107 Hopper, Dennis: 4, 11, 86, 88, 92-95 Hot Tuna: 126 Howden, Ron: 144, 145 Humphrey, Hubert H.: 11, 123 Hunter, Meredith: 146, 148 Hutton, Danny: 33 Illingworth: Gary: 24 Iommi, Tony: 18 Iron Butterfly: 21 Isley Brothers, the: 141 Jackson 5, the: 179, 182 Jagger, Mick: 18, 20, 68, 84, 146, 148, 149, 151 James, Tommy: 21-24, 44, 123, 151 Jardine, Al: 16 Jeckell, Frank: 33 Jefferson Airplane: 7, 21, 35, 54, 68, 103, 124-127, 130, 134, 147, 148, 176 Jethro Tull: 18, 90 Jewison, Norman: 155 Jimi Hendrix Experience, the: 10, 14, 21, 68, 141, 142 John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers: 70 John, Elton: 27 Johnny Birch Octet, the: 71 Johns, Glyn: 32 Johnson, Arte: 57 Johnson, Lyndon B.: 10, 122 Johnson, Robert: 69 Johnston, Bruce: 16 Jones, Brian: 11, 18, 130, 146, 188, 189 Jones, Christopher: 84, 89 Jones, Davy: 34, 41-43, 45, 49, 50, 87, 88, 143, 157, 162, 176, 178, 179 Jones, Ken: 82 Jones, Shirley: 157, 171, 172 Jones, Tom: 38 Joplin, Janis: 11, 38, 60, 117, 129, 130, 136, 138, 188, 189 Kale, Jim: 35 Kantner, Paul: 124-126, 147, 149 Kasem, Casey: 185 Kaufman, Irving: 65 Kaukonen, Jorma: 124127, 148 Kay, John: 79, 94 Kaylan, Howard: 34 Kennedy, John F.: 10 Kennedy, Robert F.: 11, 37, 54, 55, 123

Kerouac, Jack: 36, 124 Kesey, Ken: 10, 124 Kilmeister, Lemmy: 144 King, B.B.: 167 King, Carole: 41, 168 King, Freddie: 144 King, Martin Luther Jr.: 10-13, 54, 121 Kinks, the: 141 Kirby, Jack: 107, 113 Kirshner, Don: 41, 111, 178 Kitchen, Denis: 114, 115 Knechtel, Larry: 73, 168 Knight, Christopher: 157, 161, 162 Kooper, Al: 180 Korner, Alexis: 69-71 Kornfeld, Artie: 136 Kovacs, Laszlo: 87 Krieger, Robby: 74-76, 189 Kroff, Marty: 182, 183 Krofft, Sid: 182, 183 Krut, Jim: 122 Kurtzman, Harvey: 113, 117 Laine, Ronnie: 32 Laing, Corky: 137 Lang, Michael: 136, 147 Leary, Timothy: 9, 10, 188 Led Zeppelin: 24, 30, 69 Lee, Alvin: 129, 138, 139, 144, 189 Lee, Ric: 137, 139, 144, 145 Lennon, John: 1, 7, 9, 14, 18, 20, 49, 89, 90, 169 Levy, Morris: 24 Lewis, Jerry Lee: 48 Lewis, Jerry: 46 Lindsay, Mark: 25, 34, 176 Lipton, Peggy: 39 Little Richard: 45, 48, 141 Lodge, John: 78 Lookinland, Mike: 157 Love, Mike: 11, 16, 36, 189 Lovin’ Spoonful, the: 13, 21, 30 Lynch, Jay: 112-115 Madden, Dave: 57, 157, 171 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: 11, 36, 84, 88, 90 Malcolm X: 10, 121 Mamas and the Papas: 21, 49, 76, 130, 180 Mann, Barry: 89, 168 Mann, Manfred: 21, 84, 152 Manson, Charles: 9, 11, 119, 188 Manzarek, Ray: 74-77, 188, 189 Marcellino, John: 136 Marin, Cheech: 156 Markham, “Pigmeat”: 57, 63 Marriott, Steve: 32 Martell, Vince: 80, 81, 144, 145 Martin, Dean: 30, 46 Martin, Dick: 57, 61, 66, 123 Martin, George: 14, 32 Marx Brothers, the: 44, 45, 47 Marx, Groucho: 84, 118 Mason, Dave: 144 Mature, Victor: 88 Max, Peter: 9, 97-101, 189 Mayall, John: 69, 70 Maysles, Albert: 130, 146, 149 Maysles, David: 130, 146, 149

McCartney, Paul: 9, 14, 20, 30, 49, 90, 152, 169 McCormick, Maureen: 157, 161-163 McDonald, Country Joe: 12, 139 McGuinn, Roger: 12, 72, 73, 92 McKenzie, Scott: 21, 124, 130 McLagan, Ian: 32 Melanie: 21, 133 Melvin, Allan: 157, 180 Merseybeats, the: 152 Metzner, Ralph: 10 Miles, Buddy: 35, 145 Mitchell, Mitch: 18, 141, 144 Mondrian, Piet: 96 Monkees, the: 10, 11, 21, 34, 38, 40-53, 87, 88, 143, 176, 178 Montgomery, Elizabeth: 38 Moody Blues, the: 21, 38, 68, 78 Morris, Greg: 121 Morrison, Jim: 11, 74-77, 89, 188, 189 Morrison, Van: 75, 77 Moscoso, Victor: 96, 97, 112 Mountain: 81, 137 Mouse, Stanley: 7, 97 Mungo Jerry: 21 Nash, Graham: 134 Neeley, Ted: 154, 155 Negron, Chuck: 33 Nesmith, Michael: 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 88, 143 Newman, Randy: 33 Nichols, Nichelle: 121 Nicholson, Jack: 84, 86-88, 92, 93 Nilsson, Harry: 33 Nixon, Richard: 7, 10, 11, 54, 55, 122, 123 Noone, Peter: 34 Ochs, Phil: 13 Oldham, Andrew: 18 Olsen, Susan: 157 Ono, Yoko: 18, 169 Owens, Gary: 57 Page, Jimmy: 30, 36, 84 Pallenberg, Anita: 18 Pappalardi, Felix: 70 Paul Revere and the Raiders: 21, 25, 176 Paul, Steve: 136, 144 Paxton, Tom: 13 Pekar, Harvey: 114, 115, 118 Pennebacker, D.A.: 130 Peter, Paul and Mary: 12, 13 Peterson, Garry: 35 Phillips, John: 124, 130 Pike, J. Scott: 107 Pinder, Mike: 78 Plastic Ono Band: 21 Plumb, Eve: 157, 161, 164 Powers, Stefanie: 38 Preminger, Otto: 57, 84 Presley, Elvis: 9, 21, 66, 73, 88, 103, 126, 137, 176 Pryor, Richard: 89 Puckett, Gary: 24, 31, 44, 123 Question Mark and the Mysterians: 21, 68 Quicksilver Messenger, Service, the: 124 Rafelson, Bob: 41, 46, 88 Rascals, the: 21, 24, 37, 76, 81 Ray, Aldo: 85 Redding, Noel: 141, 144

Redding, Otis: 130 Reed, Robert: 157-161, 164 Rice, Tim: 7, 152-154 Richards, Keith: 18, 90 Riley, Bridget: 97 Robbins, Trina: 112 Robillard, Hayward Jr.: 93 Robinson, Smokey: 76 Rodriguez, Spain: 112, 113 Rolling Stones, the: 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 32, 38, 68, 69, 71, 90, 103, 141, 146-149, 189 Ross, Diana: 57, 179 Rowan and Martin: 5, 57, 39 Rowan, Dan: 57, 61, 65, 66 Russell, Leon: 73 Ryder, Mitch: 24 Santana: 35, 147 Saxon, Sky: 87 Scharf, Sabrina: 92 Schlatter, George: 57-61, 123 Schneider, Bert: 41, 46, 93 Schwartz, Sherwood: 157, 159-161 Sebastian, John: 13, 30 Sebastian, Mark: 30 Seeds, the: 38, 39, 87 Seeger, Charles: 12 Seeger, Pete: 12 Sekowsky, Mike: 104107 Sellers, Peter: 84 Sha Na Na: 136 Shankar, Ravi: 72, 130 Shear, Barry: 89 Shelton, Gilbert: 112, 113 Sherman, Bobby: 34, 89, 176 Shocking Blue: 21, 68 Simon and Garfunkel: 21, 130 Simon, Joe: 107 Simon, Paul: 130 Sinatra, Frank: 30, 66, 167 Sinatra, Nancy: 21 Slick, Grace: 4, 125, 148 Sly and the Family Stone: 24, 38, 60, 68, 121, 137 Small Faces, the: 32 Smith, Kate: 59 Smothers, Brothers, the: 25, 32, 39, 54, 55, 76, 122 Smothers, Dick: 54, 55 Smothers, Tommy: 54, 55 Southern, Terry: 92, 93 Spector, Phil: 16, 76, 92 Starr, Ringo: 9, 14, 49, 90, 100 Staver, Gloria: 34, 176 Stein, Mark: 80, 81 Steinberg, David: 60 Steppenwolf: 21, 54, 68, 79, 92, 94 Steranko, Jim: 9, 109 Stills, Stephen: 46, 49, 134, 143 Stockwell, Dean: 87 Stone, Sly: 121, 134, 157 Strasberg, Susan: 86, 87 Strawberry Alarm Clock, the: 21, 87, 189 Sues, Alan: 57 Supremes, the: 80, 179 Taylor, Mick: 148, 149 Ten Years After: 38, 68, 129, 137-139, 144, 145

Them: 77 Three Dog Night: 33, 154 Tiny Tim: 5, 6, 11, 21, 38, 57, 64-67 Tomlin, Lily: 57, 60, 61 Tommy James and the Shondells: 21-24, 38, 123, 189 Tork, Peter: 41, 42, 45-47, 49, 88, 143, 176 Townshend, Pete: 5, 141, 143 Traffic: 68, 71, 144 Travers, Mary: 13 Troggs, the: 21, 49 Turtles, the: 21, 31, 34, 38, 54 Twiggy: 39 Vadim, Roger: 84 Vallee, Rudy: 65, 66 Van Hamersveld, John: 96, 103 Vanilla Fudge: 33, 68, 80, 81, 144 Varsi, Diane: 89 Vaughs, Cliff: 94 Velvet Underground, the: 68 Vereen, Ben: 154 Volman, Mark: 34, 54 Wadleigh, Michael: 130, 138 Warhol, Andy: 10, 68, 96, 182 Waters, Muddy: 32 Watts, Charlie: 71 Wayne, John: 48, 66, 123 Webber, Andrew Lloyd: 7, 152, 154 Weil, Cynthia: 89, 168 Welch, Raquel: 4, 5, 57 Weld, Tuesday: 66 Wells, Corey: 33 West, Leslie: 81, 137 White, Chris: 82, 83 Who, The: 5, 18, 38, 54, 69, 130, 134, 135, 137, 143, 152 Wild, Jack: 176, 178, 183, 184 Williams, Barry: 157, 159-162, 164 Williams, Clarence III: 39, 121 Williams, Paul: 6, 66 Williamson, Skip: 113115 Wilson, Brian: 16, 17, 83 Wilson, Carl: 16, 17 Wilson, Dennis: 16 Wilson, Flip: 121 Wilson, S. Clay: 112, 115 Winchell, Paul: 157, 180 Winter, Johnny: 137, 139 Winters, Shelley: 89 Winwood, Stevie: 71 Wolfe, Tom: 11 Wolverton, Basil: 117 Worley, Jo Anne: 57, 63 Wrecking Crew: 49, 73 Wright, Michael Townsend: 66 Wyman, Bill: 18, 146, 148, 149 Yanovsky, Zal: 30 Yardbirds: 20, 38, 84 Yester, Jim: 30 Young, Izzy: 13 Youngbloods, the: 21 Zagorski, Zanislaw: 151 Zappa, Frank: 41, 46, 48, 75, 88 Zombies, the: 9, 11, 14, 38, 68, 82, 83 Zwerin, Charlotte: 130, 146, 149 Zwigoff, Terry: 118

Bibliography Notes

Acknowledgments

Beatles, the; “The Beatles Anthology” (2000); Chronicle Books, San Francisco

In presenting information or quotes that are not the result of my original reporting (or don’t fall within the realm of common knowledge or historical consensus), I prefer to credit sources up front, unless doing so would disrupt the narrative. Such instances follow:

My heartfelt thanks to my own “Brady Bunch” — Charles, Mary, Barbara and Brian Voglesong and Henry Kelly — who lived through these years with me.

Page 14: Though Harrison was not yet proficient: “The Beatles Anthology” documentary, 1995

Thanks to the musicians, artists, actors, writers and others who graciously submitted to my interrogation, among them Carl Anderson, Sam Andrew, Carmine Appice, Rod Argent, Randy Bachman, Ginger Baker, Monte Beauchamp, Melvin Belli, Sid Bernstein, Karen Black, Colin Blunstone, Danny Bonaduce, La La Brooks, Jack Bruce, Ruth Buzzi, David Carradine, Jack Casady, David Cassidy, Felix Cavaliere, Bill Chambers, Tommy Chong, Judy Collins, Roger Corman, Susan Cowsill, David Crosby, Burton Cummings, Roger Daltrey, Tony DeFranco, Fito de la Parra, Kim Deitch, John Densmore, Micky Dolenz, Donovan, Barbara Eden, John Entwistle, Barbara Feldon, Peter Fonda, Carl Giammarese, Russ Giguere, Ian Gillan, Rob Grill, Arlo Guthrie, Nora Guthrie, Richie Havens, Justin Hayward, Florence Henderson, James “Al” Hendrix, Janie Hendrix, Tommy James, Frank Jeckell, Davy Jones, Shirley Jones, Bruce Johnston, Paul Kantner, Casey Kasem, Jorma Kaukonen, John Kay, Howard Kaylan, Lemmy Kilmeister, Denis Kitchen, Robby Krieger, Marty Krofft, Sid Krofft, Jim Krut, Corky Laing, Alvin Lee, Ric Lee, Mark Lindsay, Mike Love, Jay Lynch, Ray Manzarek, John “Jocko” Marcellino, Vince Martell, Dave Mason, Peter Max, Maureen McCormick, Roger McGuinn, Ian McLagan, Melanie, Graham Nash, Ted Neeley, Chuck Negron, Michael Nesmith, Donny Osmond, Harvey Pekar, Garry Peterson, Eve Plumb, Gary Puckett, Trina Robbins, George Schlatter, Sherwood Schwartz, John Sebastian, Dick Smothers, Tommy Smothers, Mark Stein, Jim Steranko, Mick Taylor, Lily

Beauchamp, Monte (editor); “The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments From Contemporaries” (1998); St. Martin’s Press, New York Bowen, Ezra (series editor) and TimeLife Books editorial staff; “This Fabulous Century: 1960-1970” (1970); Time-Life Books, New York Brooks, Tim, and Marsh, Earle; “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present” (1988); Ballantine Books, New York Campus Life Magazine editors (developed by); “The Way” (1972); Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois Carr, Roy; “The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record” (1976); Harmony Books, New York Crumb, Robert; “R. Crumb’s Head Comix” (1988); Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York Crumb, Robert; “The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book” (1997); Little, Brown and Company, Boston Dalton, David; “The Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years” (1981); Alfred A. Knopf, New York Daniels, Les; “Comix: A History of Comic Books in America” (1971); Bonanza Books, New York Fischer, Stuart; “Kids’ TV: The First 25 Years” (1983); Facts on File, New York Green, Joey; “The Partridge Family Album” (1994); HarperCollins Publications, New York Greenfield, Jeff; “Television: The First Fifty Years” (1977); Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York Grushkin, Paul; “The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk” (1999); Abbeville Press, New York James, Tommy, with Fitzpatrick, Martin; “Me, the Mob and the Music” (2010); Simon & Schuster, New York Javna, Josh and Gordon; “60s!” (1988); St. Martin’s Press, New York Maltin, Leonard, editor; “TV Movies” (various editions); Signet, New York Overstreet, Robert M.; “The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide” (various editions); Avon Books, New York Palmer, Robert; “The Rolling Stones” (1983); Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York Sabin, Roger; “Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art” (1996); Phaidon, London Selvin, Joel; “Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day” (2016); HarperCollins, New York Sennett, Ted; “The Art of HannaBarbera” (1989); Penguin Books USA Inc., New York Whitburn, Joel; “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits” (various editions); Billboard Books, New York

Pages 38-61: Series broadcast histories: “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present” Page 65: “It was tough to get letters”: Tiny Tim television interview by Morton Downey Jr., 1994 Page 65: “I remember, when I was 3 years old”: Tiny Tim television interview by Wes Bailey, 1982 Page 65: “The reason for the ukulele is very important”: Tiny Tim video interview conducted at Uke Expo 1996 Page 65: “I really do thank Jesus Christ”: Downey interview Page 65: “Never get anywhere”: Rolling Stone profile by Jerry Hopkins, 1968 Page 66: “You are a gas”: “This Fabulous Century: 1960-1970” Page 90: “The Beatles wanted more than anything else”: Al Brodax radio interview by Bob Hieronimus, 1994 Page 90: “I had seen Heinz’s work”: Ibid Page 93: Fleshed out by Terry Southern: Lee Hill in “Born to be Wild” documentary by Nicholas Freand Jones, 1995 Page 96: Cave paintings may have been inspired: “Turing Instabilities in Biology, Culture, and Consciousness” by Tom Froese, Alexander Woodward and Takashi Ikegami, 2013 Page 117: “Forced me to draw comics”: Robert Crumb in “The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book,” 1997 Page 117: “(The cover of Mad #11) changed the way I saw the world”: Ibid Page 117: “The first trip was a completely mystical experience”: Ibid Page 117: “By the fall of that year”: Robert Crumb in his introduction to “R. Crumb’s Head Comix,” 1988 Page 122: “Draft notices arrived in the mail”: Michael Lydon in the booklet accompanying the Criterion Collection’s “Gimme Shelter” Blu-ray edition, 2009 Page 122: There were more than 58,000 U.S. military fatalities: The National Archives (the exact number provided in 2017: 58,220) Page 122: “Exceptional valor”: June 29, 1970 letter from R.G. Parrish, LTC, FA adjutant, re: Jim Krut’s Bronze Star. Page 146: “Bad trips and freakouts”: A caller to KSAN’s 1969 Altamont radio special, from the Criterion Collection’s “Gimme Shelter” Blu-ray edition Page 146: “Everyone was in a hurry to get high now”: Stefan Ponek, in his introduction to KSAN’s radio special Throughout: Charting and release histories of Top 40 records: “The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits”

Special thanks to my brother Brian, a voracious reader of rock biographies who vetted the rock stuff, and to Ron Howden, who Brian interviewed about Jimi Hendrix for “Groovy” (page 144).

A tip of the visor to journalistic colleagues for editorial favors great and small. “Groovy” got the once-over from Wallace Stroby (in the middle of revising his eighth novel) and Vanessa Johnson. Thanks also to fellow alums of my almae matres The Star-Ledger and The Asbury Park Press, such as Tracy Ann Politowicz (that’s her record case on page 20), Phil Cornell, Kathy Dzielak, Jim Rife, Mike Anan and musicologist extraordinaire Larry Grogan.

Now, a few words about “handouts” (a.k.a. publicity photos) of musicians, TV shows and movies. Some such photos have been published endlessly. Others maybe saw the light of print when they were first issued to newspapers and magazines — or maybe not. Some of these, I’m happy to report, are preserved in “Groovy.” (I archived everything I could lay my hands on at my almae matres.) These were scanned from the original sources — the very same 8 ½-by-11 “glossies” mailed (not emailed) to print outlets in the 1960s and ’70s. I couldn’t resist colorizing them also. In some cases, photos were outright rescued from destruction. With the fragmentation of print journalism came the demolition of certain newspaper buildings. Alas, many rare and oneof-a-kind prints, negatives and slides were also claimed by the wrecking ball.

Ed Gabel, who has designed covers for Time and Rolling Stone, fer cryin’ out loud, created the “Groovy” logo. Jeff Colson, named the top graphic artist in New Jersey newspapers for many years (though he won’t tell you that), did the trippy type on page 109. These guys are geniuses capable of anything, and what did I ask them to do? Make type that looks like you’re on an LSD trip. “Groovy” presents more than 30 photographs by my late wife, Kathy Voglesong, who the world lost in 2005. Kathy had a knack for putting her subjects at ease in posed situations (see the Smothers Brothers on page 54), or capturing them live on stage in all their glory (see Alvin Lee on page 138). Kathy’s unblinking, black-and-white 1989 portrait of Ginger Baker (page 71) — with its three-quarter-inch of ash dangling from an inch-and-a-quarter of cigarette — was among her favorites. I thank those who provided materials and support. Howard Bender made me aware of the super-psychedelic Josie #34 cover (page 110). Bean Kelly gave me “The Way” as a Christmas gift in 1972; I lost it; she gave it to me again in 2015. Ian Voglesong and John Courter also came through in the clutch.

Disclosure: The memorabilia collages include composite images created from various sources, which I’ve altered digitally to correct distortion, wear (when clarity was compromised), inconsistent lighting and disruptive cropping. Not to sound defensive, but I didn’t steal the phrase “rock’s darkest day” (page 146) from the title of Joel Selvin’s excellent book about Altamont. Rather, I stole it from myself. I’d used the phrase in 1994, when I wrote about Altamont’s 25th anniversary in The Asbury Park Press (and I doubt I was the first). So I left it in “Groovy.” Revisiting so many of my past interviews with musicians reminds me of a Frank Zappa quote I’ve always loved: “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”

About

Shown at age 13 in 1971, on his minibike with the gas tank he painted in an American flag design (just like Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider”!), Mark Voger is a 1972 graduate of Holy Rosary School in the diocese of Camden in New Jersey. He writes about entertainment topics and designs pages for The Star-Ledger, and lives at the Jersey Shore. Also by Mark Voger from TwoMorrows Publishing: n “Monster Mash: The

Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 19571972” (2015)

n “The Dark Age: Grim,

Great & Gimmicky PostModern Comics” (2006)

n “Hero Gets Girl! The

Life and Art of Kurt Schaffenberger” (2003)

Family photo

Williams, Barry, with Kreski, Chris; “Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg” (1999); Good Guy Entertainment, Burbank, California

Page 14: The trippy look of the “Rubber Soul” cover: Ibid

Thanks also to John Morrow, Scott Peters and the TwoMorrows staff.

Tomlin, Peter Tork, Robin Trower, John Van Hamersveld, Mark Volman, Leslie West, Barry Williams, Brian Wilson, Corey Wells, Michael Townsend Wright, Bill Wyman and Peter Yarrow.

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Featuring interviews with such icons of grooviness as Peter Max, Brian Wilson, Melanie, Peter Fonda and Susan Cowsill; members of Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Vanilla Fudge and the Guess Who; and stars of groovy TV shows like ‘The Monkees,’ ‘Laugh-In’ and ‘The Partridge Family,’ ‘Groovy’ is one trip that doesn’t require dangerous chemicals