Grateful, Dad
© 2004 Evan S. Hunt
Tay Music
Evan is the visionary of Tay
Music. For those not familiar with the Tay label, they
selectively offer diverse musical offerings that range from
contemporary and smooth jazz; folk, progressive rock and R&B;
techno and electronica-based pop and urban hip-hop; New Age and
world beat; Celtic, Latin, Middle Eastern, and Indian music.
In the winter of 1967 I lived in the town of
Lafayette, a suburb 25 miles east of San Francisco. I was a senior
in high school, and I was on the Wrestling team. My dad came home
one night with a handful of tickets to the Mamas and the Papas
January 13 performance at the Berkeley Community Theater.
At that time, there wasn't
a lot of rock and roll on FM radio, and few people really knew much
about FM, and even fewer had them in their cars. Stereos were mostly
sold in consoles and there weren't many Interstate Highways. Most of
the kids in my high school had big hunks of gas-gulping
Detroit-built iron to cruise Main Street on Friday night. I mostly
hitchhiked to get around.
My taste in music was
mainly top 40 AM radio. That's what we had-KYA am 1260, KEWB am 910,
KDIA am 1310, and, at night, we tuned into XERB, which broadcast
Wolfman Jack from a 50,000 watt flame-thrower pirate station across
the Mexican boarder. In 1967 Wolfman Jack was the very epitome of
"white-boy" cool.
FM rock stations did not
make it out to Lafayette-the signal was too weak to get past the
East Bay hills. The Mamas and Papas were one of the number one top
40 groups of that era, and along with soul music from Motown, and
the Beatles, were one of my favorites. I was excited at the
prospects of seeing the Mamas and Papas in concert because I was
energized by their amazing, folk-soaked vocals.
There in the second week in
January I had a big weekend planned. On the Friday night my dad and
I would attend the Mamas and Papas Concert with my two older
brothers. Then on Saturday night, my buddies Ray, and Jim and I were
going to the Fillmore to see Junior
Wells. We three loved Junior
Wells because we had been turned-on to his music by listening to
KDIA, a soul music station out of Oakland. Black music, especially
the blues, was really "it" for us then, and we needed to
be cool.
Even as unsophisticated as
we were, it wasn't too hard to dig the Chicago blues style of Junior
Wells and his all-star band. They played danceable rhythm and blues
with a lot of emphasis on electric guitar, and it was a lot more
accessible to us than Motown and the Supremes because it was looser.
Junior Wells jammed. The Supremes never jammed.
My brothers had their own
apartment and when Dad would drop by to visit he would sit and
listen to the music they had on the stereo. Dad liked the Beatles,
and the Jefferson
Airplane, and the clever word craft and three-part
harmonies of the Mamas and Papas. When Friday night came we borrowed
my mom's car and one of my brothers drove us to the Mamas and Papas
concert. We found our seats in the balcony and before long the
Master of Ceremonies came out on stage and informed us that the
opening act had to cancel and that in their stead they were going to
give us the Grateful Dead. We had all heard of the Dead, and I'd
even seen them live a number of times in the hip San Francisco
ballrooms of the day, but none of us were anticipating such a
fortuitous change.
The Dead played about 35
minutes and all I recall about their set was that they played
"Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" and a 20-minute
version of "Viola Lee Blues."
Then the Mamas and Papas came on and played about 70 minutes-all
their hits. They were quite good and I enjoyed their set immensely.
The Dead didn't really do much for me, but the impression they made
on my dad was unforgettable.
In the car on the way home
we were talking about the show, and my brothers and I were jazzed on
the Mamas and Papas. Then, noticing the quietness emanating from my
dad, I asked him what he thought of the show and I'll never forget
his reply. He said, "Oh, the Mamas and Papas were all right,
but that first group really knocked me out." So enraptured was
he by the Dead's epic version of "Viola Lee Blues" and how
they started the song slow and then built it higher and higher to an
explosive crescendo, then dropped back into the slow and steady riff
of the song's main theme; he just couldn't get it out of his head.
He went on and on about it-comparing it to Beethoven.
The next morning a ringing
phone awakened me out of a sound sleep-no one was home so I had to
stagger to get it. On about the fifteenth ring I finally answered
and it was one of my wrestling teammates. "There's no practice
today." He said. (We used to have Saturday wrestling
practices). I hung up the phone and greedily went back to sleep.
Awhile-later dad knocks on my door. "Get up. There's going to
be a 'Be-in' over in the city today. I'll give you a ride to
Berkeley, and you can thumb the rest of the way, but hurry up 'cause
I gotta get going." Apparently, dad had read about it in Ralph
J. Gleason's column in the previous Sunday San Francisco Chronicle
and had forgotten to tell me until the last minute. Gleason was a
renowned jazz writer and was the integral music critic to focus on
the psychedelic music scene, which came strongly to the forefront of
pop music in the mid and late 60's.
My father used to always
tell me about these events because he regularly read Gleason's
column. Also he would hear about them from an acquaintance that
attended services and did work around the Vedanta Center. The guy
was part of the Beat Scene in San Francisco and Berkeley and was
privy to the word-of-mouth skinny that came down the pipeline from
hanging out in the Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco and Telegraph
Avenue in Berkeley. He and my father were members of the Vedanta
Society, which have a temple directly across the street from
People's Park, one block east of Telegraph Avenue. (Vedanta is a
system of Hindu monistic philosophies based on the Vedas, the
ancient, sacred books of Hinduism.) He would tell dad about
"happenings" in the San Francisco area, and dad would tell
me.
The day dawned wide, bright
and sunny and I hurriedly dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, a football
jersey, and, grabbing a light jacket, hustled out the door with a
double peanut butter sandwich wedged into my mouth. Dad was going to
be doing some chores at the Vedanta Center that day and gave me a
ride in his truck to the corner of Ashby and Claremont Avenues in
Berkeley-a good hitchhiking spot in those days. When we got to
Berkeley he pulled over and let me off in light, mid-morning
traffic. Before I shut the door he reached into his pocket and
pulled out a ten-dollar bill and thrust it into my hand. I said
thanks, goodbye, and turned around with thumb out. A split second
later I got a ride from a carload of patchoulied hippies all the way
to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. I offered to pay for gas and
bridge toll and it made me instant friends with the driver. I gave
the guy $1.50.
We parked on Kennedy Drive
and began walking to the Be-in site at the Polo Fields. It was
fortunate that we had an early arrival because we were certainly not
alone. More and more people came from all directions-and it turned
into a large crowd. The day became warmer and I removed my jacket
and tied it about my waist. I remember there were mostly longhaired,
younger people. Some were my age, but most were older by 5 to 10
years. There really were all types there, though-little kids, old
ladies, folks of all cultures, creeds and walks. Although I'd been
traveling to the city on my own for almost two years and had been
exposed to a number of different people it was still a bit of a
shock for little ol' suburbanite me because of the sheer numbers of
the crowd. With my football jersey and short hair I felt out of
place initially, but everyone I met was so friendly and giving, and
once the music started I began to leave emotional insecurities
behind. We positioned ourselves not more than 20 feet from stage
right.
Then I lost track of the
people I'd come with and got caught in the moment of all these
whacked-out looking freaks dancing and smoking pot and beating on
tambourines and wine bottles. I was handed joints and pipes and tabs
of acid and beers and wine, and even offered a hose from a hookah,
but I did not consume any of those items, and no one pressured me to
accept. I do recall people offering sandwiches and cokes and I tried
to pay for them but my money was no good to them. They were so
sweet-honestly sweet and caring. No one seemed to care that I was,
or how I was dressed, or what my thing was. I quickly got the sense
that I was one of them. It was an incredibly comforting and
reassuring sensation.
I recognized the music of
the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country
Joe and the Fish (from Berkeley!) and Quicksilver Messenger Service,
but I did not recognize the speakers or poets, nor did I much care
for what they were saying. The P.A. system was not that great, and I
don't think I heard much of what any of the poets or speakers said
because a few of them turned their moment in the sun into a
fun-chilling tirade which probably would not have interested me
anyway even if I could have deciphered what they were going on and
on about. I was into only one thing-the music.
As the afternoon wore on I
was dancing with all my newfound friends. The sun was abundant and
luxuriating upon my skin. The grass was green and dry. The people I
met were the best I'd ever met. I definitely remember the Dead's
set, and looking up at them, squinting in the sun, was kind of
surprised that there they were playing, as I'd only seen them the
night before. I recall two things about "our" set: Pig Pen
singing and me: dancing like I'd never danced before. I was a part
of the Grateful Dead that afternoon. Just like that it was over. It
was all over way too fast.
They closed up the Be-in
and everybody who was left started migrating towards the exits. A
bunch of people started walking west toward the beach for the
sunset, but it was time for me to go. As I was walking toward the
east end of the Polo Fields I overheard some people talking about UC
Berkeley and so I asked them if they were going to Berkeley and they
gave me a ride all the way back to the brightly-candled intersection
of Ashby and Claremont. Not ten seconds elapsed from the moment I
alighted from my city ride until I spotted the familiar outline of
my dad's truck coming up Ashby towards me. It was dark by now so I
frantically waved at him and he picked me up with the most utterly
surprised expression on his face that I had ever seen. I got home
around 6:00 pm.
Later that evening, Jim and
Ray came over and picked me up and we faux sped off to the city in
Ray's '54 Volkswagen (it always looked and sounded like it was going
faster than the 45 mph it was going). We went to the Fillmore and
saw The Doors (who opened their set with "Light My
Fire."), the Junior Wells All Stars, and yep, that's right, the
Grateful Dead. The Doors blew me away. I loved Jim Morrison and the
keyboards sounds of Ray Manzarek. They were very competent and
confident and seemed to be challenging the San Francisco music
audience, whom they seemed to consider as being smug. I distinctly
recall Morrison's in-your-face treatment of what he presumed was the
"too savvy" San Francisco rock music crowd. His disdain
for San Francisco was quite pronounced, but I didn't care because
the music was entrancing and sucked me into its sway.
I liked the Doors much more
than the Dead (until I finally "heard" the Dead in late
1969). Junior Wells was absolutely fantastic although I don't
remember a single detail about their set except the wild guitar
histrionics of Buddy Guy. We left before the Dead finished playing
and went to eat hamburgers at the Hippopotamus on Van Ness. Ray had
an ice cream Hippo burger, which consisted of a couple of scoops of
ice cream atop a big, raw hamburger patty. Jim and I opted for more
traditional faire i.e. cheeseburgers, fries and shakes. We hung out
in the city all night, raving, running amok, totally high on life,
and did not return to Lafayette's soft bedroom until moments before
sunrise. Later on, after my pockets and discovered I still had the
10-dollar bill. The entire previous day's frivolities had cost me
all of $1.50.
Three separate times within
a 27 hour period I had feasted upon the phenomenon which was to
eventually nourish my life in untellable ways: The Grateful Dead and
all that they and theirs brought to the table.
Thanks for all that you did
for me. I'm grateful, dad.
