Palo Alto Psychedelic Rock Shows 1965-66 (Palo Alto I)

The site of The Big Beat, at 998 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto, as it appeared in 2009. The contours of the building were probably largely unchanged since the building was the site of the Palo Alto Acid Test on December 18, 1965

Palo Alto, California, is only a town of about 60,000, about 35 miles South of San Francisco, and yet it looms large in the world, far out of proportion to its modest size. Palo Alto residents, like the residents of most small towns, think the world revolves around itself. The principal difference between Palo Alto and other towns is the tendency to invent or encourage institutions that redound to the importance of Palo Alto--Stanford University, Hewlett-Packard, The Stanford Shopping Center, Acid Tests, The Grateful Dead, Mapquest and Google, for example, just to name a few. All of these institutions re-write history in Palo-centric ways that reaffirms the town's importance. Residents of neighboring communities find Palo Altans self absorbed and self-important, which we probably are, but our next innovation will just reconfigure the past in a way that justifies our own narrative. And so it was with psychedelic rock and roll in the 1960s.

Palo Alto, by its own accounting, played a big part in 60s psychedelic rock and roll. The history of the Fillmore and The Avalon always begins with Ken Kesey at Stanford, and the parties and acid tests that followed. Of course, Kesey's cottage was really next door in Menlo Park, but that sort of detail never interfered with a Palo Alto story. At the same time, Jerry Garcia and other bohemians were hanging out in downtown Palo Alto, even if they often lived in Menlo Park themselves. Certainly, Jerry Garcia started playing live in Stanford and Palo Alto, and he took acid for the first time in Palo Alto, and by the end of 1965 Garcia was the lead guitarist in an electric blues band. The Warlocks--who debuted themselves in Menlo Park--became the Grateful Dead, and the house band of The Merry Pranksters, and Palo Alto's place in the rock revolution was secure.

Yet Palo Alto, as ground zero for the consciousness expansion of rock music, has a rather scattered history of rock and roll events. While some of this had to do with economics, some of it had to do with the very peculiar circumstances of Palo Alto and Stanford, which both favored and discouraged any kind of rock and roll underground. But this peculiarity is perfectly Palo Alto--a story that applies to no other town, which is just how Palo Alto likes it. This post will begin my series on the rock and history of the the second half of the 1960s in Palo Alto.

The Cabana Hotel, at 4290 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, soon after its opening in 1963. Part owner Doris Day said to her husband, "but Marty, it's Palo Alto." So true. Doris also referred to the fountain as having a statue of a Greek whore.

August 30-31, 1965 Cabana Hotel, Palo Alto, CA
The first and most important event in Palo Alto's rock and roll history was it's biggest, and to some extent it has never been topped. 60s rock and roll begins with The Beatles, and when the Beatles played the Cow Palace in San Francisco, they rather inexplicably chose to stay at a hotel in Palo Alto. The town has never gotten over it.

Palo Alto's Cabana Hotel, at 4290 El Camino Real, far South of downtown and the Stanford campus, was built in 1962. South Palo Alto was a casual suburban strip mall at the time, and the opulent hotel was garishly out of place. Conceived by entrepreneur Jay Sarno, with investors who included Doris Day's husband Martin Melcher (Doris was reputed to have said, "but Marty, it's Palo Alto? Who's going to stay at such a hotel in Palo Alto, and without gambling?"), the hotel became the model for the Caesar's Palace resort in Las Vegas. Apparently, Beatles manager Brian Epstein felt that staying in Palo Alto would be less difficult than staying in San Francisco, so for the nights of August 30-31, 1965, The Fab Four stayed at the Cabana in Palo Alto.

Things were different then. Apparently the Beatles only had two rooms (supposedly Ringo did not even spend the night, as he found a friend). Young women from all over the Bay Area persuaded their parents to let them go to the Cabana, and young men tried to dress like journalists in suits and ties, and they all tried to crash the hotel. Many of them succeeded. No other rock and roll event has ever affected Palo Alto so much. The Beatles' rooms are now a special suite.

A 2011 closeup of 998 San Antonio Road, the site of The Big Beat. If these walls could talk, they would probably have said, "I don't remember, man."

December 18, 1965 Big Beat Club, Palo Alto, CA Palo Alto Acid Test The Grateful Dead/The Witches
For most towns, it is hard to identify when the psychedelic rock and roll revolution hit the place. Palo Alto isn't like most towns. There's a date and an address. It was Saturday, December 18, 1965, at 998 San Antonio Road, at a club that had not yet opened called The Big Beat. Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters had an Acid Test--LSD was still legal--at an empty club near the Freeway. The Grateful Dead were there, and they met legendary acid chemist Owsley Stanley, and the world would never be the same. Only a few hundred people, if that, attended the event and partook of the Kool-Aid, but the world found about it from Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. More recently, David Browne's excellent book So Many Roads has an excellent chapter where eyewitnesses recall the event in great detail.

Palo Alto's only rock venue in 1966 was The Big Beat. Although it had hosted the Palo Alto Acid Test before it opened, it was far from downtown and the Stanford campus, and mostly featured a cover band (the ad is from the Stanford Daily of December 2, 1966)

The Big Beat was in the far Southeastern corner of Palo Alto. When it officially opened in early 1966, the club's location actually made it more accessible to people who lived in Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino rather than Palo Alto. One of many oddities of Palo Alto was that there were no bars downtown, so there was nowhere for Stanford students to drink. This was no accident, as founder Leland Stanford had insisted that Palo Alto serve no liquor as a condition of funding the University. By the 1960s, downtown restaurants near campus served beer and wine, but downtown was still dormant. Other parts of Palo Alto had bars and nightlife, but they weren't near campus. Their clientele often came from towns just south, which was why the Big Beat was located in the far southern corner of the town.

Since The Big Beat served beer, no one under 21 could come--well, except for 18 year old girls on dates, but that's a digression--, and since you needed a car to get there, it wasn't appealing to the downtown bohemians who were Jerry Garcia's old pals. If they were getting into a car, they were more likely to go to San Francisco or the Santa Cruz Mountains than South Palo Alto. The Big Beat was open from 1966 to early 1968, and probably did OK for a while, but it was rapidly outdated. Local combos playing covers were not nearly as hip as underground bands playing their own stuff at the Fillmore, and the Big Beat faded away without fanfare. Otherwise, just about all the meaningful Palo Alto rock and roll in 1966 was at Stanford University.

January 25, 1966 Downstairs Grill Room, Tressider Memorial Union, Stanford University: Lovin' Spoonful
Stanford had always been land-rich yet cash poor, so for its first 60 years of existence, the University was a somewhat threadbare institution for the sons of would-be gentlemen. By 1955, however, Stanford had figured out how to capitalize on its land, and one of the first outdoor malls, the Stanford Shopping Center, was built on its property. Along with the industrial park that would incubate Silicon Valley, Stanford's economic status rose dramatically, and it's academic and cultural profile rose accordingly.

Like all colleges and universities back in the day, Stanford had an entertainment budget for students. Early in the Winter Quarter of 1966, Stanford scored perhaps the hippest band in America at the time. Although the Lovin' Spoonful are now shrugged off as just another oldies act, their late '65 hits like "Do You Believe In Magic" lit up the radio. The Spoonful had headlined the very first Family Dog Dance in October 1965, so they were as cool as could be. The Tressider Student Union was at the center of campus, so this would have been a happening event.

Shortly after this, there was a confirmed  appearance at Tressider by the Butterfield Blues Band, although I haven't been able to pin down the date. I assume this was some sort of show during the time the band had its epic engagement at the Fillmore Auditorium (February 25-27, 1966). At a time when new folk rock bands were just figuring out electric instruments, the Butterfield Blues Band were polished masters. Any Stanford students who wanted to hip in Winter '66 got a good dose right on campus. The Butterfield show was alluded to in the Stanford Daily, and eyewitnesses recalled it as well.

An ad for the Lovin Spoonful at Tressider Union Deck, from the May 13, 1966 Stanford Daily

May 19, 1966 Tresidder Memorial Union Deck, Stanford:  Lovin Spoonful

At the end of Spring Quarter, the Lovin Spoonful returned. Now they were playing outdoors on the back of Tressider, at an outdoor deck which today has long since been turned into another extension of the building. This time, not only were the Spoonful playing a bigger room, but tickets were $2.00 instead of $1.50. They were still piling up hit after hit ("You Didn't Have To Be So Nice," "Daydream," and "Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind") and were bigger than ever. An eyewitness, then in the 6th grade, reported a warm day and a great show. The Spoonful headlined at Berkeley's Greek Theater on Saturday night, two days later, at the time a huge venue for a rock band. The Spoonful were definitely a coming thing.

The Lovin' Spoonful, with great songs, huge hits and a nice live act, should have ridden into the Fillmores on a white horse and become monstrously popular. Sometime in 1966 or 67, however, possibly during this weekend, the Spoonful got busted for weed in San Francisco. Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovsky, afraid of being deported back to Canada, snitched on his dealer, who was the manager of the San Francisco theater group The Committee. The Spoonful were thus ostracized from the San Francisco underground, and were never booked at the Fillmore or the Avalon. While this may have been just a casual inconvenience to their booking agent, the fact that they never played the Fillmore  insured that the Spoonful was remembered as just an old hit single act, and not the underground sensation they truly were.

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off was the band's debut album, released on RCA in December 1965

May 22, 1966 Cabana Hotel, Palo Alto  Jefferson Airplane/others  

Peninsula Volunteers “Step N Time” Gala

The Cabana Hotel, as the Peninsula's most glamorous, was a regular venue for high school proms and debutante balls. Thus it was the site of a charity fashion show on Sunday, May 22. No doubt in an effort to be hip, San Francisco's most prominent rock band The Jefferson Airplane were the headline entertainers. The Airplane had released their successful debut album, and had had a little hit with "It's No Secret," but they were not yet what they would become. Their female lead singer was Signe Anderson, a fine singer, but no Grace Slick.

Another local band was also on the bill, and both bands played around the swimming pool. The local band opened the show, and one of its members reported that the PA was so inadequate that the Airplane borrowed the opening band's equipment, too. Another eyewitness, David Biasotti (the future guitarist of the semi-legendary band Maxfield Parrish), reported that the Airplane simply played instrumentals for much of the show, perhaps as a protest. At the end of the show, drummer Skip Spence threw his sticks in the air and announced he was leaving the band, although Biasotti may be the only one who recalled that (Spence would move on to help found the great Moby Grape).

The approximate site of The Outfit, ca. 2011, on Homer Lane in Palo Alto, behind Town And Country Village shopping center, across the railroad tracks. It is now a parking lot for the Palo Alto Medical Center.

June ?, 1966 The Outfit, Palo Alto, CA The Outfit
There were a very small number of proto-hippie bohemians in Palo Alto at this time. One eyewitness told me that in total, they were just "a few dozen, plus the Kesey people" (this has been informally confirmed by others). The "scene," such as it was, revolved around two crumbling Edwardian houses near downtown. One was on Channing Avenue, and the other was on Waverley Street, near Forest. Jerry Garcia had lived in the Waverley Street house until the Grateful Dead had moved to Los Angeles with Owsley in February 1966. The remaining crew entertained themselves as best they could.

Some people in the Channing house got the idea that they should have their own joint, and the infamous Willy Legate found an old warehouse near Homer Lane, just across the railroad tracks on Alma (now a medical center parking lot). They named their club "The Outfit," and figured that they would have a band and a light show also called The Outfit. A carpenter named Bill Shuman made a little stage, and the gang had a sort of party. It wasn't publicized, because that would attract cops, but it happened. It was a sort of Acid Test--remember, LSD was still legal--and Neal Cassidy even showed up.

For entertainment, there was an ad hoc band with guitarist Pete Schulzbach and singer John Tomasi, who were members of a local group called The Bethlehem Exit, and guitarist David Nelson, an old bluegrass pal of Jerry Garcia. The trio played some rambling electric blues while the light show pulsed. A number of local bohemians showed up, but the idea of The Outfit wasn't sustainable. There wasn't another event.

October 6, 1966  Basketball Pavilion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Jefferson Airplane/Paul Butterfield Blues Band

By the time Stanford students returned to school for the Fall Quarter of 1966, a lot had happened. The peculiar little "Acid Tests" started by Ken Kesey had become a very big deal indeed, so big that LSD itself was declared illegal in California on October 6. Two underground ballrooms in San Francisco, the Fillmore and the Avalon, were both putting on shows every weekend which were the talk of teenagers and college students in every town of the Bay Area. To memorialize the illegality of LSD, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother had played for free on October 6 in the Panhandle, near Golden Gate Park, and every longhair in the region had showed up. along with then-fugitive Kesey himself. They all had no idea that they numbered in the thousands.

The Butterfield band, who had played Tressider a few quarters ago, were now booked as headliners for three weekends at the giant Winterland arena, joined by the Dead and the Airplane. On this Thursday night, as a prelude to a weekend featuring Butterfield, the Airplane and the Dead, just the Airplane and Butterfield played the Stanford basketball Pavilion. Before NCAA Basketball became a proverbial ‘big deal’, the Stanford basketball team played in a 1200 seat auditorium built in 1921, on the corner of Serra and Galvez. The gym was just a few short miles from the Perry Lane house where Kesey’s LSD quest began. 

An eyewitness reported that Mike Bloomfield played Jorma’s Guild instead of his customary Fender, and various people also report Jerry Garcia attending the show. The Pavilion was superseded as the basketball venue by the nearby Maples Pavilion in Spring 1969, but it remains in use. It is now known as Burnham Pavilion. 

 

[update 20260609] thanks to Lachlynn Dodson, whose father preserved some flyers from back in the day, we have an additional flyer for the Airplane/Butterfield show at Stanford. 

October 14, 1966 Tressider Memorial Union Deck, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA  Grateful Dead/Wildflower

The Grateful Dead finally got their chance at Stanford a week later. Although the Dead had left Palo Alto for underground success earlier in the year, they still hadn't played back in Palo Alto, because there was nowhere for them to play in town. However, with Big Mama Thornton joining the Airplane and Buttefield at Fillmore this weekend, the Dead were free to play over at Stanford. After the Grateful Dead show on Friday, October 14, there was never another concert at the Tressider Deck again. Damn, it must have been fun.

 

[update 20260609] thanks again to Lachlynn Dodson, and her father, we have a hitherto unseen flyer for the Grateful Dead at Tressider Deck. It turns out that The Wildflower opened the show. Wildflower guitarist Stephen Ehret was an old pal of Garcia's from the folk scene. The Wildflower had gotten together in Oakland at the California College of Arts & Crafts.

 

Apparently, Ken Kesey and the Pranksters were at the show, and the infamous Further bus was parked outside Tressider. Nothing could have frightened Stanford admin more than such an invasion, so it's no surprise that the Dead were banned (for the first time).  An eyewitness reported ecstatic dancing, of the sort done by Deadheads unto this day, but at the time a shocking new thing.

November?, 1966 Experimental Building, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA New Delhi River Band

We have a poorly scanned handbill for an event at Stanford on April 10, 1967. My two eyewitnesses were very vague (I wonder why?), but both thought that there were two events, one in the fall and one in the Spring. The event or events, whether one or two, were some sort of "happening" put on by The Experimental Group

The Experimental Group, sometimes known just as The Experiment, was a group of Stanford students and faculty who were interested in reforming education in various progressive ways. They would eventually merge with a similarly minded civilian group called The Mid Peninsula Free University (known locally as Free U). That story is peripheral to this one, except that The Experiment and MPFU put on a number of free rock events in Stanford and Palo Alto. The 1967 handbill locates the event at "The Experimental Building." I'm not even clear where "The Experimental Building" was, although I think it was one of the then-new buildings near Serra and El Camino Real. 

The New Delhi River Band were Palo Alto’s second psychedelic blues band. The NDRB was an outgrowth of The Outfit, which had opened and closed in June. At this time, the band lived on Channing Avenue and featured Jerry Garcia’s old pal, and future New Rider, David Nelson on guitar, along with bassist Dave Torbert, from Redwood City, and also a future New Rider. Lead singer John Tomasi and lead guitarist Peter Schulzbach were from a Cupertino  band called Bethlehem Exit, and drummer Chris Herold rounded out the group.  Although no tapes survive of the group, they apparently aspired to sound somewhat like the Butterfield Blues Band. 

By this time, the NDRB were already the “house band” at The Barn, a psychedelic outpost in the tiny town of Scotts Valley, about 37 miles southwards, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Barn was a self-contained mini-Fillmore, the remarkable story of which we have detailed elsewhere.   The late Russell (Rusty) Towle, the band’s roommate, soundman and sometime Light Show man recalled the Stanford event in a personal email, and thinks it may have been two nights rather than one, although he couldn't recall if they were on consecutive nights or not (for the time, that was still a pretty clear memory). At this time, proto-hippies were trying to distinguish “Fillmore” type events from regular teen dances.

A 2011 aerial view (from Hoover Tower) of the Wilbur Hall Commons area at the Wilbur Hall dorms on the Stanford University campus.

December 2, 1966 Wilbur Hall Dorm, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Big Brother & The Holding Company/San Andreas Fault Finders “A Happening In The Wilburness” 
Wilbur Hall, at 658 Escondido Drive on the Stanford campus, was the anchor of a quartet of dormitories. At the time, and perhaps still, Wilbur housed mostly freshmen. I believe Wilbur Hall was the dining commons and admin offices for all four dorms. Based on an obscure flyer, some sort of end-of-term event was held that featured no less than Janis Joplin and Big Brother. No such thing seems to have happened again.

 

An ad from the December 2, 1966 Stanford Daily (thanks Cleuci!)

Update: Correspondent Cleuci found an ad and some articles in the Stanford Daily. The Avalon Light Show was there (with Gary Ewing), the Chloe Scott Dancers, two bands--it never happened again. 

Remarkably, the Janis Joplin appearance was not the hippest bit of 60s rock trivia associated with Wilbur. Back in May 1961, the lounge of Arroyo Hall (one of the Wilbur dorms) featured a folk night with "Bob and Jerry," the first paid professional performance of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. Whoever was a freshman that night in Arroyo lounge can now say "so when did you first see Jerry?" and know that he cannot ever lose.

Rock in Palo Alto after 1966

Psychedelic rock bands had come from Palo Alto in 1965, and some had even returned. But just about all the rock shows in 1966 were at Stanford University. However, after 1966, there were almost no significant rock shows at Stanford for the next several years. A Fall quarter with the Airplane, the Dead, some sort of Experimental Event and Big Brother seemed to be enough for Stanford. For 1967, the action would move away from campus and across El Camino Real to Palo Alto itself, and we shall start to see that in the next installment. 

The Good News-Performance History 1966

(drummer Chris Herold, guitarist Tim Abbott and keyboardist Bob Stephens of The Good News, from Redwood City, CA, playing somewhere on the Peninsula in 1966-photo courtesy of Tim Abbott)

History is written by the winners, and hindsight is always 20/20, so rock history often falls into a tautology: since only famous bands are written about, rock history is shrunk to a tiny roster of famous bands. The reality is messier and way more interesting. The San Francisco Bay Area in 1966 was rightly remembered as a time of great creativity and musical experimentation, as the likes of Ken Kesey, Bill Graham, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead created the blueprint for the modern rock concert as we know it today. A closer examination of the time, however, shows that a lot of interesting things were going on.

In the course of my research, I was fortunate enough to learn some things about a hitherto obscure group called The Good News, from Redwood City, CA. The Good News played heavy Butterfield-style blues, had their own light show and played some hip venues, and some of their members went on to better known endeavors, but they have been all but lost to history up until now. The Good News were interesting and well ahead of their time, and an examination of some surviving evidence gives an interesting picture of bands on the rise in 1966, when the Bay Area was exciting and everything seemed possible.

Redwood City, CA
Redwood City is in San Mateo County, just a few miles North of Palo Alto, but still about 30 miles South of San Francisco. It's a nice little town, but back in the 60s it was just another suburb on the Bay, with no University to make it cool, yet still too far from the City to be hot. There were a few tiny venues in Redwood City, but most of the action, such as it was, could be found on El Camino Real, the main commercial strip that ran from Mission Boulevard in San Francisco to downtown San Jose, touching every town along the way. By day, the El Camino was a commercial district with stores and auto dealers, and at night it was the entertainment district in each of the little suburban communities. In 1965, many entertainers simply played up and down the El Camino. For example, in the Fall of 1965 a Palo Alto blues band called The Warlocks had a lot of bookings in and around El Camino Real.

As to indigenous Redwood City rock bands, however, they were few and far between. I do know of a folk-rock group called The Sit-Ins, but they seem to have been High School students. So far, the first group from Redwood City who played outside of the town that I have been able to discover has been The Good News. One eyewitness describes them as "a Butterfield-style band," which for the early 1966 suburbs is pretty surprising. David Nelson of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage described them as "a Redwood City blues band," which had to be a pretty short list. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band had only released their groundbreaking debut album on Elektra in October '65, showing that it was possible for white boys to play the blues, and it had an electrifying effect on musicians and audiences.

Good News lead guitarist Tim Abbott recalls

The Good News was a group that I joined in about 65 and split up in 66 or early 67 The group went through some changes in personnel over it's time together. It started with 

• Chris Herold-drums, 
• Dan Hess- Bass, 
• Kinkade Miller- Keyboards, 
• Tim Abbott- Lead Guitar and Vocals and 
• Dave Torbert-Lead Vocals and Guitar.

After several months we got Bob Stephens in on Keyboards, Harmonica and Sax (he also did some  amazing Howlin Wolf style vocals) [Stephens replaced Miller]

The timeline fits nicely. The first Butterfield album came out in Fall '65, so it makes sense that it would inspire any just-formed band. The Good News lasted until about the end of 1966, although there seems to have been a few personnel changes at the very end.

Tim Abbott would go on to join the South Bay's finest, The Chocolate Watch Band. Dave Torbert (1948-82) is best known today as the bassist for The New Riders and Kingfish, and drummer Herold was also in Kingfish. Both Torbert and Herold left The Good News in late Summer 1966 to join the South Bay's other psychedelic blues band, The New Delhi River Band. The New Delhi River Band are a fascinating story in their own right. I am working on the definitive NDRB story (and it will be definitive) but it turns out that The Good News were a critical prequel.

 (The Good News perform at a debutante ball, with their strobe-light-ready clothing. The caption from  a forgotten newspaper says "Peninsula Deb Janet Laird, Steve Boyden dance to the Big Beat"--clipping courtesy Tim Abbott)

The Light Show
The Good News were playing some pretty serious blues by early 1966, making them ahead of the curve but not unique. What set them apart, however, was that they appear to have been the first Bay Area band to travel with their own light show. It was pretty simple, but remember that at the time there was no concept of "light shows" outside of a few underground Family Dog events in San Francisco. Almost none of the suburban teenagers who would have seen The Good News would have been to The Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City or a Family Dog dance at Longshoreman's Hall or The Trips Festival.

The Good News basically used a strobe light, which must have been quite a shock to teenagers used to conventional stage lighting. The Good News had special stage clothes that were embarrassingly colorful in true 60s style, but they were designed to look exciting when they jumped around under the strobe. It may seem corny now, but seeing flashing lights jumping around the stage while the band laid it down on "Got My Mojo Working" must have been a surprising moment, and however briefly shown the shape of things to come.

Tim Abbott very kindly sent me the clipping above (and the other visual materials), but he doesn't know where the photo was taken. It was common in the mid-60s at Debutante parties to have two bands, a big band for the adults to dance to and a rock band for the kids. The groups would usually alternate sets. Many famous Fillmore bands actually played Debutante parties, as the money was good and the girls were cute. Abbott recalls playing a Debutante event at San Francisco Airport (of all places) for Bob Weir's sister (update: FOUND! June 24, 1966--see below).

I wonder who Janet Laird and Steve Boyden were (the couple in the photo)? Were they just dancing together, or did they get married and have three kids? Maybe the Internet will work it's magic and they will write in.

Good News Performance Venues
The performance history of The Good News remains murky. Since the band did not go on to subsequent fame, few artifacts of their past remain preserved. Abbott, fortunately, does recall a few events, and it at least gives us a picture of the circuit that was available to aspiring bands. The Grateful Dead had graduated from the El Camino Real by the end of 1965, as their association with Ken Kesey led them to Owsley and then The Trips Festival. Other bands had to keep slugging it out.

(a flyer for The Good News performance at The Bold Knight in Sunnyvale, April 1, 1966-courtesy Tim Abbott)

The Bold Knight, 769 N. Matilda Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA
Abbott recalls "we used to play The Bold Knight a lot." The Bold Knight was in Sunnyvale, a few miles South of Palo Alto, nearer to San Jose (Redwood City was North of Palo Alto). Once a sleepy farm town, after World War 2 it was a booming suburb full of people working for Lockheed and other aerospace companies. It was garage band central, and the South Bay was full of great bands. The local radio station (KLIV-am 1590) liked to play local bands, so groups like The Chocolate Watch Band, The Syndicate Of Sound and The E-Types were making real money playing dances and concerts all over the area, even though the band members were barely out of high school (and in the case of The Syndicate Of Sound, still in High School).

Two Los Altos High School graduates, Mike McCluney and Terry Nininger, leased the banquet room of a restaurant in a shopping mall and put on rock concerts. These were mostly directed at kids under 21, although unlike some parts of the Bay Area older patrons were not excluded. The banquet room could fit up to 1000, so it was  relatively substantial place. The Bold Knight put on about one show a week on Friday or Saturday, occasionally both, so it was a regular venue without being full time. With a huge audience of mobile South Bay teenagers and a lot of great bands, so when the Bold Knight opened in early 1966 it was successful almost immediately.

McCluney recalled The Good News fondly, and remembers them mostly playing blues covers but doing some original material as well. This was typical of a lot of bands in San Francisco and elsewhere, particularly those playing blues. Since the Rolling Stones and others had made a lot of blues songs sort of well known, they could play music they liked that audiences knew, and slip in some of their own stuff as they worked it out.

The June 28, 1966 SF Examiner Society Column reports on Wendy Weir's deb party at SFO Airport the previous Friday. 

San Francisco International Airport Ballroom, SFO Airport, San Mateo, CA
Esteemed scholar LightIntoAshes managed to track down the precise reference to Wendy Weir's Deb Party. Bob Weir's mom had an Andy Warhol-inspired theme and a hot local blues band. The date was Friday June 24, 1966--read all about it just above--and Bob did not attend because he had another (as yet unknown) gig.

In the early years of the Jet Age, SFO was a glamorous place. There was an exciting lounge nearby, The Tiger-A-Go-Go, where hot stewardesses hung out, and the ballroom over at the airport was desirable, not least, I assume, because one's rich friends could just fly right in.

The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom, 400 Beach Street, Santa Cruz, CA
The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom is connected to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, a sort of East Coast-style amusement park somewhat out of place on the West Coast. Although it was established in 1907, by the 1960s, the Cocoanut Grove had regular "teen" dances, usually on Friday or Saturday nights, with the local bands who were popular on KLIV. It was part of the same circuit as The Bold Knight. Santa Cruz had nice beaches (if kind of cold), so many families would spend a week or a weekend in town, so there were many more kids available to go to shows at the Grove (capacity 800) than the tiny population of the town might indicate. The Good News played the Cocoanut Grove regularly, just as all the other South Bay bands did. Abbott recalls a number of bookings at Cocoanut Grove with the Chocolate Watch Band, who were the best, best-known and most infamous of all the South Bay bands in that period.

The Spectrum, 1836 El Camino Real, Redwood City, CA
Abbott recalls, "We did several weeks at the Spectrum in Redwood City with what later became Moby Grape (Jerry Miller introduced me to the Sitar and some great guitar licks)." He added "Jerry [Miller] and Don [Stevenson's] group were called The Frantics at the point that they were working with us and Bob Mosley hadn't joined the band yet. Chuck [Schoning] was on bass, and they had a girl who's name I can't remember on rhythm guitar."

The Frantics had relocated from Tacoma, WA to suburban San Bruno. Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson were only a few months away from the roller coaster ride of Moby Grape, but couldn't have known it at the time. Schoning too would go on to a lengthy music career (with AAA and Quicksilver, among others). The "girl whose name I can't remember" was the uber-cool Denise Kaufman, immortalized as Mary Microgram in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and by 1967 the main voice of the great band The Ace Of Cups. So The Good News were bumping into musicians just like them, playing around the circuit and trying to break through.

The Spectrum was at an intersection in Redwood City called Five Points. It had been an Autumn Records-owned place called The Nu Beat, but when Autumn folded in April 1966, the place changed its name to The Spectrum. I have written about the intersection of Autumn Records, The Nu Beat, The Frantics and The Spectrum elsewhere.

The Barn, Granite Creek Road at Highway 17, Scotts Valley, CA
Abbott: "I also remember playing at The Barn at some point, but can't remember if we were sitting in or were on the bill."

The Barn in Scotts Valley was a hippie enclave that started in Spring 1966 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In 1966, the only true "hippie" places were The Fillmore and The Avalon in San Francisco. You could argue that the college campuses of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State and San Jose State were hippie friendly, but those zones didn't extend very far off their respective campuses. For the rest of the South Bay, there was just The Barn. The converted dairy barn, halfway between Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, was an isolated little clubhouse for all the longhairs: hippies, bikers, Merry Pranksters, light shows and psychedelic blues bands were all there at once. Good bands played The Barn, but at the time they played there, they were mostly unknown. The more adventurous of the teenagers going to places like The Bold Knight would find there way to The Barn, so for the South Bay it was a signpost to new space.

I am working on the history of The Barn, and I have a very preliminary version online. The Spring and Summer of 1966 remain very murky, however. Abbott's confusion over whether they were on the bill leads me to think that they played on a Thursday night, but explaining why is too much of a tangent, so you'll have to take my word on that for now. The essential point about playing The Barn was that it was one of the few places outside of San Francisco and Berkeley for longhairs to hangout, so if a band played well at The Barn then the right people heard about it.

Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA
October 22-23, 1966 Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band/Chocolate Watch Band/Great Pumpkin/Good News
Abbott: "We did one date at the Filmore and were asked back but we had broken up by that point."

Without question, bands made it in San Francisco by playing The Fillmore and The Avalon, and indeed succeeding at The Avalon mainly guaranteed that Bill Graham would steal you from Chet Helms for a more lucrative Fillmore booking. So if The Good News had played The Fillmore and were asked back, things were definitely looking up, yet they did not stay together to make the jump. If the Good News had played The Barn before the Fillmore (not a certainty), the word would have traveled particularly fast. Abbott recalled that Good News manager Denis Minga lined up the Fillmore appearance, but Graham would have asked around about the band.

Shortly after the Good News played the Fillmore, the band broke up. Dave Torbert and Chris Herold became members of The New Delhi River Band, who were regularly headlining at The Barn. While Torbert had played guitar in The Good News, he played bass in NDRB, an instrument he would play for the rest of his career. There is some ambiguity as to exactly when Herold and then Torbert joined NDRB, and either or both musicians may have been members of both bands for a brief while.

It's a little known fact that many bands played The Fillmore who were not "on the poster." In 1966, Graham would advertise two or three bands on his famous posters, usually for three shows from Friday through Sunday. Each advertised band would play two sets. Often, however, another unadvertised group would open the shows on Friday and Saturday night, playing a single set. These were usually called the "audition" bands, and were probably paid union scale. Trying out bands this way gave Graham a look at which groups were worthy of getting on the poster for a forthcoming date. No doubt The Good News acquitted themselves well, as they were asked back, but it was not to be.

The Good News-Aftermath
When The Good News broke up, in early November 1966, Tim Abbott became the lead guitarist in a group called The San Francisco Bay Blues Band. The group was not particularly successful, even by local standards. However, in early 1967 lead guitarist Mark Loomis left the Chocolate Watch Band, and bassist Bill Flores asked Abbott to take his place. Although the Chocolate Watch Band members weren't any older than The Good News, they were already hugely successful. By 1967, the group had successful records, and airplay on KLIV insured that they were hugely popular in the South Bay.

Despite many social connections to the San Francisco bands, the Chocolate Watch Band were never able to really break into the Fillmore. The CWB played there a few times, and were well received, but they were one of the Bay Area's best bands, and should have had a much higher profile at the Ground Zero of San Fransicso 60s rock. Different reasons are ascribed for this--competition between Bill Graham and CWB manager Ron Roupe, stemming from Graham's attempt to manage the band may have been a factor, or it may have been that San Franciscans couldn't believe that a cool band could come from San Jose instead of Seattle or London. As a result, while the Chocolate Watch Band belong in the top rank of Bay Area bands from the 60s, they are often given only second tier status. Nonetheless, Abbott joined the group in 1967 when they were hugely popular. His first show with the band, after three days of frantic rehearsal, was at the Mt. Tamalpais Festival on June 10, 1967, as the Chocolate Watch Band went on between The Doors and The Fifth Dimension.

Abbott, however, left the Chocolate Watch Band by the end of 1967 due to concerns about the band's finances. The New Delhi River Band had ground to a halt by early 1968, so Abbott, Torbert and Herold formed a group called Shango with a few other players (Matthew Kelly and Ryan Brandenburg), but that is yet another story that I will tell later. Torbert went on to great success with The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, and then Kingfish, and Chris Herold rejoined Torbert in the latter band. Torbert passed on in 1982, way too early, and is sorely missed by fans and friends alike.

I had thought that the story of The Good News was completely lost, but the former proprietor of The Bold Knight tipped me off to the fact that Tim Abbott owns a recording studio in the South Bay. Tim could not have been more helpful and generous with his memories and pictures, and so a seemingly lost piece of Bay Area rock history as been retrieved.

And who says the past has to be past? Guess what band has Tim Abbott as their lead guitarist? Why, The Chocolate Watch Band, still going strong with members from back in the day, still ready to be there when you make your move (at the Love-In), still the pride of the South Bay 60s. Good News, indeed. The CWB have produced a new album, recorded at Abbott's studio, featuring new and old Watch Band songs. Whether the band will break out the multi-colored Good News stage gear remains to be seen.

4290 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA Cabana Hyatt House "Cabana '67 Presents 'Who Is Miss Boutique'"-Music By The New Delhi River Band

(a flyer for a Wednesday afternoon "hip" fashion show at Palo Alto's Cabana Hyatt House on June 28, 1967, with music by the New Delhi River Band--h/t Ross)

Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University, played an essential role in 60s music. Palo Alto was the incubator for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead, both of whose peculiar missions were transformed by early LSD experiments. Even though many of the seminal events in the early history of the Pranksters and The Dead (nee Warlocks) actually took place in neighboring Menlo Park (including the LSD experiments, at the VA Hospital on Willow Road), it was bohemian downtown Palo Alto that provided the nesting place. When the legendary Trips Festival at Longshoreman's Hall (on January 21, 22 and 23, 1966) exported the South Bay "Acid Tests" to San Francisco, the modern rock show was born. Groups like the Grateful Dead took flight at the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms, and ad-hoc rock venues had sprung up around the country by 1967.

Despite its status as a "psychedelic start-up" (so to speak), Palo Alto itself was strangely bereft of musical action. When the psychedelic scene took root in the Haight Ashbury, the Grateful Dead and  others relocated to San Francisco. One participant at the time told me that the whole Palo Alto bohemian scene was a few dozen people, not counting Kesey's crowd, so it didn't take much to scatter the crew. Those who did not find urban San Francisco appealing found the then largely deserted Santa Cruz Mountains more hospitable. As a result, while progressive Palo Alto was considerably more friendly to long hair, protesters and loud music than most other South Bay towns, there were few actual hippies to provide the economic basis for a rock venue.

Palo Alto did have its own leading psychedelic band, The New Delhi River Band. The group had formed in June 1966, out of what was left of a folk rock band called Bethlehem Exit, which had been based in the Los Altos/Cupertino area just South of Palo Alto. The New Delhi River Band was based at a house on Channing Avenue (between Waverley and Cowper) in Palo Alto. Today, the New Delhi River Band is only known, if at all, as the first rock band for future New Riders Of The Purple Sage David Nelson and Dave Torbert. Although no recordings are known to survive, they played Butterfield-style blues, with a touch of R&B thrown in: typical sets apparently included "Young Blood" and "Suzie Q" along with Muddy Waters classics. The lineup of The New Delhi River Band (up until its final incarnation) was

• John Tomasi-vocals, harmonica
• Peter Sultzbach-lead guitar
• David Nelson-guitar
• Dave Torbert-bass
• Chris Herold-drums

Sultzbach had founded Bethlehem Exit in 1965, Tomasi and Herold had joined the group by 1966. David Nelson was living at the Channing Avenue house, on hiatus from playing bluegrass (foregoing the riches therein), and jammed with the Bethlehem Exit members. After an initial bass player did not pass muster at rehearsal (he was a converted guitarist), Dave Torbert was brought in.

I am working on the complete history of The New Delhi River Band--and quite a history it will be--but the shortest version is that by September 1966, the group was the house band at a remarkable place called The Barn in Scotts Valley, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There were many hip, rocking bands in the South Bay in 1966 (such as The Chocolate Watch Band), but whatever the personal proclivities of the musicians, their audiences were more teenage and radio-oriented. In the Fall of 1966, outside of the Fillmore, the Avalon and near the Berkeley campus, there was no other place for older long hairs to congregate and hear their own music. The Barn put on shows just about every weekend from mid 1966 through April 1967, and hippies (and bikers and musicians) from all over the Bay Area went there.

Since the New Delhi River Band seems to have played at The Barn almost every weekend in Fall 1966 (the poster here features the NDRB on Friday, December 16, with the Anonymous Artists of America appearing the next night), sometimes multiple times, and regularly in early 1967 as well, they were a well known band in the tiny circles of the Bay Area underground. People in the extended "families" of the Family Dog or The Grateful Dead (albeit not the busy band members themselves) were regulars at The Barn, since there were few other places to go without drawing the unwelcome attention of the police or local yahoos. As a result, by mid-1967 the New Delhi River Band were regularly headlining concerts in San Jose and around the South Bay. These were modest venues, admittedly, but the NDRB was the cool underground band for the area, and they were based in Palo Alto.

To my knowledge, however, the mid-week fashion show on June 28, 1967 was the first paying gig in Palo Alto for the New Delhi River Band. The Grateful Dead had moved North at the first whiff of opportunity, but the NDRB had chosen to stay home. With The Barn closed in April of 1967, due to constant harassment from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff, the group lost their principal place to play. Although The Barn would reopen intermittently from June of 1967 through mid-1968, it stopped being a useful paying venue for a working band. The New Delhi River Band was thus left in the South Bay without an anchor venue.

The Cabana Hyatt House, 4290 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto had been conceived by Leland Stanford as a sleepy college town, and it generally lived up to its founder's goals. Thus it was surprising when hotelier Jay Sarno opened the opulent Cabana Hotel in 1962 as a sumptuous luxury hotel in Palo Alto, 4 miles South of Downtown, near the Los Altos border. The wife of one of the investors said "Who's going to stay at a hotel like that in Palo Alto--and without gambling?"This initial prognosis turned out to be correct, but for a few years the hotel was a glittering swan in the Palo Alto Duck Pond. The Cabana Hotel's lasting fame in Palo Alto history came when the Beatles stayed overnight on August 31, 1965, prior to playing the Cow Palace. Room 810 is still designated the "Beatles Room" in the current hotel (although I have to assume all the band members got their own rooms).

In 1966, Sarno used the design of the Cabana Hotel as the basis for his new Las Vegas Casino, called Caesar's Palace. The garish, theme-oriented Caesar's was a pioneer establishment in modern Las Vegas for a luxurious gambling resort. Many of those elements could be seen at the Cabana Hotel, such as huge chandeliers, giant fountains and an upscale lounge with the name "Nero's Nook." By 1967, however, the Cabana had become the Cabana Hyatt House. The theme of elegance was maintained, but Sarno had already moved to Vegas, where such opulence belonged. Nonetheless, the Cabana Hyatt House was the Peninsula's "best" hotel, a regular site for debutante balls and Society fundraisers.

In California, at least, the confluence of the Fillmore and Swinging London had made Carnaby Street fashions stylish, at least for younger women. I assume that the boutiques (dress shops) advertised for the fashion show were smaller places on the Peninsula, but the names and the Wednesday afternoon "Tea" seem directed at the older daughters and younger wives of the Fashionable set in the South Bay. (I'm particularly curious about the Suzy Creamcheese Boutique).

On the Saturday prior to the 'Who Is Miss Boutique' show, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and The Holding Company had headlined a Be-In at Palo Alto's El Camino Park (on June 24, 1967). The Be-in was well attended and went off without any problems, a sign of Palo Alto's benign tolerance. I have to assume that the members of the New Delhi River Band were present at The Be-In, not least since Nelson was old friends with both Jerry Garcia and Big Brother's Peter Albin. [update: I have since found out that the Be-In was four days after this event, on July 2, and that the NDRB played the event]. Four days later the NDRB would have found themselves at Palo Alto's most fashionable hotel, playing loud electric blues for pretty young women in miniskirts, all eating tea and sandwiches.

I have to wonder which event was stranger for Nelson and his bandmates: native sons of the South Bay--most of the Grateful Dead and Peter Albin of Big Brother--headlining a comparatively large outdoor concert as local heroes? Or finding the New Delhi River Band cool enough to lend some hip credence to a Society fashion show for young women who might not typically give a scruffy hippie blues band the time of day?



The former Cabana Hotel and Cabana Hyatt House is now the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

The Yellow Brick Road, 37266 Niles Boulevard, Fremont, CA: June 1967-January 1968 (Work In Progress)

(The flyer from June 16-17, 1967 for The Yellow Brick Road, featuring Palo Alto's New Delhi River Band and Fremont's Wakefield Loop. Poster by Paul Johansen)

The underground rock explosion that was ignited at The Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, NV in the Summer of 1965 spread rapidly when it returned to San Francisco. Although the rest of the United States was just discovering the anticipated Summer of Love, the Bay Area had already reacted to the exciting mixture of loud music, strange colors and long hair that was luring young rock fans to the Fillmore and Avalon. Miniature variations of the psychedelic ballroom scene sprung up around the Bay Area, some only briefly like the ephemeral Outfit in Palo Alto, and some more substantially like The Barn in Scotts Valley. Somewhere in between lies the brief and curious story of The Yellow Brick Road, in the Niles district of Fremont. While I am some ways from competing the story, what I have learned is such an interesting case study in how a culture takes on varying forms that it is worth telling what I have learned so far, not least in the hopes that readers can add to the story and correct any mistakes I have made.

In 1967, Fremont was a prosperous suburb in Southern Alameda County, 35 miles South of Berkeley and 18 miles North of San Jose. Fremont had only been incorporated in 1956 by combining 5 smaller communities. Although part of the central Bay Area, Fremont had a distinctly different flavor, in that its principal employer was the General Motors plant, and the city of Fremont also functioned as the economic center of the agricultural areas just to the East of town. Today, most of Eastern Alameda County is heavily populated, but in the 1960s its primary businesses were auto manufactuing, ranching and agriculture, and Fremont was its hub. The city of Fremont had a lot of Cowboy bars and Western Swing music, and it wasn't an affectation.

San Francisco and the college towns of Berkeley and Palo Alto had grudgingly come to accept long hair and loud music, and whatever the local police thought, they were constrained by local tolerance. The cities and towns nearer to those communities were somewhat accepting of the changes, too, generally in proportion to their proximity to San Francisco or one of the two Universities, and places like San Jose and Santa Cruz were coming around as well. Fremont, however, despite its geographical location remained somewhat separate. Fremont teenagers had been to the Fillmore or other hip places, had the new records and had started to grow their hair. The Fremont Police and Schools, reflecting the city's less urban character, took a hard line against such changes. Male students were threatened with expulsion from school for having anything resembling long hair, and Fremont cops thought nothing of stopping and rousting young hippies, telling them (on some occasions with guns drawn) to "get out of town" even though in fact they lived in Fremont with their parents.

(From the April 11, 1967 edition of The Fremont Argus)

On April 10, 1967 the Fremont city planning commission approved a Use Permit for a "teenage 'pyschedelic' dance club in the Niles District of Fremont." The club was approved to be open on Friday and Saturday nights, and one Sunday afternoon per month. According to one of the owners, Warren Townsend, "it would be patterned after the more successful clubs in San Francisco." A commissioner was concerned about "who would police the 'undesirable element of teenager' who would patronize the establishment," summing up the City's view of hippies. When a hippie friendly coffee-shop (The Nickelodeon, at 3987 Washington Blvd) opened downtown, the City health and safety inspectors immediately had it closed.  When it was re-opened, the police made an active point of harassing the patrons. This wasn't some hippie rumor--this was reported in the Fremont Argus (June 22, 1967) with a picture of a stern looking cop sitting in the coffee shop in front of teenagers playing electric guitars.

(5/6 of Fremont's Wakefield Loop, Summer 1967: (l-r) Dan Garvey (ld gtr), Dave Simpson (vcls), Cheryl Williams (vcls), Denny Mahdik (gtr), Julio Stabin (bass))

The Wakefield Loop were probably Fremont's first avowedly psychedelic band, playing their own music. To the Fremont police they were dangerous hippies, although they hardly looked like hardcore San Francisco freaks, and most of them where still High School students. I have been in direct or indirect contact with a number of members of The Wakefield Loop, and they are the principal sources for this remarkable chronicle. The band was named after a tiny street in Fremont where  drummer Larry Payne lived (later replaced by Don DeAugustine).

The Yellow Brick Road was an old equipment rental facility. A stage was installed in the back of the room, and the venue had its own little parking lot (for a larger version of the photo, see here). The owners were the Townsend family and the Rapp family. Teenager Russ Rapp, still a High School student, was effectively the manager of the venue. Wakefield Loop guitarist Denny Mahdik assisted him with the booking.

June 10, 1967 Wakefield Loop/others?
The venue opened shortly after school ended, and Wakefield Loop members recall that they played opening night, although there may have been other bands. I have assumed that the club decided to have an opening act without an out-of-town headliner, just to make sure everything was running smoothly. June 10 was a Saturday, but that is just speculation on my part--the Loop could have played Friday, and other bands played Saturday (I'm hoping someone who remembers will write in).

Lead singer Dave Simpson recalls the presence of Sopwith Camel manager Yuri Toporov, who soon signed up the Wakefield Loop. Toporov brought along his friend, San Francisco guitarist Carlos Santana, then just another young gun on the scene. 

June 16-17, 1967 New Delhi River Band/Wakefield Loop
Palo Alto-based New Delhi River Band had been the house band at The Barn in Scotts Valley. A hip blues band, their membership included David Nelson and Dave Torbert, both future members of The New Riders of The Purple Sage. Denny Mahdik had been to The Barn a number of times, and in some ways the Yellow Brick Road was similar to The Barn: weekend gigs, no liquor sales that excluded teenagers, hippie friendly. It was appropriate that The Barn's house band were the first out-of-town headliners at Yellow Brick Road.

The New Delhi River Band also headlined Fremont's first free psychedelic happening, on Sunday June 18 at Fremont Central Park. This is an interesting event in its own right, and I have written about it elsewhere. Suffice to say, despite civic resistance, Denny Mahdik organized a successful outdoor event that drew some thousands of people to hear bands in the park, dragging Fremont unwillingly into the 1960s.

June 23-24, 1967 The Garden Of Chaste Refreshment/The Plastic People
June 30-July 1, 1967 Purple Earthquake
July 7-8 Loading Zone/Wakefield Loop

Thanks to this surviving poster, and one other, we know about the initial weekends at Yellow Brick Road. The Garden Of Chaste Refreshment was apparently a Hayward band, and Purple Earthquake were from Berkeley. The Purple Earthquake featured guitarist Robbie Dunbar, then a Berkeley High School student, and they would evolve into the group Earthquake, who had several albums over the years on A&M and Berserkely Records. The Loading Zone were a popular East Bay club band as well, the first hippie group to mix psychedelia with soul, kicking the door open for many others like Sly and The Family Stone and Tower of Power. This early version of the Zone most likely did not have a horn section, and future lead singer Linda Tillery was still in High School in San Francisco. Loading Zone would put out albums in 1968 and 1969 as well (along with one in 2008).

A surviving poster shows Wakefield Loop opening for the Loading Zone, and band members recall helping Loading Zone organist Paul Fauerso get his heavy Hammond B3 organ into the venue. It seems likely that local Fremont bands opened many of the shows, with regional headliners topping the bills. In the Spring, the Fremont Argus had reported on various Fremont "Battle Of The Bands" at different High Schools, the prizes of which were a gig at Yellow Brick Road, so the venue was clearly focusing on local groups as well.

The balance of the Summer of 1967 at Yellow Brick Road remains obscure. The Wakefield Loop started working with Yuri Toporov, playing all over San Francisco and Marin, so they don't recall playing Yellow Brick Road for the balance of the Summer. The group played an exciting week at Muir Beach, despite having their equipment stolen, but at the end of the Summer the group broke up. Some band members recall that The Sons of Champlin played Yellow Brick Road, but whether that was the Summer of Fall of 1967 remains obscure. It does appear that the venue closed at the end of Summer, but I suspect that was as much to accommodate end-of-Summer holidays.

(an article from the September 14, 1967 Fremont Argus, and an ad from the September 15, 1967 Hayward Daily Review)

September 15-16 Rock-A-Day Daisy And The Good Time Band/New Grass Garden (16th only)
The brief article is quite revealing. It says "The Yellow Brick Road, Fremont's teen dance center, re-opens for Friday and Saturday for young adults in the Tri-City Area." After describing the upcoming events, the article ads "Age limits are from 15-20 with a dress code similar to those used by local schools." Its not clear whether the dress code and age limit had been in force in the Summer, but in any case the terms ensure that the relaxed freedom implied by the Fillmore was still just in San Francisco.

Russ Rapp, although just a teenager, must have realized that many acts had a following that included people over 20, and if they were excluded from the audience, nor allowed to dress in jeans (which were not typically allowed at High School dances in Fremont) the potential audience was considerably smaller. Members of The Wakefield Loop speculate also that the constant hassling of hippies by the Fremont police cannot have been appealing to any out-of-towners, not least the bands themselves. Yellow Brick Road seems to have been receding from a cool suburban Fillmore to just another teen dance hall.

(Hayward Daily Review ad September 22, 1967)

September 22-23, 1967 The Blues Bag/St. Matthews Experiment
Both of these groups are unknown to me, but there is a good chance that St. Matthews Experiment was a blues band led by harmonica player Matthew Kelly. Kelly was associated with the New Delhi River Band, and after many permutations would end up leading the band Kingfish, with Bob Weir and Dave Torbert.

(The ad is from the September 29, 1967 Hayward Daily Review; the article is from the "Women's Section" of the September 6, 1967 Fremont Argus)

September 29, 1967 The Collective Works/The S.E.
Fremont, a merger of five smaller communities, was named after an explorer named John C Fremont, known as "The Pathfinder," so Fremont's big celebration was called "Pathfinder Day" (modern knowledge about John Fremont suggests he was not so admirable a role model). On the actual day, September 29, a public dance was held at Yellow Brick Road. The Collective Works were apparently one of Fremont's most popular and successful cover bands, less hip than bands like Wakefield Loop but of course earning considerably more money. For Saturday night, the venue was taken over by the Fremont's Women Club (see article). The event featured a psychedelic light show, a guest appearance by Miss Elizabeth, Australia (Elizabeth, AU was Fremont's sister city) and a 17-piece orchestra for dancing.

(ad from the Hayward Daily Review October 6, 1967)

October 6, 1967 The S.E./The Golden Crank
October 7, 1967 The S.E./Deep Blue Quintet
The Wakefield Loop had reformed by October (lead guitarist Dan Garvey, vocalist Cheryl Williams and drummer Don DeAugustine were joined by bassist Steve Lind and guitarist Mike Swindell). Yet they recall that their hope that the Yellow Brick Road would be their local Fillmore was fading. For one thing, constant police harassment was not an inducement for out-of-town bands to play there. In any case, Fremont did not have a cool reputation in the Bay Area (I can attest to that), so it was quite difficult for Russ Rapp to get "name" bands to play there, and apparently shows mostly featured local bands. For the most part, memories of the last few months of the Yellow Brick Road are fairly vague.

(ad from the Hayward Daily Review, October 26, 1967)

October 27, 1967 The Fish/Collective Works

In October of 1967 Country Joe McDonald temporarily split with Country Joe and The Fish, due to the proverbial "creative differences". Joe McDonald fulfilled some dates as a solo act, and Barry Melton and the rest of the band (organist David Cohen, bassist Bruce Barthol and drummer Chicken Hirsh) played gigs as The Incredible Fish. This "split" lasted about two months. The Fish played Fremont (between Portland, OR on Oct 20-21 and the Fillmore on Oct 30) on Friday October 27. The Wakefield Loop are fairly certain that they opened for The Fish, and do not recall "replacing" The Collective Works (whom they knew), so there is the distinct possibility that The Fish played again in November, with The Wakefield Loop as the openers.

There are some memories of San Francisco's Flamin Groovies playing the Yellow Brick Road, possibly more than once. Denny Mahdik remembers going as a fan, and Dan Garvey recalls Wakefield Loop opening for them, and then being surprised not to be asked back (the Groovies wanted another band), so whatever the exact story the Groovies were definitely around. Other bands must have played there, but memories get foggier, and in any case the rock biz became more about making it big rather than local fun, and Fremont's out-of-the-way status did not help. Although the exact date of the last show at Yellow Brick Road is unknown, it appears to have been January 1968.

Throughout February of 1968, the Fremont Argus reported on efforts of a local businessman to open a sort of "Cowboy Bar" at the site of the Yellow Brick Road. The permit was eventually rejected, as allowing an actual night club in place of a "Teen" hangout was even less appealing to the neighborhood. However, the framing of the various articles (the one here is the final one, from the February 21, 1968 Fremont Argus) suggests that The Yellow Brick Road had closed in January of 1968. The rock business had gotten bigger by 1968, and it was no longer a "teen" phenomenon. By 1969, the Fremont schools backed down on insisting that male students keep their hair short, and the city moved grudgingly into the 1970s. By this time, the rock scene was much more oriented towards larger shows at Fillmore West, Winterland and Oakland Coliseum, so no local Fremont venue really replaced the Yellow Brick Road.

 

By the end of 1968, 37266 Niles Boulevard was an ASCO Appliance Warehouse. The building is still extant, and its most recent client appears to have been a Bar-B-Q joint, although it appears to be currently unoccupied. Nonetheless the peculiar brief story of The Yellow Brick Road, along with the Wakefield Loop and the "Banana At Noon" Be-In make a nice metaphor for the effect of the 60s on music and culture. The long haired Fremont teenagers represented things to come, but they had already graduated and moved on before the town came to see that they were right.

Anyone with additional information, corrections, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) about The Yellow Brick Road should contact me or mention them in the Comments.

Central Park, Fremont, CA, June 18, 1967: "Banana At Noon" Free Concert New Delhi River Band/Wakefield Loop/others-The Happening

In a previous post, I posed the question of whether the "Banana At Noon" event scheduled for Central Park in Fremont on Sunday, June 18, 1967 actually occurred. This "mini Be-In" was held the same day as the last day of the Monterey Pop Festival, and the free concert was the first event of its kind in Fremont (a suburban town halfway between Berkeley and San Jose). The Friday before the show, the front page of the local paper suggested that the event was in jeopardy due to thinly-veiled concerns about the hippie menace. The event was organized by a Fremont band called The Wakefield Loop, who were also scheduled to perform at the event.

Those who have been reading the various Wakefield Loop posts, particularly the last one, know that the event did occur and it was quite a success. It was such a success--relatively, anyway--that it made the front page of the Fremont and Hayward papers on Monday morning (the clipping above is from the Hayward Daily Review of Monday June 19, 1967), with the headline "Happy Happening Helps Hospital." Wakefield Loop guitarist and concert organizer Denny Mahdik picks up the story

I came up with the idea that it might be nice to use "Central Park" in Fremont to stage a free concert, and in doing so we could raise money for some charity. Hippies were getting such a bad rap in the local news that I thought we could help change the public's impression.

I approached "Dawn School" which used to be on Thornton Avenue, and it used to take care of "Special Needs" kids. At first they were excited at the prospects of getting some free press, and making some money...by cleanliness standards I would not classify myself as one of those filthy hippies... but as I recall, the principal of 'Dawn School' pulled out of the event at the last minute.

I had everything in place by that time, and ended up with no charity.  Obviously my goal was to link up with a reputable organization to show the community that ALL rock bands were not 'low lifes', but "Dawn's" principal got cold feet because we were classified as a hippie band. Then he went to the press, and said something derogatory like " I initially thought it was a good idea but then the association with hippies is not what we want, I hated to break the kids heart, but..."

 

Once Dawn pulled out, I went back to the newspaper and did my best to make an issue out of the situation, as we felt slighted,  that although we were attempting to do good... they turned it into something bad. I was seeking a bit of community support. But as I recall I didn't get too far at age 17 or so.

 

However, the event did go on. A fair size crowd saw South Bay headliners The New Delhi River Band (with future New Riders David Nelson and Dave Torbert) supported by Wakefield Loop, The Collective Minds, The London Colony and Of An Ugly Nature. A careful reading of the poster (done by Wakefield Loop lead singer Cheryl Williams) tantalizingly suggests that a "surprise San Francisco group" would appear. Although Denny Mahdik talked to different groups, including The Sparrow, by showtime this was supposed to be The Sopwith Camel. The Camel and Wakefield Loop shared management in one Yuri Toporov, but in the end the Camel did not play the event.  Still, as Mahdik recalls,  in the end the event had a musical and personally satisfying resolution

Anyway the gig drew several thousand people, there were no incidents, and it came off without a hitch, a fellow Fremont musician that we hung with Steve Lynn was there with his father who was VERY supportive of all of us, and when he heard the story about Dawn School, he was pissed. Mr. Lynn got on the mic and related the entire story to the crowd, who was in total support of us... and he suggested that we go ahead and collect donations, and make the benefactor The Oakland Children's Hospital.  I don't recall how much he collected by I know it was more than $400.00.

So... The concert was a success... Dawn School received nothing, and our effort paid off for Oakland's Children's Hospital.

So the Wakefield Loop successfully introduced Fremont to the psychedelic age, and for those fans who were there, and couldn't be at Monterey, it was probably just as memorable.

(thanks to Denny Mahdik and Dan Garvey of Wakefield Loop for their memories and insights. Poster by Cheryl Williams, wherever she might be, and h/t to Dan Garvey for the poster photo)