The Haight-Ashbury experience in San Francisco had, by 1975, become a Pandemic of its own, but, to the denizens of the rock-and-roll world, the actors in that play, the Haight-Ashbury lingered on.
The earthquake of 1906 levelled the city into ashes, and its resurrection is deeply ingrained in all native San Franciscans. In 1906,everybody went and lived in the park in tents. Like the hippies.
In a very real sense, native San Franciscans live with the knowledge of earthquakes and destruction as a daily epidemic, so seeing someone walk into a bank wearing a medical mask wouldn’t seem too bizarre, but one case stands out.
In 1975, a guerrilla crime wave, especially bank robberies, swept America in the wake of the media violence perpetuated by the kidnapping of Citizen Kane’s granddaughter Aka Patty Hearst. The rock-and-roll crowd, of all people, were accused, by lifted brow and distended nostril, of instigating violence and this included the Grateful Dead and the other Frisco based Rockers.
The Dead Heads thought this was a bad rap, but the media acted as a smoke screen. Certain number of ecstatic fans and overzealous enthusiasts have gone to great lengths to demonstrate their commitment to the cause; they tried to beckon to the musicians through the clouds of media: “We hear you, we hear you!” to show that they understood about living on the edge, waiting for the next quake… and about civil disobedience. But this was San Francisco, no one thought it would spread world-wide.
The most classic of disobedient incidents came when a man named Cat Olsen, entered a bank in Greenwich Village and held a number of hostages at bay, armed with nothing more than a revolver, a portable radio, two hits of blotter acid and five joints. Naturally the police, when they arrived on the scene, asked this rather disheveled man wearing a bright floral patterned shirt, sneakers and an army jacket, what his demands might be. He replied, not cash or bullion, not power, not any of the normal things a bank robber might demand… instead good old Cat wanted only to hear three consecutive hours of Grateful Dead music played on the AM radio, with an additional thirty minutes allocated to he, himself, for his message.
He would talk only to a certain disc jockey he considered righteous, and this same DK would spin DEAD music as part of these heroic demands. It seemed a stupid, even surreal demand like a Banksy wall paining, yet the whole thing was a coup d’état, because the demands were met.
The disc jockey was contacted, and a number of Grateful Dead tunes were played on the radio, at the end of which our friend raved for more than thirty minutes about how wonderful Jerry Garcia was, and how important the music of the Grateful Dead was, and how Phil Lesh is a genius and how much he missed Pig Pen, and everybody should listen to the Grateful Dead, the greatest rock group on EARTH. Now that’s what anyone would call “strength of commitment,” and in some ways Cat Olsen is a hero, even though he is probably still on Rikers Island.
Civil disobedience is nothing new. Lenny Bruce once said, “I’m a nut, elect me,” and I can’t help but remember Marty Balin standing on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl virtually inciting people to riot, because they would not be allowed to the gig; or remembering the New Jersey police cars being served flambé outside the stadium where the Grateful Dead played, even though there were empty seats, and even though the Dead asked the police to allow the people in FREE, the police would not allow anything free. This brings up the hysteria and philosophy that surrounds the concept of a free concert and what we are now facing in the Echo virus pandemic.
It seems that the word FREE has become a swear word in a country where everything is supposed to be FREE. Since we were kids, weeping at the half-mast for FDR, or screaming at the stampede over VJ Day, amid clouds of ration coupon confetti, we have heard the phrase: “It’s a FREE country!” Yet, a FREE concert cannot be given without serious and complex political ramifications. Likewise, wearing a mask has become a something of a political statement; a symbol of free speech, or the lack thereof, depending on your point of view.
There came a time when all the greater good and evil were on our asses to do benefits.
They missed the point of the whole Haight-Ashbury experience. The object was to-do free gigs, for no money. Just good ol’ plain free gigs. It should be added that the Charlatans, the Dead, the Airplane, Quicksilver, and Big Brother all did hundreds of free gigs … they were the marching bands for a populist revolution, not a Marxist revolution. They loved freedom, and thrived on it, but to the minions of the old culture, the free gigs had to be stopped.
Today, in our buggy Pandemic, the urban war always seems to flare up around civil rights and racism, but I assure you FREE gigs weren’t always mellow. You couldn’t convince just anybody to set up a free gig. It’s as if the promoters were saying: “Fun ain’t no fun, let’s get the bread.” As the revolutionary confrontations escalated into fiery pep rallies, the bands grew not a little afraid of their own power. The family units were serpentine, but as the juggernaut of musicians -naked and exposed to political intrigues -lurched forward, the family support seemed to wane. At one point, the late and beloved Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship had a scenario involving the takeover of Golden Gate Park, with every exit guarded.
In Kantner’s scenario, every tunnel would be full of supplies. If there was to be a battle, then we would have the battle on a real battlegrounds, real turf. Speedway Meadows, Stow Lake, the Polo Field. If we won that turf, we’d have the City by the balls. We did anyway. But it was fun to make it more dramatic … wearing a mask is not fun anymore … people are dying for real… this isn’t a FREE concert, it’s Germ Warfare.
