THE DAY I DISCOVERED THE 60s WERE OVER

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

It was April, 1971, 50 years ago to the month, and only 16 months since the calendar years of the 1960s had officially ended. We still wanted to hang on to the values that we carried over from the summer of love, and I had had several semi-euphoric moments in those ensuing years where I believed that if we were high all the time, all the world’s problems would just go away, or something equally far-fetched.

Reality hit me in the spring of 1971, when I saw people who looked the part of your average dope-smoking peaceniks behaving like your average bar brawlers. The band that I had been working with was not making the progress we had been hoping to make, and I was living in the San Jose suburb of Campbell, in a big gloomy house on the corner of two of the town’s busiest streets. (Within six months after we left that house, the building had become a Bank of America.) The gigs had not been as steady as they had been, and our manager decided we should look into another aspect of show biz. Somehow we agreed on concert promotion.

We knew little about booking bands but we had convinced a club manager, whose club was in Campbell, conveniently enough, to let us book a series of Sunday afternoon concerts in his venue, The Bodega. The club seated about 300, and many rising stars played there, as well as established artists with cultish followings. Our band had played there also, but Bodega’s manager let it be known that he wasn’t interested in booking us again. So be it.

Now came the hard part, which was finding bands that had some kind of following that were willing to traipse as far as 75-100 miles to play indoors on a Sunday afternoon. I remember much bickering with the band Big Brother & The Holding Company, who had the name, but their drawing card, Janis Joplin, had long since left the band and later the world. Even so, they wouldn’t budge from wanting a guarantee of something like $300, which we couldn’t do. I personally didn’t participate in any negotiations, but was privy to enough just hearing the phone conversations.

Somehow we had gotten a yes from the white blues singer/harmonicist Charlie Musselwhite, whom I was aware of but not much beyond that. I think he agreed to do it for $200, and he lived in San Francisco, so it was just an hour’s drive for him. He had a very down home, aw-shucks manner about him, and he was luckily in the frame of mind of just liking to gig and not worrying too much about money. As a support act, we hired a band we had seen in Santa Cruz a couple months before that we thought would be a good complement to the show. They turned out to be the opposite.

The day of the show came, and wouldn’t you know it, it was the sunniest, warmest day of the year up to that point, on top of advance tickets being minimal. We handled the “throng” waiting in line for the club to open in about five minutes, then spent the next 30 or so hoping for latecomers, stragglers, anybody. It was time to start the show, but we only had maybe 40 people at the most. We thought we’d wait a bit, and after a half hour or so, the crowd swelled by another possibly five. I went to where the opening act was to tell them we were going to start. One of them remarked, “Boy somebody’s taking a bath on this one,” and I replied “Yes, I know, I’m one of those somebodys.”

The band wasn’t as good as when we’d seen them before, and as a capper to their lacklustre performance, the lead singer chastised the small audience as he was leaving the stage. This began an onstage argument between the rest of the band that then spilled out into an all out brawl outside the back of the club. The drummer, showing no calm whatsoever, smashed a beer bottle and was waving the broken end at the lead singer, repeating, “Wanna try me, man!” A lot of obscenities later, the lead singer was tackled and held down on the ground while the drummer took three solid shots right at the singer’s mouth. Everything about them looked like love-and-peace-and-groovy-vibes, but after the drummer had badly bloodied his bandmate’s mouth, he uttered the ultimate betrayal of the 60’s ethic with the words, “Yeah, I believe in peace and love, but this guy’s a fucking asshole.” So for me the 60’s ended that day.

Charlie Musselwhite was hanging out near all this affray, wearing sunglasses and drinking a mixture of cognac and Coke (He is still around, but has been sober since 1987). Like all of us, he was disappointed in the turnout, but not enough to bail on the gig. He may have even taken a freebie, since we told him of how little was available to pay, and his only response, in his Mississippi accent, was “Well look, Ah gotta pay muh boys.” As for the chaos going on a few feet away from us, his only remark was, “Ah’ve seen worse.” For someone only 26 years old at the time who looked considerably older, his attitude was that of a travelled veteran. He and his band put on a wonderful show, and it momentarily took my mind off the financial bath we were taking, not to mention the horrible example set by the openers.

Musselwhite is still performing at age 76, and has made close to 40 albums over the years. The Bodega was around until 1982, and Rick & Ruby even played it once. We never heard anything more about the opening band, maybe that was their last gig after all that brouhaha. Their name was probably the greatest misnomer: GOOD CLEAN FUN!

April 15th, 2021



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