Music... A lifelong Obsession... A Memoir...
Previously written : 9/14/12
Music has been the driving force for many if not most of my decisions. As the late great guitarist Michael Bloomfield said. “ it is the soundtrack of our life.” I built a life around musicians and have met many . Heroes, Shamans, Charlatans..you name it.. The power of music has no single measure. It can be the power of memory via a song of your youth or the power of raw emotion when you hear something new. Music is physical and meta- physical. The harmony of the spheres, going back to Pythagoras of ancient Greece.
The planets in motion creating a chord that is the harmonic vibration upon which we live. And you thought I was going to wax poetic over three chord rock and roll. Don’t worry we’ll get there.
Before performing The Bargain with The Who at Madison Square Garden about 15 years ago Pete Townsend reflected on the spiritual impact of music. I did not record his comments so I will paraphrase : There was a time when we gathered in Cathedrals to hear music and most music was commissioned by the church. Looking around to the Garden audience he reflected ..” it looks like these places have become our Cathedrals.” The comment was not that far from John Lennon’s famous 1966 observation that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Blasphemy or truth, why do we want to believe in musicians. To find a kindred spirit ? A place to belong? Do they really know any more than you or I? … or could it be that they just put those thoughts and emotions into a context .
Charles Manson used The Beatles’ Helter Skelter as his family anthem for mass murder. This certainly was not the intent of Lennon and McCartney but they unleashed the raw power of an idea. Once the idea is released the composer relinquishes control of the context. We take music with us everywhere we go. So let my journey begin….
My father bought me my first 6 transistor portable radio in 1960 when I was 10 years old. I would carry this little plastic box, slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes to the playground on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn where I played handball. My favorite station was WMCA not the super popular WABC. This would foreshadow a lifelong obsession to be the first to hear something new. An obsession that I must admit has waned as I reach a point where I can no longer relate to the problems of teens..or that my memory ..to quote McCartney is almost full.
The first thing to capture my imagination was the melody. The second was the voice. The guitar would not captivate me for a few more years. There was one guitar instrumental in the early 60’s titled Apache by Jorgen Ingman . A haunting melody with effects that seem to meet in the place where the styles of Les Paul and Jeff Beck meet. This captivated me as well as Strangers on The Shore , a clarinet instrumental by Mr. Acker Bilk .Still one of the greatest melancholy melodies of all time. I can reach a state of catatonia immersed in this song. I guess that would not make it great driving music. Then came the voices Sam Cooke , Dion , Ray Charles. These voices had a life form all their own. I wanted to sing like them. Eventually I would muster the courage to try ..and sometimes succeed.
My 8th grade year was fraught with major changes every 12 weeks. I was Bar Mitzvah in September, JFK was assassinated in November, The Beatles arrived on Ed Sullivan in February and my family moved from Brooklyn to The Bronx in April. Suddenly I was a teenager. Suddenly we were all growing our hair. I must admit that I wish I had the courage to pick up a guitar at 13 ..but I did not until nearly 17 and have never been a very disciplined student of anything mathematical. .. The first band I was ever in was at sleep away camp in 1965..Camp Maddah in Chester New Jersey…A camp that was forced to adapt Alan Sherman’s Hello Mudduh as its theme song. I was in a band at 14. Got to play bongos and sing The Yardbirds For Your Love and Herman’s Hermit’s Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter. Mike Morganbesser taught me Beatle harmonies. He could nail that slightly flat tone that Lennon achieved and I was hooked on singing harmony. The Byrds Tambourine Man , a pure velvet experience. To this day I try to identify David Crosby’s voice and it is the invisible magic thread in the harmony that holds the fabric together.
My parents both sang my mother sang the popular songs of the early 50s in the kitchen Dinah Shore and Doris Day. My father had a resonant baritone that could capture Nat Cole. He did not have any appreciation for rock and roll. “ You call that music?!”…. My older brother had more taste for show tunes and folk music. He was also a strong singer having done Sky Masterson in the 1959 production of Guys and Dolls at Wingate High School in Brooklyn. These three people that I was living with could not understand what the hell Little Richard was screaming about…but I heard it loud and clear.
My first job in the music business was at The Sam Goody store at Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers in the spring of 1967. I would take the #20 bus up from the Bronx. There I met Mike Winfield. The first “real” musician I ever met. Mike spoke in a be bop hipster cadence. He ran the jazz and blues section and he was my mentor. He was also the bass player in a band called The Colwell Winfield Blues Band who would record an album for Verve Records, move to Woodstock and have half the band stolen by Van Morrison for his Moondance Band. Mike invited me backstage to The Café Au Go Go on Bleeker Street. This was my first backstage experience. All I can remember was a tiny room..and stacks of boxes and kitchen garbage just a few feet away. The illusion of the luxury of show business was broken that night. Mike taught me about Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and on and on. He opened this magical world to me and when he left I became the manager of the blues department at the age of 17. Kids would come in looking for the new Cream album and I would turn them on to Buddy Guy or Michael Bloomfield. My fate was sealed in the summer of love 1967.
This was also the time that my record collecting began in earnest. I was never able to keep an accurate account but I know that my collection of albums exceeded 10,000 at some point. Albums are heavy . hey weigh about a half pound each in the cardboard sleeve. So moving tonnage takes fortitude. So did stocking shelves at Sam Goodies. I remember having to take apart the top 40 wall the morning that The Beatles magical Mystery Tour album was released. I filled every slot on that wall with the slightly heavier gatefold album cover. Schlepping the boxes up from the basement. Maybe 500 copies. On display at 10am Saturday when we opened. Gone by 2pm. THAT was what a new Beatles record was like; and this was a record featuring numerous singles that had been around for months.
Collecting albums became a passion. I have had custom furniture made to handle the tonnage..and finally I pay $60 a month to store thousands of lps that I do not look at. Having been in radio since 1976 I must admit that thousands of my albums are radio comps..but there have been two major changes in music storage over the past quarter century. First , the compact disc gave us pristine digital highs ( albeit with slightly artificial lows). The cd weighed a fraction of an album and took up a fraction of the space.
My album collection was converted to cd over the years beginning in 82 and then the next step in the evolution. The i-tunes I-pod revolution of the 21rst century. I am on my second i-pod carrying around a devise in my pocket the size of a pack of Luckies that has 18,000 songs on it. My record and cd collections have survived two moves..but they are no longer alphabetical. So what I find at this point is almost accidental. I must admit to the convenience of the i-pod and bose box…and there my alphabet is in tact.
The 12 inch album format represents more than the music. It represents some of the most expressive art of the second half of the 20th century. I have an entire wall dedicated to forty framed album covers which I occasionally change. The idea of browsing through records in a store has become an arcane anomaly . Poughkeepsie NY has a fabulous collectors store in Darkside Records. The trick to a great record store is the lack of predictability. You never know what you’ll hear. I spent quite few years working in record stores. In 1970 -72 I was assistant manager of the Book and Record chain store in New Paltz NY. I got to talk music with customers all day long and turn them on to new music.
Then in late 74 I came back to New Paltz after 2 years in NYC. I was second in command at an independent store called The Spindle Spot. I nearly partnered with the owner Stu Johnstone but opted instead to form a band booking agency with Stu, and my old freshman roomy and friend Roger Barnes. Even then I feared the independent record store was in trouble. The Spindle Spot made money on used records. This created an endless shift of parameters to measure the value of an album. The condition of the vinyl the rarity of the artwork etc. When Bruce Springsteen released Born To Run in 75 we could buy the album wholesale at $3.52 ..while Barkers Department store up the road was selling the album retail as a loss leader at $ 3.49. It was obvious that owning an independent record store was not for me.
Stu, Roger and I were Sunrise Booking with bands for all occasions. I got to meet Lena at Café Lena in Saratoga. One of the first people to give Bob Dylan a break. I got to really know Ron Merians owner and raconteur of the Joyous lake in Woodstock, a legendary music club, well into the 70s..Ron... A Brooklyn jew was the embodiment of Woodstock both before and after the concert. When Ron died in the 1980’s I lit a candle right behind Michael Lang the man who would put Woodstock on the cosmic map. I also got to know the late Larry Plover owner of The Last Chance Saloon in Poughkeepsie. Larry and that room would change my life in more ways than I could have imagined. Larry introduced me to Rob Dyson in 1976 and that led to my career in radio advertising .
Over the years wherever I travel and find myself in a shopping district I am the family member who gets parked in the music collectors store. A few years ago I blogged a eulogy for Jack Cohen which I include here:
In Memorium : Jack Goldberg Last of The Record Retailers
1-09-10
By Stan Beinstein
Jack Goldberg died this week at the age of 66. I did not see him often. I did not know him well, but we understood each other to the core. Jack owned two record collector stores. Rhythms Of Woodstock and Jack’s Rhythms of New Paltz. The Woodstock store closed several years ago and that was the signpost for me that everything had changed. Woodstock no longer had a record store. Part of the adventure of shopping at Rhythms of Woodstock was that you could not only pick up something rare, you could pick up something dropped off by the artist. Be it John Herald or John Sebastian, Artie Traum , John Platania or Eric Andersen. You could also talk music; any kind of music.
In John Barry’s news item / obituary in the Poughkeepsie Journal (1-6-2010) Barry quotes John Lefsky who recently took over Rhythms of New Paltz .Lefsky said in memory of Goldberg : “ turn off the lousy radio station or TV. Put on The Replacements , Doug Sahm, John Coltrane.” ….
As I read this I was deeply saddened and cut to the quick. I am the advertisng sales mananger of one of those “ lousy “ radio stations. WDST / Radio Woodstock, and eventhough I believe my station is better than most I understood John Lefsky’s frustration.
I began my career in music a few months shy of 17. It was the Summer Of Love 1967. I would take the #20 bus from Jerome Avenue in The Bronx to the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers where I worked at Sam Goody’s. One of my slightly older co- workers taught me all about jazz and blues and I soaked it up like a sponge. His name was Mike Winfield , one of the most amiable and giving human beings on the planet. He talked in a be bop cadence that I had only witnessed in movies.
Mike and I only had a few months together. He was a bass player and he was trying to launch a jazz/ rock band. I remember the two of us dissecting The Electric Flag. Mike’s baritone “ yeah man.. “ as we listened to Harvey Brooks’ bass on Killing Floor. Mike would leave Sam Goody’s after a few months. His band,.. The Colwell Winfield Blues Band prepared to launch on Verve Forecast records. The same label as The Blues Project. I remember being invited backstage at The Café Au Go Go on Bleeker St in Greenwich Village. This was the club that housed the NYC premier of Cream and The Dead. A low ceiling basement with no more than 150 seats owned by Howard Solomon . They served no liquor just overpriced egg creams and ice cream sodas because their clientele had become teens listening to these emerging new sounds. Mike Winfield and Bill Colwell would move the band to Woodstock, where Van Morrison would take half the band to become his Moondance band. Mike subsequently spent years playing bass in society bands at The Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz and building houses.
We never crossed paths in Woodstock when I came to work there six years ago. A few years back Mike Winfield moved to Phoenix where his fellow bass player , the aforementioned Harvey Brooks lives. I would like to thank Michael Winfield for teaching me how to talk to customers about music. He could make anyone feel comfortable, from a know nothing to a know it all. He taught me about Muddy, and Wolf and Coltrane and Miles, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and so much more. As I stocked the shelves with Cream’s Wheels Of Fire I was getting an education on the precursors Willie Dixon and Freddie King.
After Mike Winfield left Sam Goodys for fame and fortune I became the manager of the blues department. All 6 bins of it .Room for about 50 titles. If a kid like Eric Clapton with John Mayall I made him listen to Freddie King. If a kid liked Paul Butterfield I made him listen to Junior Wells or Little Walter. actually met Sam Goody once ( ne: Goodman). We were all on our best behavior as he visited the Yonkers store and we all shook his hand.
It was at that same store that I made my stand for Jimi Hendrix. The word was out on this incredible album …Are You Experienced … The Saturday morning that it came in I opened a copy without asking permission and put it on the portable Webcor stereo in the front of the store . I then made sure that the speakers were separated by at least 8 feet ( they usually sat four feet apart). Stereo was still new Sgt. Pepper was ringing in our heads. From the first notes of Purple Haze I was inside the music. Unbeknownst to me, the classical manager makes a B- line for the store manager and has “ that crap” taken off. I told the store manager that this album was important and being played today in its entirety…if I have to wait until the end of the day. I jeopardized my job and got my way later in the afternoon when the store was crowded with young people.
That’s where I understand John Lefsky’s frustration with radio. In a record store you play music for people and you look at their faces and you wait for customers to say. “what is that?” ( in a variety of tones. ) The more independent the store the more likely to experience esoteric music. Sam Goody’s was not the place for esoterica. Many years ago I told Eddie Kramer how I had stuck up for Jimi in that store. Eddie was impressed. He was the engineer on that album and so many more classics. My copy of that album is framed and autographed by Eddie Kramer.
Throughout my college years in New Paltz I worked at The Book and Record Store. It was a chain of about 8 stores throughout the Hudson Valley run by Lou Kustas of Poughkeepsie and his brother. Lou was a quiet man with a taste for classical music and his shops were big on gifts , cards, and books..so we had to be judicious in our musical choices..but we had more leverage in the New Paltz store with all the college kids. My customers included the late Dr. William Abruzzi. Dr. Bill was the head Dr. at the original Woodstock Festival. He was also the head Dr. at the infirmary at New Paltz . In those “heady” days Dr.Bill started a “ freak out” center where people having bad acid trips could be safely brought by their friends and calmed down and observed. Working from the theory that there could be three basic reasons for a bad trip. Bad drug, bad people, bad place. Bad drug is the hardest to determine. You could never be quite sure what kind of poison went into the manufacture…but bad people and bad place could be remedied with time and patience. I turned Dr. Bill onto Frank Zappa at The Book and Record. It was the Flo and Eddie period and he loved it. He would inquire about all kinds of music after that and his tastes were quite broad..jazz to classical to rock. A common mix today but odd then. The Book and Record was still not a place where anything goes on the turntable. That would come later.
After graduation and a couple of years on Madison Avenue buying TV time for Ivory Soap , I returned to New Paltz in the fall of 1974 to find a new establishment. The Spindle Spot in the middle of Main St. across from St Blaise Bar. Stu Johnstone had discovered the market for used albums. I started to work with Stu. We set up a band booking agency with my old room mate Roger Barnes and I moved into the store hell bent for a partnership. The “ used” record business had my attention. First you scrutinized the album for scratches then you made an offer based on both condition and your judegment of sellability . You could make more on used albums than on new ones. If you gave someone a $1.25 in store credit ..or..$1.00 in cash for an album that you could sell for $2.00 you were better off than buying new merchandise for $3.25 and retailing it for $3.95 .
We knew the handwriting was on the wall for new albums when Springsteen’s Born To Run came out in 1975. With that album our wholesale price from the “one stop” ( distributor) in Philly went up to from $3.25 to $3.52 and Barker’s Department Store up the road was selling it retail as a loss leader for $3.49. Then I went into the store one day and saw this album cover of a dorky couple with their Bulldog. It was The Captain and Tenille . The “ one stop” had insisted that this was going to be the biggest seller of the year. I stared at that Captain’s stupid hat for weeks. This was not our clientele. Finally a guy bought it for his kid sisters birthday. To this day I find the song Love Will Keep Us Together both captivating and depressing. Luckily I never partnered with Stu in that store. I went my way across the river to Poughkeepsie. Where the late Larry Plover, proprietor of The Last Chance Saloon would change my life and help me get into radio.
Years later I would shop with Jack Greenberg at both of his stores periodically. I knew he had no money to advertise. I would stop to just talk music. I remember when CD s were new and there were two artists that I was passionately seeking on disc, Fred Neil and Moby Grape. We talked about different music, recordings, performances all aspects of music. I told Jack about the store in New Paltz that was halfway up the block on the same side of the street years earlier. At one point I didn’t see Jack for nearly a year. If I dropped in one store he would be in the other, …and when I did finally see him he said.. “got some Fred Neil for you!” …That’s what I mean about a record store man..he knew his customers… and you NEVER knew what you were going to hear when you went in there. The magic of was always the lack of predictability. Charles Mingus? The Replacements? Dave Van Ronk?
There are precious few stores left like that. You’ll find Bleeker Bob’s on W. 4th st. in the village. I remember when this long narrow store was the Night Owl Café which launched the career of the Lovin Spoonful. I make it my business to buy something there when I’m in the village. If you happen upon one please buy something. Now that my kids are grown, family trips to the mall are less frequent. I still get left at Best Buy ..but now music and movies are reduced to a few short rows….and there are only so many phones I can look at. Although it is gratifying to see a shelf of contemporary vinyl.
Music has been reduced to the intellectual property….just the music… no package..no library… same with movies… Call me old fashioned or crazy ( actually you CAN be both), but I have thousands of albums and I don’t even have a working turntable. I exhibit them in frames. I have 12,000 songs downloaded to my ipod. Yes I know.. it’s shameful… but I still buy discs and download them.
I am once again brought back to Sam Goodys 1967 -68 . When a box of 50 albums could break your back weighing in at about 30 pounds. Hauling a stack of cds is certainly a lot easier. I remember when The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour came out and I had to take 40 vinyl album titles off the wall in bins that were 10 deep each. Then replace them ALL with this one Beatles album..just to watch it sell out in a day. I remember Dylan’s return after a year and a half in seclusion with John Wesley Harding and the debates that would ensue in front of that album.. ( “ is that his band on the cover?.... no.. they are a tribe of Indians)…
About seven years ago I was in a collectors store in Great Barrington Mass. The owner behind the counter was about my age as I listened to college kids debate about the virtues of various artists. Loving the debate but being unfamiliar with much of the content I took my purchase to the register and told the proprietor: “ I come from a planet where MOBY is Grape and BECK is Jeff.” … We both laughed …. Yes John…A record store CAN do things that no single radio station can do….
I am grateful for my years in the record store both as an employee and patron. I’m still friendly with two men whom I met as boyhood customers at Sam Goodys over 40 years ago. Paul Tesoro of Central Hudson Gas and Electric and Richie Kaplan of Max’s On main in Beacon NY. I believe that music is to be shared. I was cautious about all the excitement over the Sony Walkman 30 years ago. Music was becoming a solitary experience…. I got my first 6 transistor radio in 1960… bopping around as Dion sang the Wanderer, sharing the tune with anybody within ten feet. The ipod poses the same threat although there are some pretty good docking stations from Bose that bring back the shared experience.
Go into a local independent record store if you can find one…make a request and buy something even if it’s a smarmy Jack Black kind of kid behind the counter . So here’s to the independent stores on Fordham Rd. in The Bronx. Cousins ..and The Spinning Disc where you could ALWAYS find hipper stuff than at Alexander’s …but more importantly you could find people to talk about the music with.
Thank you Jack Goldberg for remembering how much Fred Neil meant to me.
Playing music vs. listening. I have found great satisfaction in both. As I said early on I have always been a poor math student and have never mastered the study of music theory or how to read. I am an ear musician and a feel musician. I can handle some rhythm guitar.. I am a pretty good singer… and I can be a really good Harp player when my lungs and lips cooperate. As a history student I didn’t realize that I was actually becoming a musical historian. I have mixed well with musicians. I observe how they are put together. What may have started as a hobby to pick up chicks at 16 somehow became a career. Sometimes that career has led them to work in Holiday Inns and at Bar Mitzvahs ..and sometimes the ultimate goal of success has turned them into gypsies who see home every 4 months. To paraphrase the late great jazz saxophonist ,Rahsaan Roland Kirk who I saw at The Village Vanguard numerous times ..: “ a musician has to live the life of the gypsy to make it. There could be the most talented cat in the world living down the street next door to the carpenter or the lawyer but his neighbors will likely say…he’s ok..he’s a local cat…. Wherein when you blow into town once a year.. you are exotic..you are a big deal.. and that is the curse of road life. A road musician does not sit down to dinner with his family every night.”…
Rahsaan was a brilliant blind saxophonist who had mastered a method of circular breathing wherein he could solo for 3 or 4 minutes and appear that he had never taken a breath. Live in the audience it was always an incredible thing to view. One night I was at The Vanguard with my buddy Barry Schulman sitting ringside… Rahsaan loved to brag and claimed that if anyone could breathe as long as him he would take them to the bar then take them to Hollywood to meet their favorite movie star….Being a blues harp player with a good pair of lungs…and at the time in a band called The International Roastbeevery wherein we did everything from the Dead to swing I was coaxed by Barry and found myself onstage with Rahsaan. He instructed his percussionist to hit me in the back of the head when I ran out of breath with his oversized Cabassa shaker. I called Honeysuckle Rose..Rahsaan said ..you do what you like ..I’ll do what I like… I started to scat and must have lasted about two minutes. Got bopped on the head . Got my token round of applause.
Finished my entire beer and had a cigarette ( remember smoking in jazz clubs) , and Rahsaan still hadn’t finished his solo.
I saw Rahsaan put three saxophones in his mouth plus a nose flute and play the entire horn chart of Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll by himself . I saw Rahsaan at Carnegie Hall as part of Charles Mingus’ sax summit along with John Handy, Hamiett Bluitt, and Clifford Jordan . I saw Handy lead the blind Rahsaan to the very edge of the garden stage for his solo a full five feet in front of the microphone. Rahsaan swayed the sax back and forth like an elephant as he figured out where the microphone was based on the changes his motion created in the sound of the room. That session is available on Atlantic records Mingus at Carnegie Hall 75.
A few years later my good friend Ron Merians of The Joyous Lake in Woodstock would set me up with my most memorable radio interview. Charles Mingus. When Ming entered the studio of WPDH in Poughkeepsie that snowy Dec. 76 night he moved slowly to a large plant, put his fingers in the soil, sifted out some rocks and ate the soil. After this ritual he was ready to be introduced to me. I could not help but think that he had just eaten dirt as a symbol of our interview. I was terrified. I had 90 minutes alone in a production studio to record an interview. Just the two of us in this closet sized production studio designed for commercial voice overs.
I asked Mingus about the electric bass. He told me that the Fender company tried to get him to play one in the early 50s but he just ripped the strings off. I asked him about the electric guitar and he went on about how the voicings were to synthetic for him. A musician creates a relationship with his instrument whether it is his mouthpiece or his fingers that do the talking and Ming was not big on artificial voicings. He di say that Tal Farlow was his favorite electric guitarist. Tal was a brilliant musician who put his career on hold for many years to paint houses in New Jersey and was finally recognized late in life. Tal used a minimum of sound reinforcement.
During my interview I asked Ming to listen to electric guitar master Jeff Beck’s version of his classic blues standard Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. He closed his eyes and went deeply into the arrangement. When it was over he sat silently with his eyes closed and his head down. I was awaiting a tirade instead he made it clear that Jeff Beck had nailed his composition. Like in my record store days I was very proud that I had turned someone on to new music…but this was Charles Mingus !...
One of my great losses over the years was the tape of that interview. A year later in 1977 Mingus would release his last album . Three or Four Shades of Blue ,…and on that album would appear not one but three guitarists. Phillip Catherine, John Scofield and Larry Coryell along with a new version of Porkpie. Years later as I became friends with Larry Coryell’s son Murali I got to tell him this story and he recorded an outstanding version with his father.
My dear friend and bass player Joe Lomoriello told me just this week that I have an affinity for bass players which reminds me of the day that I babysat Jaco Pastorious . Pete Fancese was the owner of The Last Chance in Poughkeepsie during the early 1980’s . Some less than reputable booker had given him a great double bill of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Jaco Pastorious. The problem was that nether act new that the other was on the bill that night. Mayall was the billed headliner. Jaco the opener. At 4pm Pete calls me at the radio station and says..can you take Jaco down to Noah’s Ark ( a restaurant / bar that he owned ) to cool his heels after finding out. Jaco was a notorious drinker. The bar was empty as I bellied up with Jaco and Katy the bartender says..” hey Stan going to see Mayall tonite.?” The scene played right out of Cheers. .Jaco and I began to knock back bourbons straight up. Lesson One: never go toe to toe with a legend. I had seen Jaco twice before ..once as a Florida teen with Wayne Cochran and The CC Riders ( although I didn’t know who he was at the time he left an impression ) and once with Weather Report. Jaco had also ironically been Joni Mitchell’s muse. He was the backbone of my wife Rosalie’s favorite album Hejira. Now Ro was running the office at the Chance while I babysat the opener who thought he was the headliner. Jaco had lived with Joni. I asked about her . His comment: “ The woman never shuts up !!! “… I was on thin ice and we had already consumed more bourbon than 10 men should have. I don’t know how I drove up the hill…and more importantly I don’t know how he hit the stage that evening. I saw him kick his right leg up in the air during a bass solo and wind up on his ass without stopping the solo. Jaco was beat to death just a few years later for having a big mouth in a bar in his hometown of ft. Lauderdale.
I met Joni Mitchell in 1968. She was the opener for Blood Sweat and Tears at Hunter College in NYC. My High School girlfriend Jill Bogard went there and she got me backstage as I represented the freshman class at Suny New Paltz. I met a booking agent from Premier Talent. He introduced me to Joni and David Clayton Thomas after the show. I was totally taken with this waif like girl. I was offered a package of Joni and BS&T for $3,500 ..$500 for Joni and $3,000 for BS & T.. this was before any of them had hits. My concert committee rejected the idea when I got home. A year later they would pay $20,000 for BS &T and never get Joni.
I think back to the prices of talent in those days Feb 1970 in the gym at New Paltz the triple bill of Chicago Chuck Berry and Seals and Crofts for $5,000 in talent costs $3,500 Chicago $1,000 Chuck Berry $500 Seals and Crofts. Our ultimate college coup was The Who in October of 1969. We were sold the Who in April before the rock opera Tommy ( I could only envision Peter Sellers) was released. The asked the outrageous price of $7,500 . By the end of the semester Pinball Wizard was everywhere The WHO ..a band that I had loved for 4 years was finally top of the pops..but that probably meant that we would lose our Oct. date. ..and then came August and Woodstock..Now I was sure that we would lose our October date..but as fate would have it they fulfilled our date . I wish I was smart enough to carry a camera that day. I was in charge of security. The gym could safely handle 2,000 people but we had sold 3,000 tickets.
The entire road crew was under the influence of the same psychedelic and we were loopy. At the end of the performance rather than destroy a guitar, Moon jumper over his drums and tackled Daltry saying ..” You bloody bastard I can’t work with you anymore.!” I stood not ten feet away as they wrestled their way behind the drums and fell off the rather low stage at the feet of Gerry Schneider who was doing his job guarding his isolated backstage post. I raced around the side of the backstage to see Moon and Daltry laughing hysterically at Gerry’s feet. They stood up and as tho rehearsed each grabbed one of his elbows as Gerry went stiff legged they dragged him over to me stood him up and asked me to take care of him.
Then as Daltry turned around I was whipped nicely by his famous Woodstock fringed vest.
Synchronicity …my first wife Rosalie got into that Who show by handcrafting a counterfeit ticket. The girl was some artist . I would not meet her for another five years. Ironically I was in charge of security the night she snuck in. The recording tapes went missing that night and the Who’s road manager went nuts. They were recording every show on that tour and finally chose Live at Leeds to release. I have a house bootleg of that night ..but would love to hear the board tape.