Jailbirds
We were now full throttle into the twenty-four-hour lifestyle that built or destroyed rock musicians. For a while Bill Graham was our manager, but after he'd booked us into three different cities in one day, we decided that his power-house management and our interest in having some time to rest or goof off were at terminal odds. Bill Thompson, who'd been our road manager, moved into the position of full-time manager, nurse, confidant, psychotherapist, and fellow freak.
Graham accepted our shift, and this preservation move probably saved our lives, because all the members of Jefferson Airplane are still alive, a rarity among the rock-and-roll groups of the sixties. Whether or not we could have made mounds of money with one of the L.A. or New York pros is now a moot point. Bill Thompson was, and is, a friend, who stayed with us through every strange development that occurred in the band over a period of thirty years. In fact, he still negotiates contracts and conducts legal business for the Airplane/Starship entities, with varying degrees of appreciation from the band members.
There were no big audiences or predictable venues then, as is the current situation with rock tours, so some of our early jobs were truly strange. We played in places where the people didn't even know who or what we were. On any given evening in the Midwest, you could find us warming up in a country club where we were viewed as base entertainment right up there next to a bearded lady. The audience of rich hog farmers would just stand there with their mouths open, wondering if we might explode or turn inside out—or engage in some other hideous act that would really get them off. You've got to remember, the gap between “straight” and “freak” was so wide then, we weren't even considered human in some southern states.
One bust occurred in New Orleans, which, compared to the rest of the South, was actually quite loose. There was flagrant drunkenness, entertaining misuse of political power (is that redundant?), and the ever-expanding population of musicians and freaks in the Crescent City. We checked into our hotel, and within a few minutes everybody, except me, gathered in Chick Casady's room. (Chick, Jack's brother, worked with the band taking care of the equipment.) I wanted to wash off the traveling first, before the fun started.
But the so-called fun took an unexpected turn. Refreshed from my shower, I strolled down the hallway and knocked on Chick's door, expecting to find my comrades hanging out, getting high, making snide remarks at the TV, talking about amplifiers, and getting ready to check out the local clubs—as usual. But no one answered. Someone in the crew came by and told me the guys were all in jail. Apparently, they'd wedged towels beneath the door—their usual modus operandi—but the scent of pot had somehow penetrated and wafted into a security guard's nostrils. Everybody in the room had been arrested for drug possession and taken to the local precinct.
My concern for hygiene had saved me; I was the only one who missed the Jazz City slammer. The next night, after Thompson managed to get everybody out, fifteen hundred high school students dressed in classic prom gear came to hear the “jailbirds” from San Francisco do “acid rock.”
Did they know what it was?
No.
Did they know it was okay to stand up and dance?
No.
They sat there instead, in polite clumps of corsages and stiff tuxedos, clapping for songs that encouraged the complete annihilation of every aspect of their constricted little lives up to and including that peculiar point in time. They could hardly help it; what did they know?
But dumb adults were another matter. Wealthy contributors to the established art museums would receive invitations to concerts that were put on by the “Friends of Culture,” or some other cloying title, where they could see radical new mishigas without having to leave their upper-class neighborhoods. The Whitney Museum, my case in point, was filled with lots of furs and diamonds one afternoon, while the patrons patiently waited to see the drug-addled psychedelic trend from the West Coast: Jefferson Airplane. Having been to Finch College, I knew this well-heeled crowd before I even saw them.
One of the newest electronic innovations was a cordless microphone, and the night of our Whitney Museum appearance was the first time I got to use and abuse this liberating device. Someone put it in my hand and informed me that it would likely carry from the top floor all the way down to the room where we'd be playing. I was fascinated and inspired, so in the elevator, on the way to the ground floor, I let the straights have a warm-up talk. Before the music began, before they could even see who was ragging on their ass, I spoke into the mike, “Hello, you fools. You got Rembrandts on the mantel and a Rolls in the garage, but your old man still wouldn't know a clitoris from a junk bond if you had the guts to show him your twat in the first place.”
I added other congenial remarks that made people just want to love me no matter what I did, following such a friendly introduction. I might add that none of the other band members were as prone to warming up audiences the way I was. They were musicians, while I was a perverse clown.
Was any of my outrageous behavior fueled by drugs? You betcha. Chemicals destroy inhibitions and basic body functions, if administered in the right proportions. Since I'm damned near sixty years old, I can now say with relative impunity the same kind of flippant shit I dished at the Whitney, but would I encourage that sort of “self-destructive” behavior in the nation's youth? Of course! We're overpopulated.
Back when LSD was circulating, I had to constantly look out for the invisible dosers. Since acid was tasteless, colorless, and effective in very small quantities, it was easy to slip someone a hit without their knowledge. Surreptitious dosing was not an activity in which I engaged, but if one of the guys set down his 7-Up bottle in the dressing room, the doser, usually a member of another band, might put a little acid on the bottle's lip. The next thing the thirst quencher knew, the walls were dripping green slime, he thought he was Napoleon, and it was time to go onstage. Since I've never liked soft drinks (easily accessible open containers), the dosers never got me, but an honest dose was had by all of us in Fargo, North Dakota.
We were backstage, in semidarkness, waiting to go on, and our road manager, Bill Laudner, brought out the usual clear plastic drug tray with dividers in it to separate one powder from another. One section held vitamins, while the others held, respectively, a nasal decongestant, crystal Methedrine, cocaine, LSD, and some popular headache remedy. We thought we were each taking a couple of snorts of cocaine, but due to the lack of lighting, the entire band made the mistake of honking up enough acid to make the whole night a complete joke.
About fifteen minutes into the set, I looked over at Marty and noticed that his face was decomposing. The drug was beginning to kick in, and we started giving each other goofy smiles that said, “That wasn't cocaine, was it?” The Fargodome added to the weirdness of the situation with its inverted saucer shape that positioned the audience up in the air and the performers down at the bottom. To the band, it was like being on an operating table in a surgical observation room.
I always loved Jack's bass sound, so during the beginning of his solo, when I was supposed to be playing the piano, I just stopped and turned around to face the speakers, not thinking about whether that abrupt move would mess up the continuity of the song. I'm sure each member of every sixties band has stories about drug silliness onstage, but fortunately, our audiences were usually as fucked up as we were, so they pleasantly went along with whatever was happening.
Those were the good old days.
Ah yes, children. Those were the times before everybody “became powerless and our lives became manageable.”
Before consistent togetherness became “codependent.”
Before black people started killing each other over “Who's got the music?”
Before white people discovered “politically correct.”
Before a pat on the butt became “sexual harassment.”
Before you couldn't fix your computerized life if your ass depended on it—Newsweek, June 2, 1997.
Of course, the “fabulous free psychedelic sixties and early seventies” were not all fun and games. Consider the following:
Young men were killing each other in a dipshit war in Vietnam.
Students were being shot to death at Kent State.
Cops were using clubs and tear gas on peace demonstrators.
Birmingham was trying to shut up black people by sending in dogs and fire hoses.
And our president, attorney general, and leading civil rights leader were all being struck by assassins' bullets.
The sixties were a time when people with electric guitars naively but nobly thought they could change the whole genetic code of aggression by writing a few good songs, and using volume to drown out the ever-present whistling arsenal.
So much for acid. It may have been illegal, but it never made me any enemies. Alcohol was the “fun” chemical that fueled most of my outbursts of congenial conversation, like the cordless mike incident at the Whitney Museum. That's the legal beverage that causes husbands and wives to kill each other, prisons to fill up to capacity, highway death rates to soar, six-figure missed work days, and self-inflicted hospital admissions. Without my use of alcohol, Marty Balin might not have said in an interview: “Grace? Did I sleep with her? I wouldn't even let her give me head.” God only knows what offensive behavior of mine he was reacting to. I can't remember, probably because of the alcohol. Without alcohol, I'd be richer by two million dollars that went to pay lawyer's fees. What an interesting ride it's been, folks.
I stayed away from heroin, not out of any moral or righteous decision; it just didn't look like much fun. The first person I saw nodding on the stuff was an excellent guitar player who'd come to the studio where we were recording, to visit and listen to us play. When I got there, anticipating meeting him, I found him sitting in a chair, head drooping to one side and drool trickling from his mouth. (I know you're wondering about who he was, but trust me, you wouldn't know his name even if I mentioned it.)
“What's wrong with him?” I asked one of the guys.
“He's a junkie. But he just had a fix and he'll be okay in a minute.”
“If he wants to sleep, why doesn't he go to bed?” I asked.
A grin was the answer.
I was interested in drugs as a means to enjoy or alter the waking state. I simply couldn't figure out why anyone would take the trouble to get the money, get the dealer, get all the paraphernalia, get sick, go into a coma—and then consider it an experience they'd want to repeat.