Somebody to Love? Read online

  After hearing Mick's thoughts on how a concert of this kind might be set up, Paul and I reassured Mick that “our people” would stay in touch with “his people.” And we left feeling like we'd just had a meeting with a very young art patron, rather than the crown prince of British hedonism. We thought, Hey, if Mick is this together, maybe this thing can work.

  Wrong.

  We'd wanted to hold the concert in Golden Gate Park, but two days before it was supposed to happen, the city of San Francisco said no to the park permit. Sears Point raceway was the next option, but the owners wanted one hundred thousand dollars in escrow from The Stones. Understandably, Jagger said no. Finally, we found Altamont. Located about forty minutes outside San Francisco, Altamont was an ugly, brown, flat, open expanse of land with no tree cover and no personality. Definitely not a pastoral setting. And obtaining a permit for even that was a hassle. We finally got it, but as Paul later reminded me, “We took Altamont out of desperation.”

  The concert was scheduled on what turned out to be a weird, gray-red dusty day in the muggy dead-grass flatland in the middle of nowhere. The sun never came out. Granted, it rained through most of Woodstock, but this dullness was worse than rain. I wore a pair of blue pants and a blue jacket—nothing striking, no princess posing. This time, I settled for looking like just another guy in the band because the anticipation of another glorious event had been flattened by the constant hassles.

  Flying in from Florida after doing a gig the night before, we'd had no sleep, so we were far more concerned with keeping our energy up long enough to make it through our set than with how we looked. There were a couple of trailers near the stage serving as overloaded holding pens for any and all bands, crew, managers, and Hell's Angels, who were acting as security. With a mass of people shuffling around, trying to organize either themselves or some aspect of the production, the atmosphere was closer to traffic at rush hour than an outdoor celebration.

  I later told an interviewer, “Woodstock was unruly, but Altamont was reigning chaos.” The Hell's Angels were roaring drunk and ready to ignite even before the concert started. Jefferson Airplane went on second, after The Flying Burrito Brothers, and in the middle of the set, my contact-lens-less eyes could see a blurry scramble over on stage left where Marty usually stood. I walked to the drum riser to ask Spencer what was going on, but he just kept playing with a terrified look on his face. Then I walked toward Marty, but he wasn't there. After jumping off the stage to help some poor guy who was being pummeled by the Hell's Angels, he'd apparently made a big mistake by yelling “Fuck you!” at one of the bikers.

  “Nobody says ‘Fuck you!’ to a Hell's Angel,” the drunken biker shot back.

  “Fuck you!” Marty repeated, without losing a beat.

  Our crew gathered around Marty and for some reason, the “Angel” backed off and later apologized. But the problems didn't end there. Mick Jagger, dressed in a black satin cape, was singing “Sympathy for the Devil” when life imitated art and another fight broke out. Toward the end of The Stones' set we left by helicopter, and my enduring memory of Altamont is Paul's line when we looked down at the audience near the stage. “It looks like someone is being beaten to death,” he said. He was right—in the hospital the man died of inflicted wounds.

  Ralph Gleason, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, reported, “In twenty-four hours, we created all the problems of our society in one place: congestion, violence, and dehumanization. The name of the game is money, power, and ego.”

  24

  Ladies (and Gentlemen) of the Canyon

  By 1967, Che Guevara had been assassinated, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the overwhelming hit of the summer, and our album, Surrealistic Pillow, had made it to No. 3 on the Billboard charts. We started doing promotional TV shows, but the speakers on home TV sets weren't built to carry the new high-volume sounds we were making. Consequently, the music sounded trapped and “tinny.” We wanted people to hear the real sound of full-spectrum electric rock, not a watered-down jumble of small-speaker crackle.

  But radio and TV talk shows help sell records—“so get out there and market that stuff!”

  In the dressing room at The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, I'd never seen so much makeup—everything from black to white and all the shades in between. I was already white, so piling on more white grease paint would have been redundant. But black—that's the right color for singing “White Rabbit,” I thought. I wasn't interested in some funny Al Jolson look, though. I wanted to get it as real as possible. The trouble was that my features were angular and not right for the part, so apparently none of the viewers even noticed that I was in special makeup. Since nobody wrote in to the show and said, “What the hell was that?” they must have thought I had on some jet black tanning lotion or that the color on their TV sets had gone haywire. Maybe it was just getting harder to shock the couch potatoes.

  When we were living in L.A., doing various TV shows, playing live, and recording our new music, we spent about half our time up in Laurel Canyon. Musicians such as Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Stephen Stills, and David Crosby, as well as hundreds of others, had flocked to the canyon as a pastoral relief from the flatlands of Hollywood. The guys in the different bands would hop into an array of fast cars, and at night, usually fueled by cocaine, they'd race across Mulholland Drive on the way to friends' parties.

  Frank Zappa's house in the canyon, which I visited several times, looked exactly like a troll's kingdom. Fuzzy-haired women lounged in long antique dresses, and naked children ran to and fro while Frank sat behind piles of electronic equipment, discussing his latest ideas for orchestrating satirical hippie rock music. Never a druggie, Frank openly made fun of the very counterculture he was helping to sustain. While the San Francisco artists were creating posters with pictures of flowers, fair maidens, and placid Indian gurus, he was into something quite different. His first poster showed him with his pants down around his ankles, squatting on a toilet. Now that's my kind of tasteful commentary.

  If only I'd thought of it first.

  In those days I made a habit of putting on makeup, shaving my armpits and legs, and wearing dresses or skirts, but the language that came out of my low-end voice was a counterpoint to the refined image I might otherwise be projecting. As my mother so quaintly put it, I tended to talk “like a truck driver!”

  My parents' Edwardian background and their experience living through the Depression had produced certain criteria for social accceptance. My father had achieved financial success through hard work; my mother had dedicated her life to her family; and they exhibited neither Jewish nor Italian cultural stamping. Which means they lived by an ethic where you simply don't fly off the handle—ever! Hence, when I began “making it” as a rock star and engaging in outrageous behavior, they were seriously conflicted. My father's response to my newfound celebrity was almost nonexistent, while my mother let me know she liked some of the softer songs the group did, because that was how she liked to sing. Of course, none of the softer songs were mine, so basically my parents' reaction to my so-called success was divided between admiration for my financial accumulation and disgust for a lifestyle that was completely contrary to their sense of what was appropriate “for a lady.”

  A woman who did bow her head and blush, although she was very talented and self-reliant at the same time, was Joni Mitchell. She somehow managed to put it all together. When David Crosby took me to the studio where she was recording, Joni was sitting quietly in a chair between takes, singing a soft song for anybody who wanted to listen. When she was finished and David introduced us, she seemed so fragile, I thought she'd break into bunches of rose petals on the floor. That first impression was ultimately wrong—she is a strong woman. But, that first time we met, she seemed like the most sensitive person on the planet, and I couldn't bring myself to fuck up her serenity by being my usual sarcastic “truck driver” self. I saw her recently at a restaurant in L.A. and I was still too chicken-shit to deal
with someone who was musician enough to record with Charlie Mingus.

  Joni lived with Graham Nash in the canyon for a while. In fact, “Our House,” Graham's classic hit song, was written as an ode to the relationship he was having with Joni. But as we've all experienced, something changed and “the two cats in the yard” became one cat in town and the other cat in Wyoming. Spencer Dryden later told an interviewer that when I was in L.A., I was having an affair with Graham. I wish. I don't know what made Spencer say that; maybe he was reading my mind. Graham prefers them blonder and quieter.

  Too bad for me.

  I don't remember whose house it was, probably because I never saw the inside of it, but one night in Laurel Canyon, I drove up to some kind of party that was going on. Before I got out of the car, I saw Stephen Stills, standing out in front of the house by himself, and when I waved, he came over and got into my car to talk. Three hours later, this funny, talented man had poured out the sad story of his breakup with Judy Collins. It sounded like “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” had been the love of his life, and since it was rare to hear a man being that honest about how he felt, I was almost honored that he'd confided his feelings to me. I say “almost” because I was beginning to feel like I was the skinny substitute for “the sweet fat girl” who gets the sob stories instead of the heroes. But in my experience, men generally feel more comfortable telling any woman how much they hurt, rather than running the risk of seeming weak by showing sorrow in front of another man.

  Perhaps PBS (public television) was correct when they once called the sixties “the Age of Anxiety.” We all had a lot to be anxious about. Along with a deeper sensitivity emerging in both men and women, our parents just didn't get the ironic connection whenever three-hundred-pound Kate Smith did a loud, maudlin version of “God Bless America.” That was the perfect end of their era, a demonstration of “Yup, it's over. The fat lady has sung. “This was during a time when the garish tailfins and bloat of the fifties were prevalent in a country made rich from a world war.

  It was about a nation that needed to go on a diet, a nation that needed to get back in touch with its core.

  When the joke of it all was being exposed in art that reflected the depth of a soup can (tell it like it is, Andy Warhol), Laurel Canyon had its own particular form of budding artists: a group of girls who worked in plaster. These artists, known as the Plaster Casters, got their hands on more rocker dicks than the well-known groupie Pamela des Barres, or me or anybody else in the world for that matter. Touting their castes of rock star penises as a sincere artistic endeavor, the girls managed to lure more than a few willing subjects. No surprise there, of course—what bigegoed rock star wouldn't want his cock immortalized in soapstone?

  Although I wasn't there during any of the actual artistic endeavor, I imagine the procedure must have gone something like this:

  The girls (I have no idea exactly who they were), would get the rock star's dick in a comfortable position. That varied for each gentleman, who was offered his handjob of choice—serve yourself, or may we serve you? Next, they'd slap some clay on the erect body part, and after it had hardened into the desired shape (the clay, not the dick), they'd crack it open and take it off. While the rock star relaxed after his ordeal, they'd glue the mold back together, pour the plaster into the clay mold—and wait. Once the plaster had hardened into the container shape, veins and all, they'd break off the clay and there it was—a perfectly immortal plaster specimen.

  But I've never see one—have you? No knockoffs, no limited editions, and certainly no originals. The story about these dedicated female artists is so legendary, everybody has heard it or told it, but

  WHERE ARE THE DICKS?

  If you know of their whereabouts, please send them or any pertinent information to my editor, Rick Horgan, c/o Warner Books in New York.

  I wonder, will plaster rock star dicks eventually become valuable artifacts from an anxious age? Or will they just fetch a wry smile, be viewed as yet another item—like pet rocks and 3-D glasses—that earned its five minutes of fame?

  Hey, have you heard the one about the disappearing dicks?

  25

  Reruns

  We'd arrived in L.A. armed with the success of Surrealistic Pillow, while the increasing publicity touted Jefferson Airplane as being in the forefront of the new music scene. When it was time to record our next album, After Bathing at Baxter's, we rented the same mansion The Beatles had used during one of their stays in the Hollywood hills—a big, typical Southern California home with a pool and an underground bowling alley extravagance. The mansion housed our band members and their entourage for the entire six months it took to record the album. Unlike when we'd recorded previously, we were now awash in money, cars, parties with L.A. bands, and new fans hanging out at the studio and in the bedrooms.

  The sales of our records broadcast a message that was impossible not to hear: a whole lot of people understood what we were saying and what we meant. And a whole lot equaled success. Artistic success? Who was talking about art anymore? The discussion had moved to the bottom line—it was about continuity, the charts, the numbers.

  In 1968, RCA was paying for all our studio time (that was the policy then), so we could relax and get weird. Each member of our group developed his own piece of the puzzle in the ongoing quest not to become a rerun. Unavoidably, there was a tendency toward deliberate eccentricity. By the way, the title After Bathing at Baxter's was not a specific reference. It came to us quite spontaneously, out of the mouth of Gary Blackman, a poet friend of Marty's. Gary used to hang around a lot, and one day, he said, “Hey, why don't you name this album After Bathing at Baxter's?”

  Okay.

  During this time of excess, the various band members let most of the business details ride, complaining only occasionally to our mates, instead of taking the problem to the right source. Except Paul. He was the one who talked to the managers, producers, CEOs, agents, and record company toadies. He always showed up at the studio as early as I did, and his presence in his favorite flowing medieval cape would immediately change the atmosphere. Conversations would go from casual to “Look out, the principal's here,” though not in such a way that the familiar school routine was interrupted. With his military straight back and a pothead's colorful take on the world, Paul presented an intriguing paradox.

  At this point, he was becoming a power figure to me. He'd question every move the producers or the suits made, and even if his judgment wasn't always on the mark, at least someone was guarding whatever integrity we thought we had and wanted to preserve. Don't mistake me, he could be a major pain in the ass, but if he was on your side, the opposition was in deep shit. Romantically, he and I hadn't yet connected, but the union was closing in—the band probably saw it before we did.

  There wasn't much time to contemplate much of anything. As soon as we finished After Bathing at Baxter's, we immediately went on tour. We'd had offers to go to Europe based on the popularity of Surrealistic Pillow, but concert dates in America and the excessive time we'd spent recording Baxter's had held us up. As soon as we were free, we took about a week to buy some new underwear and then zipped over to “do” the continent, co-headlining with The Doors.

  In one of the Scandinavian countries, Airplane was offered the use of a big boat to cruise around a lake—a good opportunity to appreciate the scenery from the vantage point of about three hundred mics of acid per person. During the course of the day, we stopped the boat to explore a small island and swim around in the water. I was the only one left on the boat with Paul, who was sitting by himself, looking off into the distance. It was not one of those peaceful, contemplative moments. I could tell by the way I felt—jittery and distorted—that he might be experiencing the same point in the LSD high where things can get really peculiar. As much as for my own benefit as his, I went over and put my arms around him—but the extra feeling of sexual attraction was a surprise to me. The acid was clarifying some aspect of our friendship that I'd been previously unaware
of. After we traded comments on the strangeness of the drug, the beauty of the water, and so forth, the strangeness diminished and we resumed our separate paths for the rest of the day.

  Another country. Another night.

  “We're going to the red-light district, you wanna come?” the group asked me. Frankfurt had an area of prostitution that was more like a Gene Kelly set for An American in Paris than the usual sleazy appearance of hooker hangouts. There was a huge cobblestone courtyard surrounded by quaint two- or three-story apartment buildings. Men and women lounged around on the windowsills or walked around the ground floor area, showing themselves and waiting for a trick. As we were crossing between the front entrance and the large yard area, a girl came toward us screaming and yelling, threatening me with a knife. As if he was Errol Flynn, Paul whipped off his blue leather cape and swirled it in front of her like a bullfighter. I guess she thought I was infringing on her territory. We concluded that my presence was upsetting the status quo, and we went off to more hospitable nightlife.

  Now Paul had become both the strong and sensitive “leader” of the group and the mythic hero figure for Yours Truly. But still the relationship took only platonic forms.

  26

  Strawberry Fuck

  During that tour in Europe where we were co-headlining with The Doors (one night they'd open the sets, the next night it was Airplane), my most vivid memories are of Paul, but I also remember Jim Morrison.

  In London, the Doors/Airplane concerts took place in an old structure called the Round House. Located at the end of a railway line, the interior of the house had a floor with radiating tracks, and there was a huge turntable-type machine, originally used to turn the big locomotives around. It looked like some kind of gigantic record player made out of iron, and although the sound was cavernous, the atmosphere more than made up for it.