tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87433129036396282092024-03-18T20:44:18.628-07:00Gimme An FCountry Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-77124994511006767812011-03-05T17:21:00.000-08:002011-03-05T17:21:43.103-08:00The Berkeley String Quartet <br />
<h1> The Berkeley String Quartet</h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYv2zdPG0kmJFV-MvFeAzqB3nfUnq026j6fjugPEI2ADMUqik3ptS1exZvHECTgAAe4a3K2DrLE8pM6rsboqd-91VCygzntah0ePdihkX6LkyeK5zA04YQm4rmQbc15FXrZQyGg3o_do/s1600/bsq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYv2zdPG0kmJFV-MvFeAzqB3nfUnq026j6fjugPEI2ADMUqik3ptS1exZvHECTgAAe4a3K2DrLE8pM6rsboqd-91VCygzntah0ePdihkX6LkyeK5zA04YQm4rmQbc15FXrZQyGg3o_do/s320/bsq.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h1><span style="font-size: small;"> In the summer of 1965 I decided to drop out of Los Angeles State College and move to San Francisco to become a folk singer. I had joined the folk music club at LA State and started a magazine called ET TU which was to become RAG BABY MAGAZINE when I got to Berkeley. I recorded an LP with Blair Hardman titled GOODBYE BLUES after a song I wrote about leaving with the same title. We had ten copies made. I kept five and Blair kept five. We had played quite a bit together before that and were both members of the folk song club. Our playing included a trip to Pershing Square in downtown LA where we played for the homeless people hanging around there and ate at the Salvation Army. I remember they had salmon. I liked it. I imagined I was back on the road again like my father and Woody Guthrie. </span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: small;"> I was married to Kathe Ann Werum and we traveled together up to San Francisco. It was too big so we stayed with her uncle and aunt Larry and Virginia Horrowitz in Lafayette just outside of Berkeley. Larry Horrowitz told me I should go onto Get Chiaritto's Midnight Special radio show in Berkeley on KPFA radio. I did and fell in love with Berkeley. We moved there. I continued my </span> <span style="font-size: small;">magazine in Berkeley and renamed it Rag Baby Magazine. Then one day Ed Denson and Mike Beardslee and I did not have copy for the magazine so we recorded a talking issue on a seven inch vinyl and called it RAG BABY RECORDS. This was the first "I-Feel-Like I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" recording and we called the skiffle band that played Country Joe and The Fish. </span></h1> <span style="font-size: small;">Kathy and I got an upstairs flat on old Grove Street near the Black and White Liquor store at Ashby and Grove. The downstairs neighbor was Carl Shrager and Toby Lighthauser. They sang together. Carl played guitar and wrote songs. I started going to the Jabberwolk <a href="http://www.chickenonaunicycle.com/Jabberwock%20History.htm"></a> coffee house , and met Ed Denson, Bill Steele, and Bob Cooper. Ed Denson and I along with Michael Berdslee started <i>Rag Baby</i></span> magazine. Ed would later manage Country Joe and The Fish. Bill Steele made an album and wrote a song called "Garbage" that was sung by lots of people including Pete Seeger. Bill played washtub bass. Bob Cooper played 12-string guitar.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> The four of us formed the group the Berkeley String Quartet. We played the Drinking Gourd, the Coffee Gallery, and other venues in San Francisco. The photo was taken on Sproul Steps on the University of California, Berkeley campus. I don't remember who took the photo. At the left you can see my guitar case with collage all over it. Part of the collage is a headline saying "Kennedy Slain." That gives you a time frame. Also a centerfold from <i>Playboy</i> magazine. I am playing an F-hole Epiphone guitar that I bought from <a href="http://www.countryjoe.com/lundberg.htm">Jon Lundberg</a> of Lundberg�s guitars in Berkeley on Dwight Way where I worked and learned to repair guitars. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> A few years ago someone sent me CDs of these performances that he said were recorded in his living room back then. I do not remember his name nor do I remember recording it. But I am very thankful to him for the memories and bringing to life that old group sound. I post it here for you to enjoy. There was also years ago a live recording from the Drinking Gourd but I lost it somewhere down the line. </span><br />
<br />
<div align="RIGHT">--</div><img alt="" height="1" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/spacer.gif" width="10" /><br />
<h1> </h1><br />
<center><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Fact Sheet</b></span></center> <span style="font-size: small;">It started out to be a "jug band," but it isn't. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The four young men in the group were interested in traditional American music, but what they played together didn't emerge as a purely "traditional" sound; they had too much formal musical training, too much city background. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">On the other hand, they didn't end up forming another "slick" commercial folk group. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Instead, they produced something unclassifiable which they called the Berkeley String Quartet: four men playing guitars, banjos, an autoharp, a washtub bass, harmonicas, kazoos and odds and ends like washboards, stovepipes and salad spoons. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Their repertoire ranges from traditional American songs and tunes through popular songs of the twenties and thirties to contemporary folk and topical songs. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Their approaches to songs range from irreverence -- as in the performance of "Grandfather's Clock" to the tick-tock of a wooden spoon held across Joe McDonald's teeth -- to simplicity and sincerity -- as in the flowing rendition of Bob Dylan's "If Today Were Not an Endless Highway." </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Audiences in San Francisco Bay Area coffeehouses have learned that the group follows no pattern except unpredicability, but there are at Ieast two rules underlying the group's arrangements: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">One -- based on the fact that two members of the quartet have made extensive study of folklore and traditional music -- is that traditional material should be treated with respect. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The other -- a sort of echo ot Spike Jones -- is that music should be fun, both for the performers and the audience. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Why the Berkeley String Quartet? Because something about that famous city drew together four young men with widely divergent backgrounds. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Bob Cooper, whose suggestion to form a jug band gave birth to the group, came west from New York City where he had been immersed in folk music since the age of 14. He attended Hofstra University in Long Island and St. John's College in Anapolis, Md. In between, he went to sea, working his way around the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Europe. A devotee of old-time country music as played by performers like Jimmy Rogers and the Carter Family, he performs on guitar, 12 string guitar and five-string banjo. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Joe McDonald came to Berkeley from Los Angeles with the stated intention of becoming a professional folk singer. He had studied classical trombone for nine years, played in a Dixieland jazz combo, and in high school led a rock 'n roll group. He carried his guitar through three years in the Navy, learning songs along the way, and occasionally writing his own. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Carl Shrager was formerly a classical pianist, performing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 15. He attended Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, where he discovered folk music. The discovery led him from Oberlin to Berkeley, and then to some 50,000 miles of travel through every state and nearly every city in America. He performs on guitar, autoharp and assorted home made rhythm instruments, and has composed original ballads and love songs. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Bill Steele, who provides the musical foundation for the group on washtub bass, came to the Bay Area five years ago from upstate New York, where he had encountered folk music and learned to play guitar and banjo in the Cornell University Folk Song Club. He was at one time editor of a small newspaper and currently pursues a career as a freelance writer, specializing in science articles for young people's magazines. </span><br />
<h1><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></h1><h1> </h1>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-29037366300139427232010-10-05T22:28:00.000-07:002010-12-28T09:45:31.639-08:00Bacon and Day Senorita guitar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aJZoCTuBwlc2C8X9ocl5tR9CxDiyAPKWxdpzy2VmHgkEm9rVN6oeBrw2OVxx_xluwiOCtbea_1logCwOzLXdP64V2FcS4fFqETzqadR41m_y_pRwyYmVv8WUayShP8laiPaBYXLNDZk/s200/senoritafahey.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="200" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Fahey album cover with him holding the Bacon and Day Senorita guitar</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aJZoCTuBwlc2C8X9ocl5tR9CxDiyAPKWxdpzy2VmHgkEm9rVN6oeBrw2OVxx_xluwiOCtbea_1logCwOzLXdP64V2FcS4fFqETzqadR41m_y_pRwyYmVv8WUayShP8laiPaBYXLNDZk/s1600/senoritafahey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<br />
<br />
The Bacon and Day banjo company made a few guitars they called Senorita. No one seems to know how many of them were made. This was maybe during the 1940's. The Senoritas were a bit different. They had one that was quite elaborate with stones and inlays and color and one that was plainer. They were bigger than a parlor size but not as big as a dread naught size. When I first came to Berkeley in the summer of 1965 I worked for a while in Lundberg's Guitar shop. Jon and Dierdre Lundberg moved from the Midwest to Berkeley in 1960 with the intention of starting a guitar shop in San Francisco. After talking with Barry Olivier at his guitar shop near the University of California campus above Telegraph Avenue they opened Fretted Instruments their shop on Dwight Way in Berkeley just above Shattuck Avenue it became a haven for all people who played steel string wooden instruments for decades.<br />
<br />
When I moved to Berkeley in the summer of 1965 I found a job working the counter of Lundbergs' and helping and learning about guitar repairs from Jon Lundberg. This was before Country Joe and The Fish. I met Ed Denson who owned Tacoma Records with John Fahey. The label release Johns' first ground breaking guitar instrumental LP's. John lived in Los Angeles but would often come to Berkeley. I also became the boyfriend of Pat Sullivan. Pat Sullivan had been girlfriend of John Fahey. Pat and John and Ed all came from a town back east and knew each other well. Pat played the guitar very well in the many folk styles that everyone was trying to play back in the early sixties.<br />
<br />
Below is a sound file video of a mystery person playing his brand new ARK New Era Senorita, enjoy!<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyiBxlJhLCGx1hEJc4lPiiPQZZjG_Gfnj9gaSQLoHGUBNqBm-1r6GiCka9sRnmDTawdQfhjAF5DM7v4sZGs' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div> John bought a Bacon and Day Senorita from Jon Lundberg and that guitar is seen on the cover of the album above. The guitar came back to Jon Lundberg and I bought it in 1970. Stefan Grossman also owned the guitar at one point. Later I found out through Bill Belmont who was "managing" my career that Dougal Stermer (sp) had and wanted to sell another Senorita. I bought his. It was not as fancy as the other one. Less ornate. A few years later I sold both guitars through Sam "Fat Dog" Cohen of Subway Guitars in Berkeley. It was something I have regretted for years.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7djgjHnn0oEDyAKO85C7LTvucIYlhvUZrZYWYxTVy1qb6He_l52YeSi1nhyphenhyphenH_GFKTkyOL4wctZ99hLDbfrWSU0Xbke3SiKtBPNmw331vCmtENyCcH7fR8LPTjbFUMp2cc1YpEIfIYbaQ/s1600/Bacon3%252CSenoritamid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7djgjHnn0oEDyAKO85C7LTvucIYlhvUZrZYWYxTVy1qb6He_l52YeSi1nhyphenhyphenH_GFKTkyOL4wctZ99hLDbfrWSU0Xbke3SiKtBPNmw331vCmtENyCcH7fR8LPTjbFUMp2cc1YpEIfIYbaQ/s320/Bacon3%252CSenoritamid.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><br />
<br />
About two years ago I was playing a gig at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists hall at Cedar and Bonita. On the show was Henry Kaiser and he showed me a guitar made for him by a guitar maker named Tony Klassen. He had a history of making classic steel string guitar replicas under his own name. They were perfect. Henry told me that Tony had just found a Senorita just like the one I had and had sold and asked if I wanted him to make me one. <br />
<br />
I contacted Tony and made a deal for him to make me one. He made three. One for Henry Kaiser. One for Stefan Grossman. And one for me. Those are the pictures above of the brand new ARK New Era Senorita.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHkoeNAObcctBNUO1d4wt1GV8fzC0srLjidxGNgMkLms00i9dd0IzN3hNQKt6YpkRg_oVX6jw8Nx_eO1k548Cre3BLYtkqy4b100GkttS8zTVWVSWDvtJY0nhx2kafzoOjhV0za9NaJ6k/s1600/senorita2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHkoeNAObcctBNUO1d4wt1GV8fzC0srLjidxGNgMkLms00i9dd0IzN3hNQKt6YpkRg_oVX6jw8Nx_eO1k548Cre3BLYtkqy4b100GkttS8zTVWVSWDvtJY0nhx2kafzoOjhV0za9NaJ6k/s400/senorita2.jpg" width="182" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3af-p-c68c3OWKyXemHtY1FlX9BB7D64PhxG0IMP9DVVTXLaecripU_xYBUby_EIS21KsM5OIfiybEzn8SBS0dPAproXyFbA6DMwYjuOLtACx5zXuyQeAfr3PjGCEjXhbZmCwjCq26Y/s1600/senortia3jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3af-p-c68c3OWKyXemHtY1FlX9BB7D64PhxG0IMP9DVVTXLaecripU_xYBUby_EIS21KsM5OIfiybEzn8SBS0dPAproXyFbA6DMwYjuOLtACx5zXuyQeAfr3PjGCEjXhbZmCwjCq26Y/s320/senortia3jpg.jpg" width="163" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAylH99SGZA3WQCgK3FEZMDtlJnZ44I4VMBSA3gBfaigVOQwCB8f-SAaB8IRYyWMXTWOem6po8tBEFtslKsHBKSiWmqSS5_v7mytTV4PlqmkuFIZCTFUAQt1o8yEOX3BmcMkFH5yGJ7Hg/s1600/senorita1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAylH99SGZA3WQCgK3FEZMDtlJnZ44I4VMBSA3gBfaigVOQwCB8f-SAaB8IRYyWMXTWOem6po8tBEFtslKsHBKSiWmqSS5_v7mytTV4PlqmkuFIZCTFUAQt1o8yEOX3BmcMkFH5yGJ7Hg/s320/senorita1.jpg" width="201" /></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-70648242923896983612010-09-25T16:13:00.000-07:002010-09-25T16:20:14.001-07:00Fete de la Humanite/Woodstock/Barry/Lundberg's<style>
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormalIndent, li.MsoNormalIndent, div.MsoNormalIndent { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO22zaaA3VTSj7v1RqEvF7RDNlNtOXgfgsC2GIshyphenhyphenUIr3yTKsxkz1s9kmfemdofipZZ0WWt6ivNQ5vqitCotmaH8rn6oGOhukGnlU21gC8kLzK0tuquZDpiS7YmDS-wCrpTq2SYE2TQXw/s1600/logo_fete_2008-83c57.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO22zaaA3VTSj7v1RqEvF7RDNlNtOXgfgsC2GIshyphenhyphenUIr3yTKsxkz1s9kmfemdofipZZ0WWt6ivNQ5vqitCotmaH8rn6oGOhukGnlU21gC8kLzK0tuquZDpiS7YmDS-wCrpTq2SYE2TQXw/s1600/logo_fete_2008-83c57.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><u> FETE DE LA HUMANITE</u></b><br />
<br />
It came to pass during the All Star Band years that as part of a European tour we were hired by the Communist Party of France to perform at its huge outdoor concert in Paris called Fête de la Humanité. The Communist Party is no big deal in France, nothing like America where it is hated and feared. It is part of the mainstream fabric of French life and has been for years. Also playing on the show were the English rock band The Who.<br />
A few weeks before the concert while driving in our tour van to Marseilles, France, guitarist Phil Marsh (Cleanliness and Goodliness Skiffle Band, Energy Crisis) said he felt ill. In Marseilles he remained in his room unable to even get out of bed. I went to visit him and see how he serious it was. I remembered that somewhere I had heard if you were lying on your back and could not sit up without extreme pain, it was appendicitis. So I asked Phil to sit up. He tried and fell back in tears and terrible pain. I concluded yes, it was appendicitis and called the hospital.They said they would send an ambulance. I told Phil and went downstairs to the lobby to wait for them to arrive.<br />
I had been going in and out of his room checking on him for sometime. The door to his room was left open. I left the key downstairs with the front desk. I had asked the front desk to call for the ambulance. But the person at the front desk did not know that. It was another person. I decided to go back upstairs and keep Phil company. When I walked past the front desk the concierge asked me, “Where are you going?”<br />
I told him the room number. He looked down to where the keys were kept and told me, “There is no one in that room.” I said, “Of course there is.” He said, “No, there is not. You see the key is here.” He held up the key to show me, then said, “When the key is at the front desk the person is gone. When the key is gone the person is in their room.”<br />
I said, “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. My friend is up there with an appendicitis attack and the hospital is coming to get him any minute now.” He said, “There is a French way and an American way and I tell you there is no one up in the room because the key is here.”</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-C9trkjaBvFv9f4JG9qmcikadNZzXr_k8DeUj_KOoR2N0m1NXiyI7qYHhdXlHFTpQopDqMYTbVdRoCrf78nytwQIhHFPsPs3klHS44OLn_CH5qYQi12az_LPqff531lTUQAybUPQs7ZY/s1600/all+star+band.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All Star Band</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-C9trkjaBvFv9f4JG9qmcikadNZzXr_k8DeUj_KOoR2N0m1NXiyI7qYHhdXlHFTpQopDqMYTbVdRoCrf78nytwQIhHFPsPs3klHS44OLn_CH5qYQi12az_LPqff531lTUQAybUPQs7ZY/s1600/all+star+band.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
I just walked past him and went up to the room. He followed me up and when he saw that Phil was really in the room he stuck the key in the door so that now things were in their proper order. <br />
Soon afterwards they took Phil away to a French hospital. I will never forget his sad face, streaming with tears, as they put him on the stretcher into the ambulance. He spoke almost no French and they spoke almost no English. But I had no choice, the tour had to go on, and Phil had to stay and get operated on.<br />
But here is Paris a week later Phil was playing with us in a wheelchair, happy to be back with his friends and playing music in the band.<br />
We did our sound check and it sounded very good. But at show time the sound was small and tinny and, well, terrible. I could not understand it. Afterwards Roger Daltry of the Who band stopped by the dressing room and asked, “Why didn’t you use our sound system?” Well, I had no idea that there were two sound systems and I realized that for whatever reasons we had been screwed. It was usual for managers and band crews, who are very competitive, to not give a break of any kind to the other acts on the show. I just assumed that the promoters, the French Communist Party in this case, had one sound system, which they probably did. But it seemed that The Who had brought their own super sound system in addition to the one provided and hooked it all up alongside the other one. I had always marveled at the huge sound they got onstage. We sure sounded small compared to them that day and that seemed to be by plan. <br />
During The Who’s set, a guy came into our little dressing room and asked me if I wanted to smoke some grass. I said sure. I was the only person there as the band had all gone off other places. It was pretty strong stuff and we got very stoned. As we were just sitting around being stoned there was a knock on the door and I opened it up to find a wild-eyed woman fan asking, “Is Country Joe here?” I did not want to talk with her, so as evil as it sounds I pointed behind me and said, “Sure he’s right back there,” and then left and went outside. <br />
She quickly ran inside and five or ten minutes passed as I was enjoying the fresh air and being ignored. I could not help wondering what was going on in the dressing room. Suddenly the door flew open and the guy ran out yelling, “I am not him” to the woman who followed him out into and through the crowd. It was great fun! I figured she must really be a nut case if she did not even know what Country Joe looked like and she wanted to see him so bad. Through the rest of the day I saw her chasing him around the place.<br />
The Fête de la Humanité was a regular event, as I mentioned. Our event was uneventful except for the sound system and the groupie bit. But next year during Jerry Lee Lewis’s set, some Maoists in the audience caused a riot. I saw a video of the event. Jerry Lee was forced to flee the stage. Maoists in the back threw bottles toward the front which hit people in the head and they got mad and threw bottles which started landing on the stage and in the end flew through the drum kit and stopped the show.<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<b><u>WOODSTOCK/BARRY/LUNDBERGS</u></b><br />
<br />
I had a similar experience at the Woodstock Music Festival during a lull on Sunday when the Country Joe and The Fish band were to play. The audience was hot and thirsty. Backstage we got cases of beer and some bottles of champagne. I was on stage with Barry Melton when I decided to get some drinks and pass them out to the audience. The show was stopped for some reason; sound problems or something. So I brought some beer onstage and passed a few bottles of the champagne into the press pit in front of the stage. It was about five feet to the fence that separated the press pit from the audience. That same press pit Abby Hoffman had jumped into the day before to get away from Pete Townshend. So I was kinda passing out cans and gently tossing them over the press pit. <br />
People in the back caught on and were holding up their hands asking for some cans of drinks. So Barry got a stupid idea and started throwing them cans. Well, the cans were of course hitting people in the head but he did not stop and kept on throwing them. I mentioned that it was not a good idea but he kept on going. Soon the cans were coming back in our direction. It was obvious that people were throwing them at us and we had to get the hell offstage or get hit. So we did.<br />
When I first met Barry Melton on the steps of the University of California Berkeley Associated Student Union Building at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1965, I had no experience with recreational drugs. Barry was quite experienced in this way. He was only seventeen years old, which was to cause us some amusing problems later as a band, but had grown up in the Los Angeles area and sold, so the story goes, marijuana in high school. Bruce Barthol, who was also only seventeen years old and was soon to become the bass player with The Fish band, had used pot with Barry, or Barry sold it to Bruce.<br />
This was a bit odd because I had just gotten out of the US Navy and had spent two years in Japan with the Navy but I had never used pot or any other drugs. The reason that the song “Bass Strings” was called “Bass Strings” is that that was a code word Barry and Bruce used to refer to pot back when they were in high school together. So it seemed a perfect title for that song which was about LSD and pot.<br />
In 1965-66 I hung out and worked part-time learning instrument repair and helping at the front desk of Lundberg’s Guitar Shop in Berkeley. I will say more about the shop later. Jon and Deirdre were very special people to the folk and folk-rock music scene in Berkeley and nationally. <br />
I was sitting in their shop watching the counter and playing the guitar when the fingering for the blues that turned into “Bass Strings” happened and I wrote the song in a matter of minutes. Since it is all about feelings and taking drugs, considered by some to be one of the greatest 60s drug songs ever written, I guess that the band was just about to go electric and Dylan might have just gone electric. </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggAdIvDhcQ4SBN7X7lfMRQ1-X8PsFQ4hfBkPVx7_exG5XLF0W-B4orbHDaY6slYu4_ylVES6tLLsBJX2kak-ezD1O6J0K0SxMOlsWuGVqKhdb1RxdwMYSzPN4HyeffxqYk4zh9Bh_23SY/s1600/miss+cheryl%27s.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miss Cheryl's apartment</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggAdIvDhcQ4SBN7X7lfMRQ1-X8PsFQ4hfBkPVx7_exG5XLF0W-B4orbHDaY6slYu4_ylVES6tLLsBJX2kak-ezD1O6J0K0SxMOlsWuGVqKhdb1RxdwMYSzPN4HyeffxqYk4zh9Bh_23SY/s1600/miss+cheryl%27s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
Barry and Bruce were living in Miss Cheryl’s apartment house behind the Jabberwocky Coffeehouse in Berkeley. It was at this time that Barry introduced me to LSD and on my first acid trip around the apartment I watched a maple tree and marveled at the color of the fall leaves – something I had not seen in my hometown in LA County. I put that into my song “Porpoise Mouth,” which is all about myself and that first LSD trip. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2KjiEQufDND2-wmwxDadYg54bjHkuTWnI814UVwm1z9nJkoT0qXBrP0teIF-4ubN6imbsmoS0QEWl9O5xY1MvB4oCGFMcW0AQ0QUgWsPO2KiO1YleQnq30P2b4McZ_9lt8NVyueL06cQ/s1600/barry+melton-3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barry Melton</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2KjiEQufDND2-wmwxDadYg54bjHkuTWnI814UVwm1z9nJkoT0qXBrP0teIF-4ubN6imbsmoS0QEWl9O5xY1MvB4oCGFMcW0AQ0QUgWsPO2KiO1YleQnq30P2b4McZ_9lt8NVyueL06cQ/s1600/barry+melton-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
I remember sitting on the back porch of our apartment and looking at a big tree. It turned into a big skeleton of a fish and had hundreds of naked people climbing all over it. I was thinking, “Wow, this is pretty weird. Must be a hallucination because it sure can’t be what is really there.” I thought of telling the guys to come and look but that was crazy as they could not see what I saw. So I just got up and went inside because it was a bit much. </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhfFY_fLsVtXke9J6NqnXtSBewyYn5C8WX1Jml3tWr9Iu_IU6JeRfsWB_1kEBtUf3e2u3czPdwWy8cdjYy8iTZHYMRDqkewZJE_XZ0OXKqzd-pNg3rgyH_MpdLxrivE_UL7cJPbzYi3g/s1600/bruce+barthol.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bruce Barthol</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhfFY_fLsVtXke9J6NqnXtSBewyYn5C8WX1Jml3tWr9Iu_IU6JeRfsWB_1kEBtUf3e2u3czPdwWy8cdjYy8iTZHYMRDqkewZJE_XZ0OXKqzd-pNg3rgyH_MpdLxrivE_UL7cJPbzYi3g/s1600/bruce+barthol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
We were on the top floor and Miss Cheryl lived on the bottom floor. She was a very nice and tolerant landlady. One day Barry came home with a houseguest named California Cal. California Cal dressed like an Indian guide kind of person with a brown leather outfit and a bowie knife. I didn’t want to mess with him. We had a record player up there in our apartment, the old-fashioned kind in a wooden case. One day I came home and California Cal was very proud because he had taken the record player apart and made a mobile from the parts. It was hanging in the kitchen. I thought, “Gee, this guy is as nutty as a fruitcake but he has a big knife.” So I told Barry. It wasn’t like I needed to tell him because he could see for himself. Thank God California Cal left and was never seen again.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> There was this famous blind black folksinger named Reverend Gary Davis who came to play at the Jabberwocky. Remember the club was right behind us. Or we were right behind it. So the Rev wound up staying at our place. Sleeping on a mattress on the floor like the rest of us. On night Barry came home and the Rev pulled a gun on him. Wow, blind man with a gun. He started yelling, “Who’s there?!” It took Barry a few minutes to calm him down and convince him that it was him and not somebody out to rip him off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
After my marriage to Kathe Werum tanked, I needed a place to stay and was invited to share the apartment with Barry and Bruce. I shared a room with Bruce. He was very, how shall I say it, messy? There was nothing really but two mattresses on the floor. We each had a bit of clothes and guitars but that was it. I had just gotten out of the Navy, remember, where you are living in a very clean and tidy environment. I drew a line in the middle of the floor and told Bruce, “This is your side and this is my side.” I remember my side being clean and his side being really dirty. He did not mind. He was seventeen.<br />
<br />
</span>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-38210481967768077262010-09-24T00:20:00.000-07:002010-09-24T00:20:41.059-07:00The invention of Country Joe and The Fish<style>
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormalIndent, li.MsoNormalIndent, div.MsoNormalIndent { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }span.eudoraheader { }span.HeaderChar { }span.FooterChar { }p.Style1, li.Style1, div.Style1 { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: bold; }span.BodyTextChar { }p.Style2, li.Style2, div.Style2 { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; line-height: 150%; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUw3GHQo-I7PyGJm6CV7Df3MwvF0lIw6lAfsj_9q5MMkExPYQj7PMyPffbtTwRlT6b-EX6Mw35HaGTA5J245fOsBTz1dcUzRZathOGDcDDGh7Y7kn5oVElW55nUVqOQ5cUEZQObA5yaA/s1600/jabbsign.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUw3GHQo-I7PyGJm6CV7Df3MwvF0lIw6lAfsj_9q5MMkExPYQj7PMyPffbtTwRlT6b-EX6Mw35HaGTA5J245fOsBTz1dcUzRZathOGDcDDGh7Y7kn5oVElW55nUVqOQ5cUEZQObA5yaA/s1600/jabbsign.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"> <br />
In the late summer of 1965 I heard that there was going to be an anti-Vietnam War event held on the University of Berkeley campus by a group called the Vietnam Day Committee. They had an office on Telegraph Avenue and this guy named Jerry Rubin seemed to be in charge in some way. I stopped in and asked Jerry if I could play some music at the event and he said he had a small stage setup between the open field the event was being held on (that field now has Zellerbach Hall built on it) and Sproul Steps, and I could perform there. By coincidence my magazine <i>Rag Baby</i> was just then destined to morph into a record company soon to be called Rag Baby Records, and record my song “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” with a group to be called Country Joe and The Fish. This is the way it happened:</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Ed Denson and Mike Beardslee and I met at Mike’s house to talk about our forthcoming issue of <i>Rag Baby</i> magazine. It was a biweekly and we realized that having been all caught up the excitement of the forthcoming demonstration, or Teach-In on the War in Vietnam, as it was being called, we had neglected not only to write any stories for the issue but to gather information about what was happening at the local clubs, etc. So in essence we had nothing for the next issue which was due out soon. I suggested off of the top of my head that we make a talking issue! Ed Denson, as I mentioned, was already in the record company business with his label Takoma Records and knew about making records. I had recorded an LP at Fidelatone Records in Southern California with my friend Blair Hardman before I came to the Bay Area, so between us we knew it could be done. Mike agreed and Ed made arrangements for us to record in Chris Strachwitz’s living room on a small reel-to-reel tape recorder. Chris Strachwitz owned the label Arhoolie Records. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>The day approached for us to record and we planned the have local songwriter Peter Krug sing his song about the Watts Riots, “Fire in the City,” and another song on one side. We planned to make a seven-inch 33 1/3 speed record with a small hole in the center, called an EP (standing for extended play, because it got more time on it than a 45-rpm speed single record with a big hole in the center). I was going to sing my Vietnam Rag song and another song about President Lyndon Baines Johnson titled “Super Bird.” I gathered people from the Berkeley String Quartet: Carl Schrager on washboard and Bill Steele on washtub bass, and added Barry Melton whom I had been playing with for a while. Barry said that he wanted to try playing electric guitar so we went to a shop behind the Mediterranean Cafe called Berkeley Music.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>This place was owned by a guy named Campbell Coe who was never there. He was a photographer stringer for Associated Press also and always taking photographs around the area. He smoked a cigar and was an older man and people even made a bumper sticker saying “Campbell Coe is a myth” because he was never around. He did the repairs to instruments left there but was never around to do it. I once left an instrument and took it back after many weeks and took it to Lundberg’s Guitar Shop because they were always in and actually did repairs. <br />
Annie Johnston used to work there and was there the day Barry and I came to rent an amplifier and electric guitar. She played guitar and sang and later was part of the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band. We rented the guitar and amp for five bucks and walked up to Chris Strachwitz’s house to record. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Chris had one mic in the center of the room on a wire hanging down. Another guy was there Carvell Bass who I lost contact with soon afterwards. He was a UC Berkeley student and he played 12-string rhythm guitar if my memory serves me correctly. Also I believe Mike Beardslee sang some backup vocals. Well, because of the washtub bass and washboard, acoustic instruments, and the added electric guitar and harmonica, we qualified as being called a “folk-rock group.” This was all the rage at the time, acoustic bands with electric instruments. We finished very quickly. We recorded “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag,” “Super Bird,” and also “Who Am I” from the play <i>Change Over</i>. “Who Am I” did not make it onto the EP. I can’t remember if Peter Krug recorded at the same time or not.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span>When we finished Ed asked what we should call the group on the <br />
label copy. I hadn’t thought about that. Ed suggested that we call the group Country Mao and The Fish. He said that Mao Tse Tung had said that the revolutionaries move through the people like the fish through the sea. Well, as I mentioned before, my parents were left-wingers who had been harassed by the FBI. I grew up with radical politics and was not really fascinated by it. Ed, on the other hand, was part of a new group of American university students who were just coming in contact with left-wing politics and found it very appealing and fascinating. Anyway, I thought that the name sounded stupid.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Ed then suggested we call it Country Joe and The Fish after Joseph Stalin. I said, “Well, that at least sounds better!” Oddly enough, I was not to find out until decades later that my parents had named me after Joseph Stalin, being at that time themselves very fascinated and involved with Communism and Russia. They were later to change their minds about Stalin and Communism, but my dad who was named Worden Calhoun, was always proud that he had given me a sensible name. So it was that the group became named Country Joe and The Fish. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Over the years people have asked me many times how I got to be called Country Joe, and the simple answer is that I was the only Joe in the group and that I sang the lead vocals. I remember a time a bit later when Annie Johnston had gotten with the Cleanliness and Godliness Sniffle Band that we had a funny conversation on the phone at the Jabberwocky Coffeehouse. I was in the back room when the pay phone rang and I picked it up. The voice on the other end asked something and I said “who is this” and she answered “Dynamite Annie Johnston,” which was the name the band had given her. I laughed and said, “Well, this is Country Joe.” And that is how career names are made.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDrRLs8o9MmYehex8a0RVNv67jegRgSbwTZwn0Tos9-YCreaOJC-7JfRpsKJTw5a36rbMFagJmIjlom9Ujtqc5szcNLDW-32bMpbITuB0Vit-YprQZd7wcDvauqRENe4_wAI7Gy_hN8KQ/s1600/rbtalking_bag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDrRLs8o9MmYehex8a0RVNv67jegRgSbwTZwn0Tos9-YCreaOJC-7JfRpsKJTw5a36rbMFagJmIjlom9Ujtqc5szcNLDW-32bMpbITuB0Vit-YprQZd7wcDvauqRENe4_wAI7Gy_hN8KQ/s400/rbtalking_bag.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><span> </span>So it was decided what the band would be called. Then another fateful thing happened. Supposedly Chris Strachwitz asked me if he could administer to the publishing of the songs on this little record and he says I said yes. He had just discovered that he could make money by handling the publishing of artists’ songs he recorded on his label and wanted to do the same with me. He took 50 percent of the money for doing this! For the next eight years he was to collect money for “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” and “Super Bird.” The Rag was to go on to have a place on the famous Woodstock Music Festival soundtrack and film and generate quite a bit of income for Chris and me, but more about that later.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>ED and Mike worked on the layout for the little Rag Baby Records <i>Talking Issue</i>. It was put into a manila envelope along with tear sheets of the music from <i>Rag Baby</i> magazine. The envelope was longer than a record sleeve and printed upside down so the opening was at the bottom by mistake. I don’t know how many records were pressed, perhaps more than 100, no more than 200 I would say. About 70 we put into the envelope with the sheet music pages. The cover had a picture of protesters stopping the train that came through Berkeley carrying recruits to the Alameda Naval Air Station for shipment to Vietnam to fight the war. The demonstration was, I believe, arranged by the Vietnam Day Committee. We said that we were selling them for one dollar by mail. The date on the cover is October 1965.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>On the day of the Teach In I went over to the campus with my guitar and a few of the little records. I found the small stage for singers to sing on with a microphone setup. Folksinger Malvina Reynolds walked up with her guitar. I knew Malvina, she was one of the advisers for my magazine <i>Et Tu</i>. I had written her from Los Angeles before I moved to the Bay Area and she agreed to be an adviser. I knew about her because she was one of the new “protest singer-songwriters” that grew up around Pete Seeger and had some popular songs printed in the magazines <i>Sing Out!</i> and <i>Broadside</i>. So Malvina said “Can I sing?” and since it was my job to run the alternative stage I said sure. My memory is that we both sang a set of music to no one. Everyone was going over to the field where the Teach In was being held. They just walked by us. Some who knew us said hi but they kept on moving so we did also after a while.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I then closed down the little stage and walked over to the field where the Teach In was going on. I got there in time to hear Ken Kesey play the harmonica and I.F. Stone speak. I began to walk in the crowd and sell my little EP record for 50 cents if my memory is correct. I don’t remember how many I sold but maybe five or so. There really was nowhere in town to sell them. We wound up putting them on the counter at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue. He must have sold about twenty or so over the months to follow. As I mentioned there were about 70 in all made with the envelope and inserts, and years later I visited Mike Beardslee in the Midwest and he showed me a stash of about twenty. When he passed away his wife gave me about ten and his son Tom got the rest. The local music record shops had no idea what to do with them.<br />
<span> </span>It is hard to realize now that back in 1965 there was almost no alternative music in record shops. You could count the titles just about on one, or maybe both, hands. And there was no place to sell a self-produced anything, especially sold in a manila envelope. This first Rag Baby EP has remained a secret Country Joe and The Fish product, because the next EP, when the band went electric, got all the attention and in total perhaps 8,000 of those little records were made and sold.<br />
<br />
So it was discovered that if we advertised an appearance at the Jabberwocky Coffeeehouse under the name of Country Joe and The Fish we would draw another two or three people and we started to do so. Before we had a floating membership under the name The Instant Action Jug Band, but now we began to perform with a somewhat regular membership made up mostly of Barry Melton and myself with whoever else was around. Then, when Bob Dylan put out an electric album titled <i>Highway 61 Revisited,</i> Barry and I decided to “go electric” too. Bruce Barthol, who had been playing guitar up to that point, expressed a desire to play bass and went to Leo’s Music in Oakland and got a Hoffner electric bass just like Paul McCartney played. That bass was a thorn in my side for years as it was not fretted correctly and never got properly in tune. Bruce and I fought about that endlessly. He always contended that he could get it in tune but I never thought that he did and that it was the fault of the instrument. Barry got a guitar and amplifier and found a guy from New York City named David Cohen who was mostly a bluegrass guitar player but had some knowledge of piano so it was decided that he would play organ. We went back to Leo’s Music and bought a Farfisa organ. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>That Farfisa organ had one of the definitive sounds of the 60s. It was a very small model and had a row of buttons that were all titled things like flute, trumpet, French horn, etc. etc. It was assumed that when those buttons were pushed that the sound would change to morph into a sound resembling the word written on the button. This never happened. As I remember it there were two sounds that came out of that organ and neither of them sounded like a traditional instrument of the orchestra, but the beauty of it was that it gave us a distinctly original sound. David just invented a way to play the organ and is often credited with giving the group a very unique sound, and he did. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>David also played electric guitar. This gave us the luxury of having two lead guitar players. Barry played a very bluesy style influenced very much by Lightnin’ Hopkins, whom he heard play many times in Los Angeles at the folk club the Ash Grove. David played a very traditional bluegrass style. So I got the idea to have them both play leads at the same time as I was playing guitar also and could back them up with rhythm guitar. This was to be one of the very first times the world heard “double leads” and it was always a very exciting event.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><span> </span>We also incorporated drums in the band and these were first played by a local drummer John Francis Gunning. I don’t remember how he was found, but John Francis was good friends with the drummer for the local trio The New Age, featuring the vocals and songs of guitarist singer Patrick Kilroy and flute playing of Susan Graubord and conga drumming of Jeffrey Stuart. They had some fantastic “new age” songs and a wonderful high-energy sound. They did one piece I really loved with a La La La La chorus and words: when I walk through the trees there is a song I sing. At the famous Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, soon after I jumped up on stage and joined them in the chorus. Well, Jeffrey and John Francis were good buddies and often played drums together, Jeffrey on congas and John Francis on traps or a full drum set. So John Francis began playing drums with us. We began converting our acoustic folk-rock repertoire to a rock and roll band repertoire. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<span> </span>We soon had an electric set worked up and were playing regularly at the Jabberwocky. Our audiences were very small. The place only held about 50 people and we never filled it up. I never was able to really hear my vocals because you must remember that the place was designed for the folk music era and everyone played acoustic music. The most electric thing ever seen there before us was Lightnin’ Hopkins who played electric guitar through a very small old amp and picked up a local drummer for his blues sound. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<span> </span>One night while playing, I got a funny feeling about the evening and announced that Barry really needed a new guitar. It was true, his playing had gotten much better and the guitar he was using was not very good.<span></span>There was a man and woman in the audience whom I had noticed over the past few weeks of our shows. They were older than the rest of the audience, perhaps in their thirties, and dressed casual conservative. Over the weeks they had taken to bringing incense with them and lighting it during our show. They were Martin and Mary Jo Dimbat and lived in the nearby Bay Area town of Concord. He was a chemist and she was a housewife. They had lost a son our age in a bus accident a few months before and had sort of adopted the band as part of their grieving process. I of course knew nothing of this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<span> </span>After our set I was in the back dressing room with the rest of the band and Martin Dimbat came in and pulled out a checkbook and said, “How much does a guitar cost?” Well, I was stunned. I had forgotten I even mentioned it. I told him to wait a minute and rushed over to Barry and told him and asked him how much a new guitar would cost. My memory is that he said one hundred and twenty five dollars. We just sort of made up the number on the spot. Martin wrote out the check and the next day we went back to Leo’s Music in Oakland and Barry got his first real electric guitar. The Dimbats followed our career through all of its stages and when we began to play the Avalon and the Fillmore Auditorium they were always in the audience. We dedicated one of our albums to them. I still consider them good friends and see them from time to time in my audience. What a wonderful gift it was to be there for them and them to be there for us.<br />
<br />
<br />
</span>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-8974289526360388802010-09-22T23:29:00.000-07:002010-09-22T23:31:11.730-07:00Chicago Trial<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><center> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQKS6IPqZOawirOF1uwsDoY3k8ZjisM8m1E8PV6rMACZeJKgz3mjpAhYnHqrwvA8l1XKXdxk9JFZAUAPZad7YVm2Zg5RBaGZjW1zEK8z_oG6Vd13hjo6FNE6b60C1S9weOBAIXWFnQao/s1600/chicago+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPQKS6IPqZOawirOF1uwsDoY3k8ZjisM8m1E8PV6rMACZeJKgz3mjpAhYnHqrwvA8l1XKXdxk9JFZAUAPZad7YVm2Zg5RBaGZjW1zEK8z_oG6Vd13hjo6FNE6b60C1S9weOBAIXWFnQao/s320/chicago+7.jpg" /></a></div><h3><br />
</h3><h1>My Testimony at the Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial</h1><img alt="_____________________" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> <br />
<br />
<table align="CENTER"><tbody>
<tr><td><br />
<center> <i> DRAMATIS PERSONÆ: </i> <i>THE WITNESS, Country Joe McDonald<br />
THE COURT, Judge Hoffman<br />
MR. KUNSTLER, counsel for the defense<br />
MR. SCHULTZ, counsel for the prosecution<br />
A CLERK<br />
A MARSHAL </i><br />
<i>SCENE: A courtroom in Chicago, January 19, 1970 </i><br />
<br />
<br />
<hr noshade="noshade" width="20%" /></center> THE CLERK: You will remove your gum, sir. <br />
THE WITNESS: What gum? <br />
THE CLERK: That you are chewing on. <br />
THE WITNESS: I am afraid that I don't have any gum. <br />
THE CLERK: You may be seated, sir. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Would you state your full name, please? <br />
THE WITNESS: Country Joe. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is your occupation? <br />
THE WITNESS: I am a minister in the New Universal Life Church. I am a rock and roll star, I am a producer of phonograph records. Father, husband, leader of a rock and roll band. Singer, composer, poet, owner of a publishing company, and a few other things. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you currently have a rock and roll band? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I do. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: What is the name of that band? <br />
THE WITNESS: Country Joe and the Fish. <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: For the record may we have the witness's full name? Country Joe is really not sufficient. <br />
THE COURT: I am assuming that his Christian name is Country. He is under oath. He was asked his name. <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: It might be the name that he uses and not the name that was originally his. <br />
THE COURT: Is Country your first name? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. <br />
THE COURT: That is your first name or Christian name, is that right? <br />
THE WITNESS: Some people call me Country, yes. <br />
THE COURT: What is your real name? <br />
THE WITNESS: Country. <br />
THE COURT: You say some people call you that. What is your real name, sir? <br />
THE WITNESS: I am afraid I don't understand what real means. <br />
THE COURT: What is the name -- were you baptized? <br />
THE WITNESS: No I wasn't. <br />
THE COURT: What were you called when you went to school as a child? <br />
THE WITNESS: Joe. <br />
THE COURT: Joe. <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. <br />
THE COURT: What was your family name? <br />
THE WITNESS: McDonald. <br />
THE COURT: And your family name is now McDonald, is that right? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, it is. <br />
THE COURT: How do you spell it? <br />
THE WITNESS: M-c-D-o-n-a-l-d. <br />
THE COURT: McDonald, that is what your family name is, is that right? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. <br />
THE COURT: And you are familiarly known as Country Joe, is that right? <br />
THE WITNESS: Country Joe McDonald, yes. Joseph sometimes. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you identify this? <br />
THE WITNESS: It is a phonograph record, it is our first LP. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you say your first LP, does that mean an LP of the rock and roll band known as Country Joe and the Fish? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes. And this is another one of our albums that we produced for Vanguard Records. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: How many other albums do you have that have been released? <br />
THE WITNESS: We currently have five albums released, five LP's. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I call your attention to -- let me withdraw that answer. Do you know Jerry Rubin? <br />
THE COURT: No, not the answer. You withdraw that question. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I mean withdraw the question. <br />
THE COURT: I just wanted you to know I was listening to you. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I just did it to see if you were. <br />
THE COURT: You still call him Country Joe even though his name is McDonald? <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I know, your Honor, but he is known throughout the world as Country Joe. <br />
THE COURT: That is what you say. I never heard of him. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: If your Honor would look at these-- <i>[indicating the records]</i> <br />
THE COURT: I will not look at them. Besides that wouldn't prove that he is known throughout the world. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: <i>[laughing]</i> Are you known throughout the world as Country Joe? <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I object. <br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER; Do you know Jerry Rubin? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I know Jerry Rubin. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Can you identify him at the table? <br />
THE WITNESS: He is the one with red pants on. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When did you first meet Jerry Rubin? <br />
THE WITNESS: I met Jerry Rubin in 1964, October 15, the march to end the war in Vietnam, the march held in Berkeley California, <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Did you participate in this march yourself? <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection, your honor. <br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, I call your attention to Abbie Hoffman. Do you know him? <br />
THE WITNESS: There he is. He is the handsome fellow with the handsome jacket on. <br />
THE COURT: May I suggest to you, Mr. Witness, when you are asked to identify anybody here, either you may step down, you can point to him, or you may describe him by his apparel, but do not characterize him as being handsome or in any other such manner. <br />
THE WITNESS: I am sorry. I have never been in a trial before. <br />
THE COURT: I accept your apology. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Do you recall when you first met Abbie Hoffman? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, I first met Abbie Hoffman at the meeting in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. At that meeting was Irwin Silber, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, myself, my manager, Banana Ed Denson, Barbara Dane. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who is Irwin Silber? <br />
THE WITNESS: He is the editor of a magazine called Sing Out a folk song magazine in New York. He is no longer the editor but he was. His wife- <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Who is Barbara Dane? <br />
THE WITNESS: His wife, who is a very well known folk singer. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was there -- do you remember who else was there? <br />
THE WITNESS: Let me see, Barbara Dane, Irwin Silver, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Nancy Kunstler -- no, Nancy-- <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: You got the last name a little wrong. <br />
THE WITNESS: That girl there, <i>[points to Nancy]</i> and several members of the band. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: When you say band, is that your band? <br />
THE WITNESS: Yes, Country Joe and the Fish. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Was there a discussion at the Chelsea Hotel? <br />
THE WITNESS: We had a very long discussion. The meeting had been called to discuss the proposed Yippie! Convention in Chicago, to be held in Chicago. We never -- we hadn't heard much about it, and so we all met and we were staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York and we met to discuss the Yippie! happening thing in Chicago. Jerry Rubin said to me, "We feel that the Democratic Convention being held in Chicago is a very important political event in the country, and that it represents fascist forces in America, oppression of minority groups, continuation of the war in Vietnam, and actual celebration of death, that the Democratic Convention being held in Chicago will be a celebration of death in that all of those things which are held in high esteem by the establishment, political parties in this country are those things which represent death and oppression," and that it was the responsibility of those people, young people, who are concerned with freedom in America to try to do something in Chicago which would counter-balance the evil and negative vibrations from the Democratic Convention and that since I had written the Vietnam Rag, which has become the most well known song against the war in Vietnam, and that my group was very influential with young people of America, amongst the youth, that it was very important that we try to say something in Chicago which would be positive, natural, human, and loving, in order to let the people of America know that there are people in America who are not tripped out on ways of thinking which result only in oppression and fear, paranoia and death. <br />
At that point Abbie Hoffman wanted to know what the song was, and then I -- then I sang the song. It goes: <br />
<i>[he sings]</i> "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. The next stop is Vietnam. And it's --" <br />
THE COURT: No, no, no, Mr. Witness. No singing. <br />
THE WITNESS: "five, six, seven -- " <br />
THE COURT: Mr. Marshal -- <br />
<i>[the marshal goes over to Country Joe and puts his hand on Joe's chin to close his mouth]</i> <br />
THE MARSHAL: The Judge is talking. <br />
THE COURT: No singing is permitted in the courtroom. You are here to answer questions. You may continue telling about this conversation. <br />
BY MR. KUNSTLER: <br />
Q. Can you recite the song? Do you think you can do that? <br />
A. Yes, The chorus of the song is: <br />
"And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. The next stop is Vietnam. <br />
"And it's five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates. There ain't no time to wonder why -- whoopie -- we're all gonna die. <br />
"Come on, all of you big strong men. Uncle Sam needs your help again. He's got himself in a terrible jam, way dawn yonder in Vietnam. <br />
"So put down your books and pick up a gun. Come on, we're all going to have a lot ot fun. Come on, Generals, let's move fast. Your big chance has come at last. Now you can go out and get those reds because the only good commie is one that's dead, and you know that peace can only be won when you've blown them all to kingdom come. <br />
"Come on, Wall Street, don't be slow. Why, man, this is war au go go. There's plenty good money to be made by supplying the army with the tools of the trade. But just hope and pray, if they drop the bomb, they drop it on the Viet Cong. <br />
"Come on, mothers throughout the land, pack your boys off to Vietnam. Come on, fathers, don't hesitate. Send your sons off before it's too late. You can be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box." <br />
Q. Now was there any further conversation that you can recall? <br />
A. Yes, there was a lot of conversation. The Abbie Hoffman said that he liked the song very much. I said that I would try to -- I said that I thought that it was a good idea to try to do something positive to counter-balance all the negative political vibrations. We asked Jerry Rubin where the festival was going to be held. Jerry Rubin said it was going to be held in the park. My manager, Ed Denson, asked if permits had been secured and explained that it was very necessary for the bands involved that they have permits, because without a permit it would probably be impossible to get a good P. A. system, a good stage, and organization established so that a concert could actually happen, and that if there were no permits, the bands involved would probably get arrested. There would be police action, and we wanted to avoid that at all costs. <br />
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman then both agreed. They said that they were in the process of beginning to start work towards getting permits that we could do what we wanted to do in a legal way. <br />
I then suggested that we get lots of other bands to participate. Jerry Rubin asked if it were possible for me to contact other bands and talk to them and possibly try to get some support for a Yippie! festival in Chicago. <br />
I said that I would do that, that-- then I asked them to further elaborate on the festival. <br />
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman talked about the possibilities of getting famous movie stars, famous Black entertainers, famous political figures, to come, getting people to provide medical assistance, because in every gathering of large people there is a need for medical assistance, to get food so that everyone would have food, to try to secure permission for people to sleep in the parks or in the beaches close by, and we eventually were convinced in his conversation that there was a real possibility of putting on a positive musical festival and celebration for life in Chicago, and the conclusion of our discussion was that we would put our support behind the festival to be held in Chicago at the time of the Democratic Convention. <br />
Q. Do you remember, approximately when you next saw Jerry Rubin? <br />
A. Yes, I saw Jerry Rubin at Stony Brook about two weeks after our meeting at the Chelsea Hotel. <br />
Q. Who else was present, if you know names. <br />
A. Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, and all the Fugs were there. A lot of just people working in the Yippie! Party were there, students, I believe some students from the campus, themselves, and a lot of police were there, too, all lined up in a row, refusing to let us in. <br />
Q. Can you describe how people that came to you were dressed, or some of them? <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Objection. What happened there is not relevant to this proceeding. <br />
THE COURT: Sustain the objection. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, one of the claims is that the Yippies-- the term "guerrilla theatre" has been used by Mr. Schultz and Mr. Foran on many occasions. We are trying to indicate what guerrilla theatre is and how the Yippies utilized it, and Stony Brook is one place, just before Chicago, when they did. <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: If they will talk about Chicago, we have no objection, but not whatever this is at Stony Brook. <br />
THE COURT: I sustain the objection. <br />
BY MR. KUNSTLER: Do you remember what the next time that you saw Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin was, after Stony Brook? <br />
A. Yes, I met with Abbie Hoffman. Jerry Rubin, Ed Sanders, Nancy, my wife Robin was there, at Jerry Rubin's apartment in the East Village in New York. <br />
Q. Do you know approximately when that was? <br />
A. Towards the end of April. <br />
Q. In 1968? <br />
A. Yes. <br />
Q. Would you state what was said by whom? <br />
A. Jerry Rubin asked me: how I was doing in getting response for the Yippie! Festival. I informed him that since our original meeting at the Chelsea Hote1 I had talked to people and I had talked to other bands, and I found that they were constantly relating to me stories of orders in Chicago for the police to shoot on sight in regards to the racial riots of that month, that at least two thousand civilian vigilantes were being authorized as deputies to arrest all trouble makers around the convention, that the National Guard was being assembled to prevent people from getting close to the convention hall, that the sewers of Chicago were being prepared as dungeons to put demonstrators in, that generally the vibrations around Chicago were very, very uptight and getting worse, that there was a possibility of incredible brutality, maliciousness, and fascistic type tactics on the part of the police force, and that I was having a hard time getting people to be responsive to the possibilities of anything positive happening in Chicago during the Democratic Convention. <br />
Jerry Rubin then asked me if I had any ideas about other types of people that we could have come to the convention. <br />
I suggested circus performers, jugglers, clowns, the Harlem Globe Trotters, and many other things of that nature - positive groups and entertainment groups that could possibly show up in Chicago. <br />
Q. Now, Country Joe, I ask you whether you came to Chicago during Convention Week? <br />
A. Yes. It was just a few days before the beginning of the convention and it was on Friday because we played on Friday and Saturday. We arrived Friday on the afternoon. <br />
Q. Where did you play? <br />
A. We played at the Electric Theatre, an establishment owned by Aaron Russo. <br />
Q. At any time on Friday or Saturday did you have occasion to meet with Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman? <br />
A. Yes, I met with both of them at the Electric Theatre on Saturday. <br />
Q. Would you state what was said and who said it? <br />
A. Abbie Hoffman said to me "Are you going to be in the Festival?" I said to Abbie Hoffman, "No, I was not going to be in the Festival because the vibrations in the town were so incredibly vicious that I felt it was impossible to avoid violence on the part of the police and the authorities in Chicago." I felt that my group's symbolic support of the Festival had to be withdrawn because there would be a possibility that people would follow us to the Festival and be clubbed and Maced and tear-gassed by the police and that the possibility of anything positive or loving or good coming out of that city at that time was impossible, and that I had no choice but to withdraw my support. <br />
Q. Did they say anything about that, either one? <br />
A. Abbie Hoffman said that perhaps I could come down to the park and see what was going on there because there hadn't been very much violence at all and it looked as though it might be very groovy. I said that I would try to come down the next morning, that would be Sunday morning, I would try to come down Sunday morning and see, but that I doubted very, very much if we could support or participate in the Yippie! festival. <br />
Q. Did you get down on Sunday to Lincoln Park? <br />
A. No, I did not. We left. We left in a hurry. <br />
Q. Country Joe, the question is what happened to you? Don't do any supposing about anything, just what happened to you, if anything. <br />
A. I performed two sets for the audience at the Electric Theatre. I left the Electric Theatre and on the way out was insulted by some of the people standing outside, drunk motorcyclists. <br />
Q. And what happened? <br />
A. They insulted us, we tried to be polite and avoided a violent conflict and went to our car, got in our car, drove to the Lake Shore Hotel on the Lake where we were staying, got out of our car, walked into the lobby of the hotel. We were followed by three men about my age, with crewcuts, what I would say straight looking with slacks and shirts, who were drunk. One of them began yelling about having served in Vietnam and wanted to know how I could walk around the streets looking like-- <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: I object, Mr. Kunstler stated that -- he assured the Court this was relevant. The witness has explained it now for three or four minutes and I see no relevance. <br />
THE COURT: He got down to the Lake Shore Drive Hotel and he is telling about some drunken man. That is nothing that happened to him. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Well, an incident in a moment will happen to him. <br />
THE COURT: He may continue. <br />
<i>[Judge Hoffman leans over -- he is interested in what happened to Country Joe]</i> <br />
BY MR. KUNSTLER: <br />
Q. Then what happened? <br />
A. Then I attempted to get into the elevator with my organist, David Cohen, and I was struck in the face by this person, my nose was fractured. My organist attempted to get out of the elevator to get to a phone to call the police. He was then struck in the face. They scuffled about in the lobby. Then all three of them ran out the back door. The police were called, newspapers were called, I was taken to the hospital by the police, and they fixed my fractured nose the best they could. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: The witness is with you. <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Thank you, Mr. Kunstler. <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: My pleasure. <br />
<b>CROSS EXAMINATION</b> <br />
BY MR. SCHULTZ: <br />
Q. You don't mind if I call you Mr. McDonald, do you Mr. McDonald? <br />
A. No, sir. <br />
Q. Mr. McDonald, you said that on a particular occasion you told Rubin about shooting to kill. Do you remember that in your testimony? <br />
A. I hate to say that I said something that I didn't say -- the way that you are wording it -- Perhaps you could word it a different way. <br />
Q. What did you say? <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: Your Honor, he wants to finish to answer to the question. <br />
BY MR. SCHULTZ: What did you say about shoot to kill? <br />
Q. I said that there were very negative responses from my friends and people in what is termed the underground youth community in response to Mayor Daley's order to the police to shoot to kill as far as rioters were concerned in the ghetto of Chicago in the riots of April. <br />
Q. Did you tell Rubin that what the Mayor said was to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone who was in the process of throwing a Molotov Cocktail at a building? <br />
A. Yes, I did. <br />
<i>[Schultz tries to trip up Joe - Mayor Daley's shoot to kill order was given on April 15th]</i> <br />
Q. That is how you put it, right? Now, by the way, when was that conversation? <br />
A. That conversation was in Jerry Rubin's apartment about a month - no two months after - it was April, late April. <br />
Q. About when in April was it, please? <br />
A. If you take the month and divide it up in four parts, it is in the third fourth. <br />
Q. Did they (Hoffman and Rubin) tell you that during the time they were negotiating with the authorities to get permits, some of the things that Hoffman said in his writings and orally were that during the convention the people would fight the police? Did they say that? <br />
A. Gosh, that's really a strange question. Perhaps you could say it again. <br />
Q. I am asking you as to whether or not Rubin and Hoffman told you that when they were negotiating for permits during that period one of the things that they were stating was that people would fight the police during the convention? <br />
A. They couldn't say that because that would be a lie, you know. <br />
Q. No, I am asking you whether or not one of them said that he had said that or written that? <br />
A. Of course not. <br />
Q. Or that they had said that there would be public fornication during the convention week out in the parks? <br />
A. Your Honor, I deal in words, that is my job. I write songs. I have been doing that for about ten years. Certain words have certain connotations and multi-meanings to them, and in the world that I live in, in what is probably called the hippie underground, when we refer to fornication, we are not really referring to the actual sexual act of fornication at all times; we are referring to a spiritual togetherness that can be done without physical contact at all. <br />
Q. Let me ask you this way: did they tell you when they were negotiating with public officials that they told the public official that people during the convention would fuck in the parks? Did they tell you that? <br />
A. I get arrested for saying that. <br />
Q. Did they tell you that that is what they were doing in their negotiations, these were some of the things that they said? <br />
A. That is ridiculous. <br />
Q. They did say that, didn't they? <br />
A. What did -- I don't want to trap myself. What did you say? <br />
Q. You are not being trapped, I am asking you -- <br />
A. What did you say to me? <br />
Q. I am asking you whether or not either of them told you that when they were trying to get permits and negotiating with the city? <br />
A. This question implies that they did say that, doesn't it? <br />
Q. They didn't, did they? <br />
A. Well, doesn't it imply that, though? <br />
Q. Yes, it does. <br />
A. Well, for me to answer that question is for me to acknowledge the fact that you made an statement that is rational. <br />
Q. Now I am asking you the question -- are you done? <br />
A. Yes, I am done. <br />
Q. I am asking you the question as to whether or not either of them told you that that is what they had said to city officials? <br />
A. Your Honor, that is a leading question, I mean, really -- <br />
THE COURT: You may answer it, sir. I order you to answer the question. Read it to the witness. <br />
<i>[question read]</i> <br />
BY THE WITNESS: <br />
A. I can't remember that ever arising. <br />
Q. Did Abbie Hoffman offer to pay you, by the way, for your playing in the park? <br />
A. We made it known to him that we would do everything for free. <br />
Q. You made it known to him, did you not, that the other musicians, if you could get them, were going to do it for nothing, without cost, isn't that right? <br />
A. No, I never said that. <br />
Q. Did you tell him that some of the other musicians were going to charge? <br />
A. No, I never said that. <br />
Q. Did you tell him that you were arranging with the other musicians for them to do it for nothing? <br />
A. No, I never said that. <br />
Q. Did you discuss with him what the other musicians were going to charge if they were going to charge? <br />
A. No. <br />
Q. Did you discuss payment of the other musicians with either Hoffman or Rubin? <br />
A. I don't discuss money with my friends. <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: Oh, I have no more questions, your honor. <br />
THE COURT; You have no more questions? <br />
MR. SCHULTZ: No. <br />
THE COURT: Is there any redirect examination of this witness? <br />
MR. KUNSTLER: I don't think so, your honor. <br />
THE COURT: All right. You may go. <br />
<i>[witness excused]</i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDHBLNWSIYyVyTlzqD-tMv0diKf4N68Epra7LMmMNH8YHmsmFRulwf9nt0MjSbx3XbKhhTAt4e-nTcuQEFz-xqgCwSPxODecroWzQK1q-t1zfksVIOAfl4j9hr4g3jDdjSMl-XZpN0ANc/s1600/fbi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="459" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDHBLNWSIYyVyTlzqD-tMv0diKf4N68Epra7LMmMNH8YHmsmFRulwf9nt0MjSbx3XbKhhTAt4e-nTcuQEFz-xqgCwSPxODecroWzQK1q-t1zfksVIOAfl4j9hr4g3jDdjSMl-XZpN0ANc/s640/fbi.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I requested my FBI files and was sent this. I appealed for more than this and my appeal was denied. These two pages of my files document a phone call from San Francisco to Chicago via Washington D.C. at the time period of the Chicago trial validating our fears that the Country Joe and The Fish phone in San Francisco was indeed taped by the FBI. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
<br />
<i> </i> </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<center> </center><center></center><center><img alt="_____________________" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /></center><center> <br />
<a href="http://www.countryjoe.com/index.html"><img align="MIDDLE" alt="" border="0" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmfist.gif" /><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">H O M E</span></a> </center></center>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-42290810938489404332010-09-22T13:47:00.000-07:002010-10-06T12:22:45.860-07:00Summer of 65<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKziNgRAb2nVCtLi2fH7KWRb4dRodSFxv05uoQai3ziibCI2shA6midW1JgL-DvsokPdlttaVZLH6grRG5xj3XWDaCiJJcYf4D_XowC7Cf3iESqE5LkiT-E4jhYCVuHykjb0S7SNKulcE/s320/gibsonold.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me playing my Epiphone F hole guitar at the Berkeley Marina. Photo taken by Jeff Blankfort who I have lost contact with. This was a PR shot. I was planning my career. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKziNgRAb2nVCtLi2fH7KWRb4dRodSFxv05uoQai3ziibCI2shA6midW1JgL-DvsokPdlttaVZLH6grRG5xj3XWDaCiJJcYf4D_XowC7Cf3iESqE5LkiT-E4jhYCVuHykjb0S7SNKulcE/s1600/gibsonold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
SUMMER OF 1965<br />
<br />
In the summer of l965 I was in our upstairs flat on Grove Street in Berkeley, near Ashby Avenue, that my wife Kathe Werum and I rented when the doorbell rang. A woman named Nina Serrano dropped by to ask me if I would write some songs for a play about the Vietnam War. The name of the play was Change Over and it was written by Fred Hayden and directed by Nina. <br />
<br />
I have no idea how she knew about me or that I wrote songs. Kathe and I had just moved up from Los Angeles a few months before and knew almost no one in town. Both Nina and Saul would move in and out of my life for the next forty years but I could not have had any idea of that then. I agreed to take on the project and took a copy of the script and went to a rehearsal of the play. There were spots in the play for me to write songs. One spot was for a Madam of a whorehouse to sing a song and I wrote the song “Red Hot Mama” for her:<br />
<br />
SHE’S GOT GIRLS THAT JUMP AND GIRLS THAT BALL
<br />
AND IF YOU AIN’T HAD MAMAS AIN’T HAD NOTHING AT ALL
<br />
BUT IF YOU WANT TO USE THE CREDIT PLAN
<br />
YOU BETTER GO HOME DADDY WORK IT OUT BY HAND
<br />
<br />
Aside from the two performances of the play, that song almost never was heard or performed. I did perform it solo at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in the early 70s. <br />
<br />
Another song was for three Vietnamese soldiers before a battle. The first one was a woman who had sacrificed all for the revolution and the army. The second was a coward forced to join the army and fight and the third was a killer who had learned to love killing for revenge. The song came out of the play dialogue and was hard for me to write. I got its chorus:<br />
<br />
WHO AM I? TO STAND AND WONDER....TO WAIT
<br />
WHILE THE WHEELS OF FATE
<br />
SLOWLY GRIND MY LIFE AWAY
<br />
WHO AM I?
<br />
<br />
But the verses were hard and it took three days for finish the song, “Who Am I.” The song became part of my and Country Joe and The Fish’s repertoire and is loved by people even today. Since the audience aside from the play had no idea of the plot I have always wondered what the appeal of the song was. I paused at my little desk after finishing the song and strummed a few chords on my guitar and the idea for “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” came into my head. Within a few minutes I had written my most famous song. So of course this was a very good day’s work for this songwriter.<br />
<br />
I had no way of knowing that the “Fixing to Die” song would become not only my most famous song but an important antiwar song woven into the fabric of America and the Vietnam War generation. I chose the title because a man named ED Denson had become my friend and he owned a record company named Takoma Records with the famous guitarist John Fahey and had just rediscovered a blues singer named Bukka White. Bukka White had a well-known song he wrote and sang called “I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die.” I liked the title and put the term “Rag” at the end as a black humor sort of thing. I published the song in my little magazine I was putting out with ED Denson and Mike Beardslee called Rag Baby magazine.<br />
<br />
Although that song was due to become famous and well known because of a chance performance by me at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 and subsequent movie and record set, it never earned much money as famous songs go and made me rather infamous. Perhaps the addition of a four-letter cheer which started out spelling FISH but ended up as FUCK had something to do with that. But perhaps not. The Vietnam War has remained controversial for decades and the antiwar position can still start a fight. This was an era when the word “fuck” was never printed in newspapers or magazines or said in public. Of course the song had an unflattering view of our national leadership in the war and expressed an attitude for soldiers that some might consider treasonous.<br />
<br />
The song went on to be well loved by war protesters and soldiers alike even up to today.<br />
<br />
In the summer of 1965 I was sitting on the steps of the Associated Students of University of California Berkeley building playing my guitar. It was during the time of the Berkeley Folk Festivals – events dreamed up and produced by a Berkeley man named Barry Olivier. Thousands of people came and listened to folk music and attended workshops and concerts. I could not afford to go to any paid events and along with many other young people sat on the steps and played music.<br />
<br />
I met a young teenager there, Barry Melton. He was playing a guitar also and he started playing guitar to the songs I was singing, something we have done now for over forty years. We instantly got along very well on many levels. We had much in common from a family point of view. His parents were active in the left-wing labor movement. His father was a country boy and his mother was an intellectual Jewish woman. Our sense of humor was the same. And musically we really jelled, having a certain something together that has been entertaining to us and the audience for years. We also had a common attraction to mind-altering substances.<br />
<br />
I was playing songs from my repertoire which included original tunes and folk songs and protest songs. We must have been doing OK because we got an invite to open for a couple from Canada named Ian and Sylvia who had a hit song “Leaving on A Jet Plane.” They were playing in the little student restaurant at the bottom of the Associated Students building called The Bear’s Lair, after the University mascot the California Bear. Playing bass with them that night was the famous bass player Harvey Brooks. He went on to play with Bob Dylan and The United States of America and countless other musical entities. For Barry and me, this was our first gig together. This was not Country Joe and The Fish; it was Barry Melton and Joe McDonald ....the Country Joe and The Fish thing was a few months away and would also play heavily in both of our lives for the rest of our lives.<br />
<br />
I did manage to go to a free workshop on the blues that day held in the Student Body building. I think it was Bukka White teaching a how-to-play-the-blues workshop. After it was over I went up to ask something about the blues and met for the first time a man named Stefan Grossman, who went on to be a famous guitar player and teacher. In response to my question about the blues, Stefan turned to me and said, “Forget it, you will never be able to play the blues.” I remember this because it was so odd that he would even talk to me as I did not know him. I thought he was wrong, and he was, of course. I think that was and is the only time we interacted in our lives.<br />
<br />
I had been living in Berkley for a few months. My wife Kathe and I had moved up from Los Angeles with the intention of living in San Francisco but the large size of the city scared us. So after a brief spell of living with her aunt and uncle, Larry and Virginia Horowitz, in Lafayette, we moved into a flat in Berkeley at the corner of Shattuck.<br />
<br />
It was there that I put music to the Robert W. Service poem about WWI, “The Ballad of Jean Desprez,” and wrote “Section 43,” the instrumental. “Section 43” was played with acoustic guitar, top and bottom strings lowered to D, and a G major harmonica on a rack. I later taught the band Country Joe and The Fish how to play it and it was recorded in 1966 on the second Rag Baby EP. <br />
<br />
The Jean Desprez poem came from a collection of poems titled Rhymes of a Red Cross Man. After discharge from the Navy I stayed in Los Angeles with my sister Nancy and her husband Charles Montgomery. I got a job delivering frozen shrimp in a small factory in Los Angeles. Nancy and Charles lived right across from Los Angeles State College where I attended school for a couple of semesters. The job was kind of strange in that all the employees were Japanese women who spoke very little English. And I had just gotten back from two years in the Navy in Japan. The owner and his secretary were not Japanese.<br />
<br />
The employees all wore paper hats over their hair and smocks and sat around a table filling boxes of breaded shrimp and putting them into bigger boxes and then I took them into the walk in freezer. I also took the frozen shrimp boxes and put them into a truck and drove them somewhere. I took the bus to and from work. One day I noticed a very small used-book store and walked in and saw the little book of poems Rhymes of a Red Cross Man by Robert W. Service. I liked the cover art. Service had been a Red Cross stretcher-bearer in WWI and the book was dedicated to his brother, who was a Lieutenant and was killed in the war. One day a year of so later I put the poem to music. I remember that I always started to cry at the dramatic end of the song and that it took maybe five or six times singing it before I could do so without crying.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRaMCZ1HlD6Sl2XrhYHjoncZHgEVSHX8SKO0xUAUOrMIp-qSi9CUbekYjFyHaMJ389l_me0Zp5rFUicD5qy6_cKE_4ey2wS_QaeVq5bMTAqUe67TFOZilPdbJrGBiTmlp8TG2vf-2nnC8/s1600/warlive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRaMCZ1HlD6Sl2XrhYHjoncZHgEVSHX8SKO0xUAUOrMIp-qSi9CUbekYjFyHaMJ389l_me0Zp5rFUicD5qy6_cKE_4ey2wS_QaeVq5bMTAqUe67TFOZilPdbJrGBiTmlp8TG2vf-2nnC8/s320/warlive.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I used to go to events in Berkeley called Teaton Tea Parties arranged by some people, one of them being Kevin Langdon. We would sit around in someone’s house and sing folk songs and drink a mulled warm red wine called Teaton Tea. It was great fun. And it was there that I got into performing the Jean Desprez ballad, which was almost ten minutes long. But in that environment often people would sing very long folk songs so it was not so unusual. Years later the song was inspiration for me putting many of the poems to music and recording the album War War War that is still a hit today, and it was one of the hits from that album. Especially in England where I sang it on the Old Gray Whistle Test TV show and at the Bath and Bikershaw Music Festivals.<br />
<br />
I somehow had gotten to know Ed Denson, co-owner of Takoma Records with genius guitarist John Fahey, who started the school of the New American Guitar. ED knew about my little magazine Et Tu that I started when I was a student at LA State College and in the Folk Music Club. My wife Kathe designed the dove motif cover for that magazine. I put out about five issues, I am not sure exactly how many. I left the last copies of the magazine at the Jabberwocky Coffeehouse for sale and I don’t know what happened to them. The owner Bill Elhert, the Jolly Blue Giant, can’t remember either. Malvina Reynolds was an adviser on that magazine and I had sent copies to Pete Seeger. Malvina lived in Berkeley and I went to see her when I moved there and asked her to be an adviser and she said sure.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhsdjQJzErLIcqEHb2SUbgDsH74_I0bedx7EWvmNL9WESPGLg5yCQAm5dbPVln93fMWyZMLdTdfkwqcOyp6rrtERZTwsLWVQyjaMkx0tLtxinY9lrDXR9A3e9AsnphhqRU04ISiSb_Xw/s1600/ragbaby.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhsdjQJzErLIcqEHb2SUbgDsH74_I0bedx7EWvmNL9WESPGLg5yCQAm5dbPVln93fMWyZMLdTdfkwqcOyp6rrtERZTwsLWVQyjaMkx0tLtxinY9lrDXR9A3e9AsnphhqRU04ISiSb_Xw/s320/ragbaby.gif" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But Ed and I wanted to start a new Berkeley magazine about the folk music scene with articles and songs and schedules of what was happening. I knew another guy, Michael Beardslee, from a group therapy group I was going to. I knew Mike was an artist so I asked him to help with the artwork and the three of us formed DMB publications for Denson, McDonald, and Beardslee.We started making the magazine Rag Baby, which turned into Rag Baby Records.
Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-5073905054205741962010-09-21T23:32:00.000-07:002010-09-21T23:32:04.527-07:00Veterans and Joan Baez<style>
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormalIndent, li.MsoNormalIndent, div.MsoNormalIndent { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkFs9nvvxawR36cbgv_G2Lc-G1jkNZfLcqOdD0l1XyT7NUxslfu4klQvs7Uhoe1TzenkJZoFIizaXaaYcY-Y81nc53DhZ711sGZ7mXsH7oJ35SWrh-8ZsTUmt0owv-TsLrdwxd89auM2g/s1600/baez+girls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkFs9nvvxawR36cbgv_G2Lc-G1jkNZfLcqOdD0l1XyT7NUxslfu4klQvs7Uhoe1TzenkJZoFIizaXaaYcY-Y81nc53DhZ711sGZ7mXsH7oJ35SWrh-8ZsTUmt0owv-TsLrdwxd89auM2g/s320/baez+girls.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<b><u>VETERANS AND JOAN BAEZ</u></b><br />
<br />
During the Vietnam War, I always thought that the group that made the most sense was the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). After all, they actually had been to Vietnam and participated in the fighting. They spoke from personal experience. Most people in the Peace Movement or supporting the war had no experience in the war and had never been to Vietnam. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Because I felt my family had been betrayed by the left wing, which never offered us support during the Un-American investigation and when my father lost his job, I had no love of the left.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I was also at this time a U. S. Navy veteran, having served three years in the Navy Air Force. I enlisted after graduation from Arroyo High School in l959 in El Monte, California. I was walking by a Navy recruitment office and saw a poster that I liked. It was a picture of a sailor standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier holding a flag in each hand. The wind blew through his hair and whipped around the flags and his uniform. I thought I would look very good doing this and that girls would really like me. I was 17 years old. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGzdBSo7F74syq2IaIebrpZN5I2OeDxfEHrcrq-7a_k3bwJ_S-izBlI40fiA17kWHv-okKQJuABWZeB9be4uUW45o3WOLHL3exKjV0V0l48iUBujZqfHiWC1gjgL4xiEytaqjuiICfUM/s1600/dd214.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqJNbQYvLO8_FYrF4GQUPZuaHexgmJMgd4H9mU3NlT7CcXUU3TjmIEcbNugdWThWWrF_MQOgbOSwJILMEMVKLivBTefrAvQLqOAHXMSrk_HUrUN-6WK2MHEPGDgomOzcPvSO7WjIo4Pk/s1600/hon+discharge.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqJNbQYvLO8_FYrF4GQUPZuaHexgmJMgd4H9mU3NlT7CcXUU3TjmIEcbNugdWThWWrF_MQOgbOSwJILMEMVKLivBTefrAvQLqOAHXMSrk_HUrUN-6WK2MHEPGDgomOzcPvSO7WjIo4Pk/s320/hon+discharge.gif" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I think that I also was interested in proving that my family was patriotic. The whole FBI-congressional investigation into my family and their left-wing sympathies and the local publicity when my father pleaded the 5<sup>th</sup> Amendment and refused to cooperate had left a bad taste in my mouth.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I did accomplish this: I served three years in the U.S. Navy Air Force. I did boot camp in San Diego, played in the Drum and Bugle Corps there, learned Air Traffic Control in the Navy School at Olathe, Kansas, served one and one half years at Naval Air Station Atsugi Japan in flight operations and six months on a gunnery range in Ibaraki Prefecture at a little village called Mito, and received an honorable discharge as a third class petty officer just before my 21<sup>st</sup> birthday in 1962.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I didn’t hate the Vietnamese Communists or the American soldiers fighting the war. They were all just people fighting for their lives who had very little control over their lives. I hated the brass, the leaders of all sides who sat in comfortable offices and gave orders to workers. I hated the bosses in and out of uniform who really cared more for theory and philosophy than the rank and file, government officials of the left and right. I felt very comfortable with the working class Vietnam Veterans while most of the Peace Movement did not. I always helped them when I could and paid my own expenses to do so.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>In 1971 I gathered with a small group of people in a living room in Berkeley to watch a just-finished 16mm black and white film documenting an event where Vietnam Veterans confessed to what they felt were “war crimes.” The event was called the Winter Soldier Investigation and the film was called the <i>Winter Soldier Film</i>. There were expenses from the making of the film that needed to be paid off. It was decided that Joan Baez and I would give a concert in San Francisco at the Cow Palace to help pay off these expenses and finish the film.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I had never met Joan Baez before the concert. My family had attended a concert in Pasadena once to hear her sing. My father fell asleep and later said she “had a screechy voice.” He said the same thing about a relative of his who would sing at family events during his growing-up years. My sister and her husband Charles Montgomery had Joan’s first Vanguard folk albums when I lived with them after I got out of the Navy. I had listened to them many, many times. I liked those albums a lot. I later saw her perform at Big Sur at Esalon Institute. I wrote about that in a very angry way in my little magazine <i>Rag Baby</i>. But I had never had a conversation with her. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>The Cow Palace was full that day, probably due more to Joan than me, to say the least, as she was a big star. The setup was that we both were onstage together and took turns singing. We were both solo with acoustic guitars. She did some of her songs and then said to the audience, “I know you have heard some bad things about him but he is a nice guy so please give him a chance,” and then I got my turn to sing. Then we had an intermission.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>During the show I could hear some Vietnam Veterans in the stands yelling stuff. At intermission a Nam vet, Mike Oliver, came into my dressing room very upset because no one had announced what the benefit was for and that there was an upcoming demonstration against the war right there in San Francisco. He pleaded with me to tell the people. I agreed.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>After the intermission, back onstage, when it came time for my turn to sing, I told the audience about the <i>Winter Soldier Film</i> and the upcoming demonstration against the war. As I was talking Joan walked across the stage smiling and stood beside me as I talked and ground her boot into mine so that it actually hurt. To the audience it looked like a friendly gesture. Then she walked back to her microphone. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>At the end of the show the promoter Barry Olivier brought an enormous bouquet of flowers up onstage and gave them to Joan. The crowd cheered. She bowed and walked across the stage past me and threw the whole thing into my arms and went to her dressing room. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Days later Michael Olivier called me to tell me the benefit showed no profit at all due to lots of expenses. I called up Joan and asked her how it could be that we filled the Cow Palace and made no money for the <i>Winter Soldier Film</i>. She yelled something to me about being condescending and hung up the phone. I called Michael and told him what happened. A few days later he called to tell me that Joan had given them $30 thousand, which paid for the production of the film. Joan never mentioned the incident to me.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>This passive-aggressive technique seemed to be her style. Years and years later, at the Bread and Roses Benefit Concert at the Greek Theatre on the University of California Berkeley campus to benefit her sister Mimi Fariña’s organization that brought music to those who could not get out, she drew blood.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
We were all in the dressing room area below the main level. There was a little room used as a dressing room. It was the only place you could get privacy. About 20 minutes before my set, Joan locked herself in that room and put on her “Bob Dylan” costume. I tried to get in to get ready for my set ...but no luck. Then she of course made a surprise appearance as Bob Dylan. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>After the show we all gathered for a group shot for <i>Newsweek</i> magazine. I was behind her in the group and put up two fingers in the old devil horns trick. Joan just reached up and grabbed my hand and dug her fingernails into my palm. To the camera it seemed again a loving gesture between old friends. When it was over I looked and she had drawn blood.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I don’t mean to go on and on about the woman but I think my interaction with her was startling to me and memorable because I thought we had such a lot in common. At the Hollywood Bowl Woody Guthrie concert, Pete Seeger was lobbying to have the ensemble close the show singing <i>I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag</i>. During rehearsal I asked Joan if that happened if she might join in and do the “Fuck” cheer with me, as she had just been sharing some amazing facts with me about her sex life. “No,” she replied. “Joe, that would ruin my image.”</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>Joan was a pacifist and married David Harris who went to jail for years rather than accept military service and kill. I was not a pacifist but did not feel that the killing in Vietnam was accomplishing anything. Joan and her sisters had a poster out with the words “Girls say no to boys who say yes,” implying that girls should not have sex with men who go into military service. </div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>I was ex-military and in fact did like having sex with girls at the time of the concert. I was married to Robin Menken and had a two-year-old daughter, Seven Ann. These issues seem trivial today but were quite emotional then. I do feel to this day that the Vietnam War America fought was wrong and that the soldiers who fought it were not to blame. I still feel that the Peace Movement was wrong to not embrace military personnel back then and today also. Many pacifists supported military personnel and also many military personnel were homosexual. Joan herself was to come out as a bisexual later on so the whole don’t-have-sex-with-boys thing seems a bit off now.</div><div class="MsoNormalIndent" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
<span> </span>But the fact is Joan did something. She was one of the only visible women who took a stand on the war and that is to her credit. It was such a divisive time that it is hard for us to imagine now.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i></i></div>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-43744707558890533362010-09-21T16:36:00.000-07:002010-09-21T16:36:21.474-07:00Janis Joplin<center> <h3><img alt="Country Joe's Place" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmhead2.gif" /></h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3tnBg9Atpy-aHEfujRhxsSJoqD3RfIDlCSAD07XpZt3HwBOtGfrlGyLYb_Kk02szbV3spoPMnVX_E_dJJpxZEaJ_V8EuLVGK0AU3mEOqtHOfciwGWlhXXOB1hCGxKWbt7IbwbRbF3BdQ/s1600/janis+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3tnBg9Atpy-aHEfujRhxsSJoqD3RfIDlCSAD07XpZt3HwBOtGfrlGyLYb_Kk02szbV3spoPMnVX_E_dJJpxZEaJ_V8EuLVGK0AU3mEOqtHOfciwGWlhXXOB1hCGxKWbt7IbwbRbF3BdQ/s320/janis+.jpg" /></a></div><h1><br />
</h1><img alt="_____________________" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> </center> <br />
<table align="CENTER"><tbody>
<tr><td> <i><br />
</i> <br />
<center><b>JANIS JOPLIN</b></center> I was in Santiago, Chile, producing the music to a left-wing movie directed by Saul Landau, Nina Serrano and Raúl Ruiz. I got the news: Janis Joplin was dead! She was found in a motel room in Los Angeles choked on her own vomit while high on heroin. She was not yet 30 years old. She was recording with her new band and on top of the world: becoming rich, famous and a "super star." Like the upcoming elections in Chile it seemed as though it was the beginning of a brand new day ... but it wasn’t.<br />
<br />
A few days later in the remote copper mining town of Copiapó I burned a candle at a small religious shrine in memory of my old girl friend. Then I walked over to the town square where the film crew had sent the stage for a political rally. But problems had delayed the shoot. So I was asked if I could entertain the crowd ... and stall for time. I strapped on my brand new deluxe Martin guitar.<br />
<br />
A few nights before I had asked if I could visit a <i>población,</i> one of the squatters settlements in Santiago set up by the revolutionary Miristas for the homeless of the city. I was told that they were waiting for me. I brought my guitar and went. That evening in the central building I was taken into an almost empty room except for a mattress on a bed frame. In the bed was a young man and a young woman.<br />
<br />
The man was a wanted fugitive revolutionary. He asked through an interpreter if I would sing a song. I took out my guitar. He asked how much it cost. I said 1500 dollars. He said," I could buy a machine gun for that." I sang the song "Mr. Big Pig," which had a driving beat to a chorus of: <br />
<br />
<blockquote><i> You don’t have to be a man, to be the man </i></blockquote>and verse lyrics like: <br />
<br />
<blockquote><i> Mr Big Pig likes to be safe, he always brings tear gas<br />
And a little bit of mace<br />
With all his equipment he feels pretty big<br />
But it takes more than guns to make more than a pig<br />
Shot guns, squad cars, walky talky too<br />
Mr Big Pig you just look like a fool </i></blockquote> When I finished he said, "That is your machine gun."<br />
<br />
So here I was in the little Chilean town of Copiapó with my "machine gun" standing on a small wooden stage erected for a fictional political rally with a group of several hundred copper miners and their families staring at me with bemused interest. They did not speak English. I sang my song "Janis." <br />
<br />
<blockquote><i> Into my life on waves of electrical sound<br />
And flashing light she came<br />
Into my life with the twist of a dial<br />
The wave of her hand<br />
The warmth of her smile </i></blockquote> Years before in the San Francisco public park known as the "panhandle" I had announced to Janis Joplin that I thought we should break up. I said it was too difficult with our band schedules and my hitch hiking back and forth across the Bay from Berkeley to San Francisco. She asked me to write her a song "before you get too far away from me." I agreed and a few weeks later in a hotel room in Canada I wrote: <br />
<br />
<blockquote><i> Even though I know that you and I<br />
Could never find the kind of love we wanted<br />
Together, alone, I find myself<br />
Missing you and I<br />
You and I </i></blockquote> So in memory of her that day I sang that song to those people in the little square. As I was singing a young man and woman who had driven all the way from Berkeley, California in a Volkswagen van pulled into the town. They got out and in an LSD fog walked over to one of the film crew and asked "what’s going on?" They were told and looked up and saw me singing the song for Janis. They had seen me many times in Berkeley singing the song. The were amazed at the timing of it all. They got back in their van and drove off. I finished the song and the movie filming went on. Afterwards at the top of a mountain later that night I thought about the last time I had seen Janis … alive. <br />
<br />
<hr /> In a drunken and stoned rage she had cursed me and my wife Robin and daughter Seven Ann. We had just returned from Europe where I had toured solo and recorded the album <i>Hold On It’s Coming.</i> I was to be part of a huge Shea Stadium anti-Vietnam War concert . The concert was organized by Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter Paul and Mary. I never saw Peter that day and I was not included in the show because it was too full of other stars wanting to protest the war. I remember John Fogerty jamming with Santana, or so I was told, as I never got to see the stage.<br />
<br />
We had cut short our stay to rush home and be a part of the event. A limo had brought us from the NYC airport. We checked in at Shea Stadium, got passes and were making our way to the area where the stage was when we saw Janis coming from the stage area. Why she was there was a puzzle to me as we had fought many times when we were going together about "protesting" anything. She thought politics were stupid and she did not need to ask anybody any "fucking thing" about anything. I could tell she was in a bad mood.<br />
<br />
The only difference this time was she was incomprehensible. I could not understand what she was talking about. But she was mad as hell. She was mad that I was with Robin. She was mad that I was not with her. She was hella pissed off ... and she was in bad shape. She stomped off to go ravage someone else. It was a relief. She was making the scene in New York City now. Free from the advice of her friends in Big Brother and the Holding Company. And loaded with money and fair weather friends like San Francisco Digger, Emmitt Grogan who I had heard was back on heroin and had convinced Janis to start using again.<br />
<br />
I did not think much of Emmitt Grogan. He was so loved by the counter culture. He was often referred to as a revolutionary and a very creative person. He was part of the group called the Diggers who started in San Francisco. They modeled themselves so I understood after the European Provos and Diggers of hundreds of years before. The old school ones were anti-materialistic and in for sharing property and stuff like that. The San Francisco Diggers had a "free store" where they gave away food and clothes and stuff they got as donations or stole<br />
<br />
I remember back in the days of the Haight Ashbury being in a Victorian flat off of the panhandle. I was in the kitchen with a bunch of women. The Diggers were in the front room talking about their daily successes and plans for the future and getting high and stuff. The women were putting them down. They were complaining about having to cook another dinner and never having any help from the men who were too busy fighting the revolution to help in the kitchen. I thought "yes, this is typical". So I was not a worshiper of Emmitt Grogan or the Diggers. But perhaps I just had a bad attitude. But the NYC heroin thing with Janis and Emmitt just fed into my attitude. Emmitt was found on a bench in the NYC subway dead of an overdose.<br />
<br />
I knew Janis was shooting drugs again because of my encounter with her in the motel in Woodstock at the Festival I had been with her in her room when she wanted me to watch her shoot up heroin and got pissed off when I left the room and would not stay.<br />
<br />
I went to NY on Thursday the day before the Festival because I really wanted to see all the bands perform and be a part of the whole event. I was quite excited about it. I don’t remember how but I got checked into the Holiday Inn that lots of people were staying at. It was not a problem, I guess because I got there a day early. I was told that when the band, Country Joe and The Fish arrived a few days later they had to fight to get rooms.<br />
<br />
I checked in and was hanging out in the lobby. There were no stars there that I remember just a bunch of regular folks. Then Janis showed up. She had a room. I guess Peggy Casserta and her were sharing a room but I don’t know. I did not see Peggy. I can’t remember if Peggy and I traveled from the airport in NYC to the festival. I don’t know why I can’t remember but I think I would remember if we had. I was not really getting stoned and drinking lots then so that is not the reason.<br />
<br />
Janis and I talked then she asked me to come to her room. We got there and right away she decided I needed to have sex. She gave me a blow job much to my surprise. Then sitting on her bed she reached over and got out her stuff to shoot up drugs. It was all quite casual and natural for her. It wasn’t for me. I could not stand needles and watching someone shoot up was sure not my idea of fun. I told her if she was going to do that I was leaving.<br />
<br />
"Shit man I helped you do your thing why won’t you stay with me while I do my thing?!" I told her her idea of what I wanted was her idea not mine and I was not going to watch her kill herself. I left her room and did not see her the rest of the festival. <br />
It was starting to get late and I decided to try and go out to the festival site. Out back of the hotel was a place that a helicopter was taking off and landing from. Bobby Newerth was out there hanging out. I think he had just come in on the last flight for the day. It was too dark to fly. I was an air traffic controller in the Navy before becoming a hippy and knew that you did not want to argue with the pilot about safety. Too bad Bill Graham did not know that or he would be with us here today. <br />
I remember we stood around a pickup truck. There was a young girl there with a bandage on her finger. She said she had been in an accident the day before ... or maybe that day. She had her hand over the side of the pickup truck bed and it had brushed against something and taken off the tip of her finger. Yikes! She seemed quite resigned to it. I went to my room and went to sleep.<br />
<br />
I rode out to the Woodstock Festival on a plane that also carried Janis’s girlfriend at the time, Peggy Casserta. I knew Peggy from the Haight Ashbury days when I lived with Janis in her apartment on Lyon Street. I did not care that Janis was bisexual or that her and Peggy were lovers. That did not enter our conversations on the plane that day. I don’t know if Peggy knew of my liaison with Janis in the hotel. It never came up. Peggy has told the press and said in her book that I stood Janis up one day and that is why we broke up ... not true. We just broke up.<br />
<br />
I remember that day as if it was just a few weeks ago. Both our bands were playing for free in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. After the show I told her I thought we should break up. I was tired of hitchhiking back and forth to my apartment in Berkeley. I had to go back and forth to practice with my band. Both our bands practiced a lot. Just about every day as a matter of fact. Then there was the gigs. We hardly ever played together on the same show. I did not have a car so it was hitchhike here and hitchhike there. I was tired of it. We were not fighting or anything like that. She said "If you leave now you can never come back." I thought that was a bit extreme. A bit stunned I said OK. I thought she should have left it open but that was not her style.<br />
<br />
A few months later, after the Monterey Pop Festival, I took up with Robin Menken. I met Janis on Mt. Tamalpais at the Mt Tamalpais Rock Festival. The Country Joe and The Fish band had been flown from the San Francisco Airport to the heliport in Sausalito. There the Hell’s Angels rode us on their motorcycles up the mountain. Janis said "You have started going with a woman I do not have much respect for." I did not understand what she meant. I was probably too immature for Janis. We were both slow learners. Too bad she did not get more time.<br />
<br />
I think Janis was pissed off that day in NYC because of what she called the "Saturday Night Burn." It went like this: When she was young she wanted to go out with the big kids and adults on Saturday night and have fun and stay out late and drink and stuff. Later when she got old enough to do it she found out that nothing happened. That it did not live up to her expectations. She was bummed. Maybe she found life without the Big Brother band and her San Francisco scene to be empty and a bummer also. She was always just a little Texas home girl in her heart and being a star probably just made her mad.<br />
<br />
It was just a few years before that I was in the audience when Chet Helms, the boss of The Family Dog concert production company at the San Francisco Avalon Ballroom dance hall, brought Janis on stage and introduced her. "Here is my friend from Texas, Janis. She is going to sing with the Big Brother and The Holding Company band." She then rocked the place with a few of her soon to be classic tunes. I always liked Big Brother, especially an instrumental called "Hall of the Mountain King." I thought she was a good addition to the band.<br />
<br />
I liked Janis. She had good energy and focus. I thought she was cute. She had a little girl quality about her. She was not full of grown up curves. She did not have large breasts or hips and wore typical hippy second hand shop mix and match clothes. But it was her spirit of life that was so entertaining. People would go on to call her the best blues singer since Billie Holiday. I always thought that was crap. She was a good rock and roll singer but no Billie Holiday. Both women could not resist the lure of drugs and would fall victim to drugs in the end.<br />
<br />
Just a few months after the Avalon concert Country Joe and The Fish and Big Brother and The Holding Company played together in Berkeley. It was a production company called Golden Sheaf Bakery, named after a real bakery that had been in Berkeley in the old days. My mother, father and little brother came up from Los Angeles to see the show. My brother and I took LSD together and we all went to the show. There was one dressing room and the three bands (another band was also on the bill) shared the dressing room. Janis and I started talking and really seem to enjoy each other’s company. We were laughing and carrying on. It always seemed like that with us. We were both Capricorns and kinda leaders of the bands we were in and both we both enjoyed just being regular people while aspiring to be entertainers also.<br />
<br />
The evening climaxed with jam between all three bands. But Janis did not participate. She never liked to jam. She liked to know exactly what was going on and although at times in her career she did get pretty loose on stage and jam ... in general she did not.<br />
<br />
We played together again at the Avalon and this time we wound up dancing together. Which seems so weird to me now as we both never danced. I guess we were just caught up in flirting and being attracted to each other. That night I went home with her to her the flat she shared in the Haight. It was totally furnished with victorian fru fru. I can’t remember the person who lived with Janis but I got the feeling it was her flat and Janis rented a room. There was always herbal tea on the stove and it was very warm and cozy.<br />
<br />
We would stay up late and listen to Larry Miller on KMPX radio, the world’s first "free form" radio station. We would call up and ask him to play a song from our then just released EPs ... and he would and we were so happy about that. She was very likable and it seemed to me very clean from drugs. There was no drug scene going on that I could see and I don’t remember us even drinking a beer.<br />
<br />
Soon afterwards she got her own apartment on Lyon Street in the Haight. I lived there with her for several months until we broke up. Bob Sideman had just taken this photo of her nude with all those beads around her neck hanging down across her breasts. She loved making necklaces and her and Linda Gravenites used to make necklaces all the time. She also did leather work. She gave me some beautiful necklaces and a leather pouch that I wore on my waist. I also had shirts that were designed by my ex girl friend Lyndall Erb. She later became tight with Janis and designed clothes for her. That was the stuff I had on at Monterey Pop Festival: Lyndall’s shirt with beaded work on it, a brown leather pouch at my waist with bead work and a bunch of necklaces Janis had made.<br />
<br />
We took those posters of her nude and put them up in her apartment all over one wall. It was my idea. I also put candles in the overhead lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was a bit pushy of me to do that to the decor of her apartment. It was her place not mine.<br />
<br />
She was so proud of that. Her mother was coming to town to visit and she just didn’t know what to make for dinner. She wanted to make "chow mein." I don’t remember what we ate. In the morning we would walk down Haight Street with her dog George. George was like a small collie type dog. Same markings as a collie but with some other mix. He was a very nice dog. She loved that dog. One day she called me crying, she cried a lot then, like a woman, very natural just upset crying. "George got hit by a car. I can’t find him anywhere. What will I do. I am so upset." I told her that he would turn up. He did, and had to have if my memory is right a bit of his tail taken off. But he was OK and recovered quickly.<br />
<br />
We would walk along. She would stop in and get a bottle of Thunderbird to drink on the way. We would meet Peggy and Peggy’s girlfriend at the time whose name I can’t remember. Freewheeling Frank the Hell’s Angel who wrote poetry with Michael McClure and other folks. We would go to Hippy Hill in the park and just enjoy the community. She was so happy then.<br />
<br />
Sometime back then we were in a sauna together in Santa Cruz high on LSD. Our bands were in the main house, which was in the woods, jamming and partying. We were doing what you can imagine boy friend and girl friend might do in that situation. All of a sudden her right hand froze and she could not move it. It started to freak me out. She said not to worry about it. That ever since she had done a lot of speed in Texas with somebody while living in a garage it happens sometimes. A few minutes later she got back movement in the hand. It was a part of her I did not share ... her life with speed and heroin.<br />
<br />
I went one afternoon over to see an event at the Fillmore that Allen Ginsberg was at. Afterwards I asked him if I could talk to him sometime about life and such. He said sure his name was in the phone book. It wasn’t so for some reason I decided to go to Berkley and talk with Mario Savio about life. I was confused about being a "hero," a rock "star." I never have figured that out. I went over and talked with Mario. <br />
He was dead set against being a hero of any kind. I argued that we needed new heroes ones that were down with the people. I enjoyed him and his wife. Janis was dead set against it. We had a big fight then. I remember her turning into someone else. She was yelling "I don’t need to ask any fucking body about nothing. I don’t need any advice from anybody".<br />
<br />
When she was living on Lyon Street I remember her playing a tape for me with that "ba ba ba ba baby" stuff in the vocal she used to do. She was so excited. She said "Joe I just made that up. Isn’t it groovy." She said she was trying to do something like Otis Redding did. She loved Otis Redding after Monterey and wanted to be "just like him." <br />
I miss Janis. She would really have enjoyed the years that have passed by. She would have been a real hero of the people in my mind. She always was a very good person she just hadn’t gotten it together yet when she died. I miss the person. I don’t miss the "superstar".<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCqqJaaRkfzlEgJIm1D56Qqn3XZurLa41oexV_KTnJkVwMw2az5yYzRCS7W5GqEx6CfNyar4bREtHNWcq1zq2xZNmse4xp2OppaYioMuNdT-Wz0XErq-NznuIOJN8L32IYQ2pr94Z0Ea4/s1600/janis+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRdC5bkCiDoGc84xhDvvE3H662WDJ0lwrFUlEZOvccAx1Qj2w13MtZaZLDkRUKSS6KOzzasVC9NBBrtPQ3VLcsAxZ8vXyszh36Virh1Xg1Q8XrgQvlMg_6GBo6vVtAeqN9gMIJPv2B8g8/s1600/janis+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><span> Copyright © 2004 by Joe McDonald. May not be reproduced in any form without express permission. </span> <br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table><center> <img alt="_____________________" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> <a href="http://countryjoe.com/index.html"><img align="MIDDLE" alt="" border="0" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmfist.gif" /><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">H O M E</span></a> </center>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-25932156997382575092010-09-20T23:02:00.000-07:002010-09-20T23:02:00.596-07:00Beginnings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VqX1ADO6_aKrlJ44NhNnKKNaUGumH5grwSVXQciC9knH8JDMec7saWKtEtjG-VXRNE52pbNonN-UMbXCV9LvXOM7ZgpcoF12u23yh4HMs6BnnAd6ppYv0pIFzeXFjU8hlP-tE5SUHnU/s1600/oldstore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VqX1ADO6_aKrlJ44NhNnKKNaUGumH5grwSVXQciC9knH8JDMec7saWKtEtjG-VXRNE52pbNonN-UMbXCV9LvXOM7ZgpcoF12u23yh4HMs6BnnAd6ppYv0pIFzeXFjU8hlP-tE5SUHnU/s320/oldstore.jpg" /></a></div><br />
BEGINNINGS<br />
<br />
I was born on January first, in a Washington, DC hospital, in the year of 1942. I was not the first child of the year but I was the first child of my parents, Worden Calhoun McDonald and Florence Plotnick. I was to learn many decades later that they were not legally married, a fact confirmed by the records kept by the FBI on my parents’ lives. My mother once growled at me, “We planned every child,” and I assumed that was the case, but my father confessed one day after I was grown that his mother had come to visit and see the new one-and-a-half-year-old grandbaby and so they “got married then.”<br />
<br />
All that aside, I was loved and my parents stayed married and were together almost every day for the rest of their lives. My mother lived into her seventies and my father into his eighties, and they died a year apart, both from cancer.<br />
<br />
Less than three years after my birth, my sister Nancy Victoria was born. These were troubled times for Eastern European emigrants and socialists, and my parents followed my mother’s parents’ lead and moved to Los Angeles County where my grandfather Harry Plotnick had a dry cleaning and tailor shop. My dad put in for a transfer from his Bell Telephone Company job and got work in the L.A. office. We settled in Culver City where I went to kindergarten and got my first guitar lessons.<br />
<br />
The family took the train across the country and my dad proudly told the story of how I would order breakfast of “sausage and eggs” in the train dining car. He was probably remembering when he “rode the rails” during the Great Depression as a hobo either on the top of the cars or in a box car with many, many other hungry unemployed hobos.
After our stay of not quite two years in Culver City, my folks found a house to buy in the sleepy little San Gabriel Valley town of El Monte, where I remained until I enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17, after graduation from Arroyo High School.<br />
As a full-grown man after my father’s death, I went with my cousin Bob McDonald to the little Oklahoma town of Sallisaw, where my father had grown up. I realized how similar El Monte and Sallisaw were. Little wonder that my father had chosen to settle in that place on a quarter-acre lot with a two-story house and immediately planted fruit trees and a vegetable garden and acquired chickens, rabbits, and even several horses. He was reliving some aspect of his childhood on McDonald Hill in Sallisaw, growing up on Old McDonald’s Farm.<br />
In El Monte, when I was ten, my brother Billy, William Patton McDonald, was born, and it was the three children and Mom and Dad for the rest of our lives.
At the age of ten I was taken to a music store and asked to blow into several instruments, and it was decided I should play the trombone in the elementary school orchestra. Thus began my musical career.
We often saw my grandparents, my mother’s parents Harry and Bessie, and Bessie’s sister Aunt Rose and Uncle Louie Zelman. The two sisters had come over together from Russia, got married on the East Coast, and moved to the West Coast at about the same time. My mother said they always wanted to be together. My grandfather Harry, I am told, was a Zionist and my grandmother Bessie a Communist. They fought over politics their whole life. Bessie had red hair and the conservative Plotnicks of Richmond, Virginia called her “Bessie the Red.” <br />
<br />
A family story was that sometimes customers would ask Harry if he had a wife and he would reply, “Oye, do I have a wife?!” in typical Jewish joke style with his Russian accent. Bessie took my mother to Communist Party meetings in Washington, DC from a very early age, and both women seemed to love meetings and socialism their whole lives. My mother late in her life became a political driving force in our hometown of Berkeley, California. She was the most elected politician ever, they say, holding office of Rent Control Board, City Council, and City Auditor. My father hated meetings.<br />
On the other side of the family, my grandmother Emma had happily married a Presbyterian minister, James Angus McDonald, who had four children from a previous marriage. She was young, and a friend said at the time “Poor Emma has had her last peaceful day.” She went on to have five children with my grandfather, two of whom died. She played the piano in the church and held the farm and the family together for decades with a smile and loving attitude. She always lived a life of Christian grace. <br />
<br />
After the Depression and early death of my grandfather, Emma moved to Fullerton, California and lived with my Aunt Beatrice, my father’s older sister, and her husband Ralph. She passed away at 93. She always stayed on the sunny side of life and my father was the youngest and her baby. Both grandmothers, besides being very different politically and socially, were a strong positive force.<br />
But that was the end of family in my life for some reason I have never understood. Probably it was politics. But even my father’s brother Angus told my cousin Henry to “go around Oklahoma, it is not worth seeing.” I don’t know about the estrangement of the Plotnicks but my mom always said, “We don’t believe blood is thicker than water.”<br />
<br />
It is a fact that there were terrible wars in Oklahoma over communism. It’s something we don’t hear about in books and school. But people shot each other over politics. And of course my mother married a non-Jewish person, which was reason to disown someone in an Orthodox family.<br />
Although we were loved and well taken care of as children, ours was not a very affectionate home. The Great Depression, the Russian and German pogroms, the Holocaust, World War II, the struggle for equal rights for African Americans, the struggle for the right to have unions for working people, and later the Un-American Communist witch hunts of the 50s took their toll on Mom and Dad. There was little to none of hugging and kissing and open affection and a kind of starkness and spareness to our lives as far as the home life was concerned.
<br />
<br />
My father turned our yard into a beautiful place of greenery. He planted fruit trees that bloomed and bore fruit and corn and other vegetables and we had dogs and rabbits and chickens and a horse and a donkey once and goats and pigs. He taught me how to be a farmer on our little piece of property there in L.A. County, and we even broke a horse together – that is, to teach a horse how to be comfortable with a rider on it and obey commands of turn left, turn right, and stop and go and stuff. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Our town had a mostly dry river bed running through it. Perhaps it was the San Gabriel River? I would ride Rebel, the horse my dad and I had broken, in the river bed, bareback at times (without a saddle). I was so small that if I fell off I would have to find a rock or something to climb up on to get back on him. He was a gelding, “cut proud” as my father used to say. A gelding is a male horse that has been castrated. “Cut proud”: I guess meant that he still had spirit. He was a pinto, brown and white. I have an old family shot of Rebel with his front feet up on a wooden platform, doing a kind of trick, with my sister on his back.
I would gallop him through the dry river bed with my BB gun. It was a Red Ryder BB rifle model. My dad had taught me that if you whistled, a running rabbit would stop and listen and then you could get a “bead,” or take aim at it and shoot. That is what I did. I don’t remember ever hitting one.
<br />
<br />
There were lots of adventures there in that river bed. It was large. It had a rock crusher in it – a big bunch of machinery that crushed up rocks into gravel. It also had a “skeet shoot.” A place that fired clay Frisbee-like things up into the air and people shot them with rifles out of the air to practice shooting. Funny thing is, I have no memory of ever seeing anyone using the rock crusher of the “skeet shoot.” But I would pick up the broken skeets as souvenirs. I don’t remember anyone else riding with me in the river bed. I would pretend to be a cowboy and go up and down grades of sand with that Southern California landscape of brush and stuff.
Dad used to sometimes take Rebel, or other horses we sometimes had, and make them run in the sand. It wore them out, he said, so that they were less inclined to misbehave. A horse that has too much energy or wants to misbehave can be a problem. It can throw you off by bucking or shying, moving suddenly to the side or even bite you or kick you. My dad said that a hand-fed colt that is treated like a pet can be a real pest later in life as it will just come into the house like a dog or cat. I like that image. <br />
<br />
After Dad and I broke Rebel to the saddle he was very gentle but he was young and full of energy. One day as I was riding around the backyard bareback, he took off in a canter in that small space and I slid off his back and fell in front of him lying on my back. I remember looking up into those big round intelligent eyes and seeing that enormous hoof coming down on my face. Our eyes made contact and he lifted his hoof and I was not even scratched. Horses are amazing animals.<br />
<br />
Dad was good at understanding the boundaries of animals with people but I don’t think he understood the boundaries of normal relationships between people. He said he always go along better with animals than people. My dad always said whenever I was thrown off a horse, “You have to get back on the horse if it throws you, otherwise the horse will think you are afraid of it and you will think you are afraid.”<br />
<br />
In his autobiography An Old Guy Who Feels Good, he said he discovered early on when he was a traveling cowboy that if he could back a horse into a corner and get a good look into its eyes, he and the horse could come to an agreement and could work together.
I think that his advice about getting back on the horse is good in moderation. Both he and I seemed to be a bit obsessive-compulsive about this. I remember in the 60s Barry Melton and I would take LSD together and sit with the Timothy Leary Tibetan Book of the Dead and light candles and read and read and read, trying to understand the bardo thing. First bardo, second bardo, and lining up your chakras and all that. We would start laughing because we just could not get what the heck he was talking about. Maybe he was talking about nothing, I don’t know, but we did that many times. Too many times. It started to be nonsense.
<br />
<br />
I got into reading the I Ching, Chinese Book of Changes, in the 60s and the Tarot Cards. I did the same thing with them. I would read the cards many times in a row and toss the coins over and over until the oracle, like a good sponsor, would get sick of my behavior and tell me to go do something else and stop thinking about myself and my future.
I remember that when the rains would come to El Monte, the river bed would fill with water and we would take inner tubes and float down the river. It was great fun, one of the few things I did with other children. Us guys would start somewhere and float as long as we could without having to hike back too far. I also remember having BB gun pretend-war fights in the river bed with other kids. <br />
<br />
Things changed when I was twelve years old. That was the year that the California Un- American Activities Committee served my father with a subpoena to appear before it and testify as to his knowledge of communist activities. He was working for the Los Angeles Bell Telephone Company and no longer a member of the Communist Party. My parents were in the Progressive Party then. They tried to serve my mother with papers but never did. My sister Nancy tells me that Mom sent her to the door to tell the FBI guys that she was not home.<br />
<br />
But my father testified. He took the Fifth Amendment. He refused to tell them anything on grounds that it might incriminate him. He was then given the choice of getting fired from his job or quitting. He quit. He was very close to having a vested pension plan. He had worked nineteen years for the telephone company. He got nothing. It makes sense that my father would quit. He was proud. He was a strong, silent, farm-boy type – an easy type to take advantage of. He would not argue and defend himself with a lawyer and stuff like a city person might have done. It was hard after that. He said one day that he remembered that when he would go into a store as an employee of the telephone company the ladies “would treat you with such respect.” Well, they sure did not treat him as a suspected communist enemy of the country with respect. And we began a downward social and financial decline.
Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-23124495496284600642010-09-20T11:16:00.000-07:002010-09-20T11:16:03.440-07:00Chelsea Hotel
CHELSEA HOTEL
<br />
<br />
I started staying in the Chelsea Hotel in NYC because the Vanguard Record Company’s studio was on 23rd Street and so was the Chelsea Hotel. I had no experience at all with New York City before 1967 when Country Joe and The Fish, the electric version, began to record albums in the Vanguard studio. Well perhaps I did, although the first album was recorded in Berkeley at Bob DeSousa’s studio. Soon afterwards we did get a job playing at the Cafe Au Go Go in the Village, in NYC, and perhaps that was the first time I stayed at the Chelsea. But no matter, it became pretty much the hotel of choice for over several decades for me playing with various configurations musically of rock bands, duets, and solo.<br />
<br />
The man who wrote “Tubby The Tuba” a story that involved a talking tuba that was quite popular when I was a kid, lived in the Chelsea. His daughter used to hang out with my bass player Peter Albin, during the All Star Band period. We always stayed at the Chelsea. My second wife and mother of my daughter Seven Anne, Robin Menken, threw some really dramatic scenes at the Chelsea. She had come on tour with me when we were boy friend, girl friend and we fought so much at the Chelsea that I sent her home. She was in the lobby crying and crying with our manager Ed Denson and her film magazine collection. As they waited for the cab to take her away to the airport. That of course was not the last I saw of her as we got married and the marriage is featured on the whole album cover of Country Joe and The Fish’s TOGETHER album. <br />
<br />
There was a period of time in the 1970s that Barry Melton and I toured as an acoustic duo. We were billed as Country Joe and The Fish sometimes. Though that always seemed to me to be stretching the truth, Barry seemed quite pleased with it as he had taken to calling himself Barry “The Fish” Melton. But never mind that bullocks.<br />
<br />
I remember Barry and I sharing a room at the Chelsea. I had been working out with free weights and also running or jogging you might say. I was following Franco Columbu’s weight exercise program, something that I still do today. I was in very good shape. I convinced Barry that we should take weights with us on the road. I had a special box with barbells in them. It seems so totally stupid now but I have always been anxious about leaving my routine home and going on the road, and so this seemed a way to take a bit of my home routine with me. We of course did not have roadies to carry the stuff around so we had to. <br />
<br />
I remember one time getting onto a small plane to take us to Uncertain, Texas for a gig for some dope dealers out in the boonies and the look on the pilot’s face as he lifted up this very heavy metal box and me telling him it had our weights in it. Anyway Barry was in not so good shape and I convinced him to try an exercise routine. He had a bad leg from a motorcycle accident years before Country Joe and The Fish so running was not possible, but the free-weight thing just might work. <br />
<br />
There in that room I worked my routine and ran the streets of NYC. I have some nice pictures that a guy named Sidney took of me back then running and looking very fit....nice. Barry had been game up to one day in the Chelsea when he was lying on his back doing Franco Columbu’s arm extensions with the dumb bells and smacked himself in the forehead with the weight. He lost interest after that. So he would go out and do stuff and I would stay and work out. This was the reverse of what we sometimes did later when he was studying for the bar, to become a lawyer, with a mail order study course, and I would go out and party and he would stay back at the hotel and study and say, “McDonald, you live on the material plane.”<br />
<br />
So while he was out one day I decided to shave my body like the guys in the Pumping Iron book and film. So I did. It took a bit of time and I washed all that hair down the drain of the Chelsea Hotel shower. It sure does work though on your body like when you shave off facial hair you always look younger. When Barry came back and he saw me in my shorts without my shirt on he said, “You know Joe, this working out has you looking years younger.” <br />
<br />
Tucky Bailey played flute and alto sax with the All Star Band. Before joining the band she had played background music for Toad the Mime who performed on the street in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. She had never been to NYC until we got some work there. It was the fashion to go to Max’s Kansas City and eat at the restaurant on the ground floor and see a show, or play our show in the club upstairs. They had chickpeas and a great salad with blue cheese dressing. <br />
<br />
The night I remember the three women in the band, Tucky Bailey, Anna Rizzo the drummer, and Dorothy Moskowitz the piano player, went upstairs to see Tim Hardin play. Tim had a problem with drugs and seemed very, very stoned that night. He was wearing what seemed to be a kimono and had a small group backing him. He seemed oblivious to the audience. The ladies got very drunk and kept yelling shit at Tim. It was pretty embarrassing to me but I could not stop them.<br />
<br />
At the end of the night we went back to the Chelsea Hotel and Tucky and I got into the elevator. She then threw up. I told her, “Wow Tucky, your first day in NYC and you ate at Max’s Kansas City, got drunk and yelled at Tim Hardin, and threw up in the Chelsea Hotel. You’ve had quite an introduction to New York City.Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-2698064470070515492010-09-19T18:15:00.000-07:002010-09-19T18:15:52.684-07:00Live performances<center> <h3><img alt="Country Joe's Place" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmhead2.gif" /></h3><img alt="_____________________" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> </center> <br />
<table align="CENTER"><tbody>
<tr><td> <i>I have started to work on an autobiography and will occasionally post some installments.</i> <br />
<center><b>LIVE PERFORMANCE</b></center> Live performance is always a challenge and you never know what will happen. The audience often does much more than just applaud or boo.<br />
<br />
Of course me and the Country Joe and The Fish band were famous for both the Fish Cheer and the Fuck Cheer. I sometimes worried what would happen when I yelled "Gimme an F!" and the audience did nothing ... but that has not happened yet. But what did happen in New York City one night was worse. Barry Melton had written a song called New York City Goodbye which was a very definite put down of the city and he decided to put the song in our set at the Fillmore East which was the place to play rock and roll in New York City. The response was cool to say the least. At the end of our set it came time to sing "I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die Rag" and we opened with the fuck cheer. We yelled out the letters and the audience responded but when it came time for the "What’s that spell?" part a guy in the front row yelled out after "What’s that spell" "FUCK YOU!"<br />
<br />
Yikes! That was a shock and a bummer and, well, a show-stopper, but we could not stop, so we did it again, "What’s that spell?" and he answered again with "Fuck you!". Boy that was not good. We did it again, "What’s that spell?" and he answered very loud "Fuck you!" I looked at Barry Melton and he looked at me and then he looked down at the guy and said, "Fuck you". We played the song and left the stage and did not get an encore.<br />
<br />
Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam War show called FTA Show or Free The Army or as the GI’s used to say, Fuck The Army, with Donald Sutherland, Ben Vereen and others involved my wife Robin Menken as a writer. Jane requested that I get involved in their plan to bring entertainment to military personnel by performing in GI coffee houses near military bases. The GI coffee houses were set up by various antiwar groups so that military personnel could come and hang out and find out different points of view on the war from those that they heard on the base and from the government. The show was a variety show with comedy and dramatic skits and satire about the government and the war.<br />
<br />
I don’t think Jane had any live performance experience before the FTA Shows. I am pretty sure all her performance experience was in front of a TV camera. After a few shows Jane asked me "How do you do it, Joe?" She was asking how one gets a good response from the audience under the conditions we were working in. The conditions were less than first class but pretty regular for a traveling musician, coffee houses mostly. She had only done movie work up to that point and found it confusing. <br />
I tried to explain to her that we could not do any retakes and just had to go with it how ever it turned out. This demanded a lot of flexibility as the audience had a tendency to get involved in the act.<br />
<br />
You just never knew how this would manifest itself, sometimes good sometimes bad. For instance when I was performing solo at the Fillmore East once. I had done most of my set without any unusual things happening . I had just released an album of Woody Guthrie songs so I sang his song about the Columbia River, "Roll On Columbia." The song is in waltz time, one of my favorite time signatures. But this time the audience began to clap along. This had only happened on other time to me and that was in Vienna Austria, the waltz capitol of the world, and there they clapped in 3/4 time to every song, even if it was not in waltz time, which most of my songs were not.<br />
<br />
But at the Fillmore that night they began a 1, 2, 3, clap with nothing on the 1, and then a clap on the 3 and 4. This sounded like, silence, clap, clap, silence, clap, clap, you get the idea. Very unusual but it worked fine and was good clean fun. But towards the end of the song one of my guitar strings broke. I decided to stop and change the string but told the audience that they could continue clapping, so they did. I went off stage, got a new string, came back and while sitting on my stool and listening to them clap I changed the string. I tuned up my guitar and went right back into the song, sang a few verses and choruses to their clapping and ended it.<br />
<br />
The audience gave me a round of applause followed by silence and I contemplated what do do next. Then of a sudden I heard a single person start the clapping thing again and soon the entire audience was clapping the waltz time thing again and looking at me with smiles on their faces! It was obvious that they were not about to stop so I did the whole song again much to their delight and my surprise. The ending was followed by huge applause and another silence. This silence was a bit tense as we stared at each other in the silence and wondered what would happen. And then one by one they started the clapping again! I played "Roll On Columbia" three times that night. <br />
<br />
<hr /> Woodstock was not the only huge festival to happen in the late 60s and early 70s. I had the honor to also play solo at both the Bickershaw Festival and the Bath Festival in England. Both festivals lasted several days, had lots of head line acts, hundreds of thousands of people and also rain and mud. I started to think brought the rain with me. <br />
At Bickershaw there was a steady drizzle during my set. At the end I closed with the "Fish Cheer" and "Fixing To Die Rag" just like at Woodstock and was called back for an encore. Being at a loss as to what to do asked the audience what they wanted to hear and they yelled back almost in unison "Do it again," so I did. I left the stage and to my surprise was called back for a second encore. I really did not know how to follow two "Fixing To Die Rags" and shared my thoughts with the audience, but no problem they yelled back "Do it again!", so I did! It was great fun. Almost everyone who speaks English loves to yell fuck in a large group and people of a certain age love to sing that song, perhaps "Fixing To Die Rag" is one of the only fun things about the Vietnam War.<br />
<br />
Speaking of the Vietnam War, about 1990 I performed for the group Veterans For Peace, at their convention, in a hotel in San Francisco. A man named Phil Butler came up to me and asked if we could talk. I said sure. He told me he had spent about seven years as a prisoner of war in the famous secret Communist prison camp called Hanoi Hilton, during the Vietnam War. He had been a fighter pilot and was shot down, as most of the prisoners there were. He told me that the only entertainment the prisoners had was the Communist propaganda radio show with the DJ Hanoi Hanna. Hanoi Hanna played American pop and rock music and gave commentaries designed to depress the Americans and get the prisoners to confess to "war crimes" and turn against the American war effort and government.<br />
<br />
Every now and then Hanoi Hanna would play "I Feel Like I’m FIxing To Die Rag." He told me that it was always a morale booster for the prisoners in the compound and that some even hummed and sang along. The prison camp officials could never understand why this song with it’s refrain "Whoopee we’re all gonna die" could be a morale booster. They were of course Vietnamese and many had been educated in Paris and learned English and about American democracy there. But American humor is not French humor -- it is something special the world over and a one of our great strengths. I have heard so many stories about this song from American soldiers who fought in Vietnam that always astound me but this story was the farthest out. Then Phil Butler, knowing that I was going to sing the song that day at the convention said to me, "I am just glad that I lived to hear you sing it in person." Upon which we both began crying and hugged each other.<br />
<br />
Back to the Bickershaw Festival in the rain. I was amazed that I managed to hold that huge audiences attention when I sang a Robert W. Service poem I put to music, from the album <i>War War War,</i> titled "Jean Desprez." The ballad is almost ten minutes long. The English of course have strong feelings about the World Wars and that song is about World War I. There are still parts of England to this day that remain destroyed by WW II bombs. They love Robert W. Service’s story of the French resistance fighter; the Prussian Captain and the French peasant boy, with its dramatic surprise ending. I can still bring a picture to my mind of those audience members huddled under their tarps, tents and umbrellas listening intently to every word of that song and cheering at the end. A short time later I sang the song to another rain drenched English audience at the Bath Festival* under those same conditions and got the same reaction.<br />
<br />
Thinking of the Bath Festival brings several memories to my mind. First I remember traveling to the Festival in a limousine with my road manager, Bill Belmont and my wife Robin Menken and our young daughter Seven Anne. I know this sound fabulous to all people who have dreamed of riding in a limousine. The trip out was fine but on the way back the limo broke down on the motor way and we sat at the side of the road for three hours in the cold weather waiting for the people to come and repair it.<br />
<br />
When the Woodstock Music Festival movie showed for the first time in New York City the Country Joe and The Fish band were playing a concert a few hours away. The showing of the movie was early enough that we could just see it and then drive to the show. Someone provided a limousine for us to ride to the gig in. We were staying in New York City so it was no big deal to go to the opening and then drive to the gig. Of course we were excited about this. We saw the movie and then exited the theater to our limo. We had all come to see the movie, band members and road crew. There was three roadies and five band members and our manager ED Denson. We were many more people that could comfortably get into that car. I remember a horrible three hour drive that had people even sitting on the floor and we finally got to the gig in a terrible mood but happy to get out of that limo for sure and hesitant to take another offer of a free limo ride.<br />
<br />
I did not have such a great success with the Jean Desprez song years later singing at an industrial college outside of London. The stage was just a riser about six inches off the ground and the audience of students sat on the floor in front of me. There were about 300 people there. Behind the audience there was a door leading from the hall to a corridor and another open door leading into a bar. I performed for about 45 minutes and everything was going fine. I decided to sing the long Jean Desprez ballad and started. About two or three minutes into the song I saw a young man leave the bar and start walking into the hall where the audience was and I was singing. He was looking right in my direction and I don’t know why but I thought to myself, "Here comes trouble"!<br />
<br />
With the careful wobbly steps of a drunk person he made his was through the crowd, careful not to step on his fellow students. With a steady determined pace and his eye on me he made his way towards the stage. The song ran through its many dramatic verses building to the grand finale as he grew closer and closer to the stage and me. There was nothing I could do to stop him or the song. It has about fifteen verses and at the twelfth verse he reached the stage and at the thirteenth verse he stood my my side and bent over and asked very nicely:<br />
<br />
"Excuse me but who are you?!"<br />
<br />
My brain was blown. I knew he would not go away nor would he stop asking me this question. I stopped playing and just looked at him in disbelief. We stared at each other. He asked me again "Who are you?" The local promoter was standing off to the side of the stage and now noticed what was happening and came over and led the young man away, hopefully explaining to him who I was. The audience stared at me trying to figure out what had happened. I returned to task at hand and not wanting to start the song over again decided to just sing the last verse, and that is what I did. Of course in the elapsed time most of the audience had forgotten what the song was about and the dramatic effect of course was severely lessened. But the show must go on! <br />
<br />
<hr /> Yes, God bless the audience, you just never know what they are going to do, but without them you are out of a job.<br />
<br />
In the mid 1970s riding on the popularity of my Fantasy Records album <i>Paradise with an Ocean View</i> I got a job opening some shows with the original Santana band. This was great as I always thought they were one of the finest bands to come out of the 60s. We were playing Denver, Colorado venue called Mammoth Gardens. During the first part of my set a huge crowd outside that was refused admittance due to the place being full already pushed open the doors and crowded their way in. This created a joyous mood in the already happy audience.<br />
<br />
I decided to sing the Jean Desprez song, a bad choice. About half way through the song noticed that the people pressed up against the front of the stage were smoking huge marijuana cigarettes and blowing the smoke up towards me. The top of the stage was about the height of their heads.<br />
<br />
Once again, as I watched the cloud of smoke rise I thought, "Here comes trouble." Working my way through the verses of the song to its dramatic ending I watched the cloud of pot smoke rise from my feet, to my knees, to my waist, then to my chest and at last to my face. I then became totally disoriented as I tried to sing and as I sang inhaled pot smoke. I no longer had any idea where I was in the song or even what the song was. I stopped singing, looked down and the people blowing smoke at me and the audience cheered their victory. Once again they had worked their way into the act.<br />
<br />
It was during that show that I got perhaps the best career advice I have ever received. I came off stage and Carlos Santana was standing in the hall outside the dressing rooms. The Santana Band was going on after me. the crowd was cheering and I was sweating and starting to come down from the excitement and tension of doing my set. We said hello and then I said to Carlos, "It is so weird doing this solo act!" <br />
Then he said, "It is a blessing Joe. There are not many people who can do it and you are one of them." Thank you, Carlos, that advice has helped me many times over the years. <br />
<br />
<hr /> Touring the country of West Germany in the 1970s I always had lots of American military personnel in the audience. They were of course lonesome for home and excited to see American rock and roll bands. Once I was playing a night club with my All Star Band about 1972. The place was packed so full that no one could really move, including us. We were stuck up on stage when the sound system broke down and we had nowhere to go. The dressing room was not accessible and we just had to wait up there for them to fix it. It was really hot and noisy in the place. I kept hearing a guy yelling, "I love you Country Joe! California! Woodstock!" over and over. It was really getting on my nerves.<br />
<br />
I looked around and could see they guy, this young soldier right there in front of me in the crowd. Now I had been in the military myself and knew what it was like to be along way from home and drunk in a night club but it was hot and I was mad about the PA not working and not being able to play and trapped on stage and this guy yelling, "I love you Country Joe! California! Woodstock!" over and over was starting to drive me crazy. Of a sudden I yelled at him, "Shut the fuck up man or I will throw my guitar at you".<br />
<br />
He smiled and looked at me and yelled, "I love you Country Joe! California! Woodstock!" and I realized that if I did he would save my guitar pieces and tell everyone back at the base later tonight how Country Joe yelled at him and threw his guitar at him and how much he loved me.<br />
<br />
Fans, God love 'em! Without 'em I would be out of a job.<br />
<br />
Sometimes the audience can turn against you. Barry Melton spent some early years growing up in New York City and I guess he did not like the town because he wrote a song called "New York City Goodbye" all about how terrible New York City was. Now New York City is probably the most important city in America and especially for show business. Country Joe and The Fish had played several times in New York City. First at the Whiskey Au Go Go when we brought the first light show to NY then at the Anderson Theater. I will never forget that opening, they pulled us out from behind the curtain on a rolling stage singing "Fixing To Die Rag" to a cheering audience. Very dramatic! And many times in Central Park for free and at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East.<br />
<br />
At the release of Country Joe and The Fish’s third Vanguard album we were playing the world famous Fillmore East. Barry decided to sing his "New York City Goodbye" about how terrible New York City was. I did not think much about it at the time. Although I had had my own introduction to New York when we first came there. David Cohen and Barry had both grown up in New York but I grew up in California and knew nothing about New York, especially about cab drivers.<br />
<br />
We all got into a cab one day and got to our destination and I handed the driver two dollars. The fare was one dollar and ninety cents. I told him to "keep the change," and got out of the cab. He threw the dime and me and yelled over and over "keep the change!" and a lot of other stuff. He went on for a good ten minutes like that. They guys just laughed and me and in the end told me never to tip a cab driver in New York less than twenty five cents. But novices beware, this was in the 1960s when a quarter was something, today I am sure the driver would throw it back at you.<br />
<br />
Anyway at the Fillmore East we did Barry’s song and the vibe got very unfriendly. We finished our set with the "Fish Cheer" and "Fixing To Die Rag." After spelling out the letters Barry yelled out, "What’s that spell" and after the crowd yelled back "FUCK" a guy right in the front row said very loudly, "YOU!". Well Barry was stunned. He paused and then went on again and yelled, "What’s that spell?" to which the crowd yelled "FUCK" and the guy said again, "YOU!". Barry looked at me and I just shook my head not knowing what to do. So he yelled again "What’s that spell?" and the guy answered "YOU!" a third time. Barry looked at him and said "Fuck you too!" and we left the stage. This was the beginning of the end for Country Joe and The Fish in New York City. <br />
<br />
<hr /> At the Woodstock Festival as almost everybody knows the audience was huge, some say 500,000, and the promoters had not planned for such a big audience. On the day the Country Joe and The Fish played Barry and I were back stage, it was a hot, muggy New York day and I noticed several cases of sodas and beer back stage for the performers. I thought it would be a good idea to pass some out to the audience. I brought them up on stage and started passing them over the barrier separating the stage from the audience. The audience got excited about this and so did Barry. In his excitement he decided to throw cans of beer to the people who were far away from us, meaning well I am sure, but I watched with horror as people with outstretched hands got hit on the head. In a matter of a minutes they began throwing them back at us. We beat a quick, hasty retreat back stage.<br />
<br />
At the Albert Hall in London Barry invited the people up in the "Gods," the very very high cheap seats, down to the ground floor, the very best expensive seats. They came pouring down. The place had been decorated for us flower power hippies with tons of flowers in the isles and on stage. The audience danced in the isles and climbed up on stage and threw flowers every where. We were banned from the Albert Hall forever. There was a young man in the Gods named Nick Saloman who had come that night with his girlfriend to see us. He came down and had a great time dancing around. He lost his girlfriend that night but became a big fan. Almost 30 years later I was to play the Queen Elizabeth Hall with him and his band Bevis Frond, playing a set of great old Country Joe and The Fish standards. At that concert I of course did the Fuck Cheer getting banned from the Queen Elizabeth Hall forever. <br />
<br />
<hr /> Speaking of getting banned forever: Country Joe and The Fish were the only band paid to stay off of the old Ed Sullivan Show. This is how it happened.<br />
<br />
We were paid in advance to be on the show. Then we were hired by the Shaffer Beer Company to perform in their New York City summer series the Shaffer Beer Festival held in Waltham Rink Arena in Central Park. On that day Chicken Hirsh said he figured out that fuck was a four letter word beginning with F just like Fish so why not change the Fish cheer to the fuck cheer. It was 1968 and the mood in the country and in the band was getting very grumpy wumpy what with the war and everything going on and on, so we thought it was a great idea Well the audience really loved it! But after the show the Shaffer Beer representative stuck his head in the dressing room and said "You will never be on the Shaffer Beer Festival again".<br />
<br />
Then a few moments later the Ed Sullivan Show representative who had been there to check out the act they had bought (the Ed Sullivan Show was filmed out of New York City), said "You can keep the money but you will never be on the Ed Sullivan Show." That is how we became the only band paid to stay off their show. <br />
<br />
<hr /> <span> * BATH FESTIVAL: The Bath Festival Of Blues And Progressive Music took place at Shepton Mallet on June 26-27 1970. First day was Formerly Fat Harry, Keef Hartley, Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band, Fairport Convention, Colosseum, It’s A Beautiful Day , Steppenwolf, Johnny Winter and Pink Floyd. On the Sunday, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers did the early-morning shift, followed by Canned Heat, Joe Jammer (who fitted in everywhere when bands failed to show on time), Donovan, Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Invention, Santana, Flock, Led Zeppelin, Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald (solo), Jefferson Airplane, whose act was curtailed by rain, The Byrds, who played an acoustic set in order not to chance electrocution, and Dr John.The Moody Blues should have played but were prevented from doing so by the downpour. According to reliable reports, the event was documented on 35mm film, though no one has ever seen the results apart from a Fairport snippet which seemingly formed part of an educational program in the early 70s.There were 200,000 people. The promoter was Fred Bannister. </span><br />
<span> <span> Copyright © 2004 by Joe McDonald. May not be reproduced in any form without express permission. </span> </span><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table><center> <img alt="_____________________" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> <a href="http://countryjoe.com/index.html"><img align="MIDDLE" alt="" border="0" src="http://countryjoe.com/cjmfist.gif" /><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">H O M E</span></a> </center>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-84666047748095741712010-09-18T21:45:00.000-07:002010-09-18T21:45:32.263-07:00matrix<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTlwLapy8YwlYycaRtBeeXWZ6qC1M1nZKl0PuQyIbVPKsO-EtTr4jUJpLtNFJ45Gu-5tpQxE_HsbplQ2PcMKXkHRjPb9NIueRSruGHX7QPIrF07ZvHM8h-XADWNgiLuVYJBEP_KSi068/s320/matrix+cjf.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTlwLapy8YwlYycaRtBeeXWZ6qC1M1nZKl0PuQyIbVPKsO-EtTr4jUJpLtNFJ45Gu-5tpQxE_HsbplQ2PcMKXkHRjPb9NIueRSruGHX7QPIrF07ZvHM8h-XADWNgiLuVYJBEP_KSi068/s1600/matrix+cjf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><center><b>Country Joe and The Fish</b></center><center><b>and</b></center><center><b>The New Age</b></center><center><b>At the Matrix Club San Francisco 1966</b></center><center><b><br />
</b></center><center><b><br />
</b></center><center><b>LSD AND THE TAPE RECORDER</b></center> Country Joe and The Fish, the very early version with John Francis Gunning playing drums, got a job playing the Matrix club in San Francisco. We had just put out our legendary EP with "Bass Strings," "Section 43" and "Love" on it. Paul Armstrong was also in the group playing tambourine and sometimes rhythm guitar. He was working for Goodwill as alternative military service because he was a pacifist. It is his Goodwill truck that we are leaning against in the photo EP cover shot. Paul had caught the clap, gonorrhea, as I remember it and I got mad at him and fired him because he said he could not play the gig because he had the clap.<br />
<br />
We found out that you had to be eighteen years old to play the Matrix because they served booze. The gig was already booked and we did not know what to do. We had recorded our first electric EP at a small studio on the edge of Berkeley named Sierra Sound. It was owned and operated by a guy named Bob DeSousa. I got this great idea to record Barry and Bruce’s parts on tape and play with the tape recorder at the gigs. Now Barry played lead guitar and Bruce played bass. We had the early repertoire of the <i>Electric Music For The Mind And Body</i> LP. They were both still seventeen years old. So according to the law they could not play in a club that served alcohol.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div> We worked all day in the little studio. It was a four track studio and the technology was reel to reel tapes. But since we only recorded two things, bass and guitar we had enough tracks. But of course the whole band had to play the tunes and we had to take the bass and guitar direct and listen to everything on the ear phones. This is pretty heady stuff for 1966, understand! So we were tired at the end of the day and a bit stressed. As I remember it this was also the day that I got into the fight with Paul Armstrong about him having the clap and he left and so the sound was a bit different as it did not have the tambourine and whatever parts Paul played extra rhythm guitar on. At the end of the day we were talking about how we still had to load up the stuff, drive over to San Francisco to the Matrix, set up and play and how tired we were. John Francis Gunning the drummer said, "You know I have a tab of acid [LSD], at home why don’t we split that tab? It will not get us too high and give us enough energy to play the gig?" We said, "Sounds like a great idea!"<br />
<br />
So we went over to his house and did that. Then we drove over to the club. Well by that time we were getting pretty damn high from that acid. Much higher that we had thought we would get. Our manager Banana Ed Denson was there waiting for us and when he saw us come in acting all silly and stuff I could tell from his "here comes trouble" look on his face we probably should not have taken the acid. But it was too late to stop.<br />
<br />
We set up and Ed had the tape from the studio on a small reel and he had this little like Magnavox home tape recorder sitting by the stage with a microphone up to it. Barry and Bruce were in the back room and could not come out. We set up the stuff, just drums, keyboard (Farfisa organ) and amps for David and my guitars and got on stage. I looked down at ED and told him to start. So he turned on the tape recorder and we waited. Then this sound came out. It was the lead guitar part and the bass. But we had not counted the songs in nor made a list telling us what songs we were listening to. So we had to try in figure it out. I decided that the first song was "Bass Strings." I told John Francis and David.<br />
<br />
About this time my guitar neck was turning bright green and writhing like a snake. I knew this was an hallucination but it made playing hard. There was this other problem of trying to play at the same time at the tape and figure out where in the song Bruce and Barry were. I remember being too slow and speeding up and catching up with them but then passing them up. I looked back and John Francis and he was starting to sweat. David was hunched over his organ trying to find out where we were with a very serious look on his face. I tried to sing something but nothing made sense.<br />
<br />
I stopped after about five minutes and told Ed to stop and advance to the next song. So he did that. The tape made that funny squeaky sound it makes like mice or something as it sped ahead to the next song. He found it and started it. Well we had no idea at all what the hell song that was. We tried a couple of things but nothing worked. I told him to stop and go to the next one. He did that. Same thing John Francis looked like he came out of a sauna, he was covered with sweat. David was very depressed and I was starting to realize that this would never work.<br />
<br />
Then one of those stupid LSD moments hit me. A moment of profound thought. I stopped everything and announced to the audience, "this proves that man cannot work with machines. If I was you I would ask for my money back." We left the stage. Many people did ask for their money back. The manager was mad as hell. We still had one more day left to play.<br />
<br />
The next day we arranged to have chicken wire wrapped around the stage to keep Bruce and Barry away from the bar area and the audience. This somehow satisfied the police. The chicken wire created a path from the back room to the stage. We played behind that chicken wire that night. A University of California Berkeley sociology professor had sent his entire class to see us that night and write papers about the new hippie band culture thing. After the show he gave us copies of the papers and many of them said, "Country Joe and The Fish enhance their country image by putting chicken wire around the stage." <br />
<br />
<center><b>GAS, SPEED AND POT</b></center> When I first moved into the apartment house with Bruce and Barry in Berkeley I was driving around with Barry in my car. He said "pull into Simas Brothers." Simas Brothers was a cheap gas station on the corner of Ashby and Shattuck. It was late at night. He stuck his head out of the window and asked the attendant, "What ya got?" The guy said, "Some weed and bennies." Barry said I’ll take an ounce of weed and a dozen bennies." The guy gave it to him. I got some gas and thought, "Wow, talk about full service!" <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span> Copyright © 2004 by Joe McDonald. May not be reproduced in any form without express permission. </span>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-79421860500519681802010-09-17T22:25:00.000-07:002010-09-17T22:25:32.167-07:00Morning Glory Seeds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNSgQq92LEbt1ukjBzM_pTaRqYsC5CA8UJvb7YpIrSnN0YN6NZC2pmcKHTG4Ii_jboMxafQ7F6a6P0g6Bg35za_4Eu46uPFZgK5MhV5vkuaGuqMhduCvzdP0UL6YfJCtZDAAmQIXKhScM/s320/morniglory.jpg" width="224" /> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_glory">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_glory</a></div><center><b> </b></center><center><b> </b></center><center><b>MORNING GLORY</b></center> In the summer of 1966. Barry Melton (guitar player with Country Joe and The Fish) and I decided to hitch hike to New York City and talk to Albert Grossman about managing us and making us famous. He was the manager of Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary and had made them famous so we figured we had lots in common with those people and he was the man to do it for us. We told the band that we were leaving putting the whole band thing on hold. Ed Denson, our manager, was actually there in New York being the roadie for the band The Blues Project. I had never hitchhiked across the country or been to New York. After the Navy I had driven all the way to Alaska and hitched part of the way back and rode a fishing boat part of the way but never across the country and never to New York City. So I was ready.<br />
<br />
We took guitars and a few bucks and small bags of change of clothes and set off. We had pretty typical adventures. I remember sleeping beside the road and waking up in the morning bitten by bugs. The going got pretty slow in the midwest, we were going Route 66 I think. We got no rides and walked into a tiny town. We saw a General Feed Store and Barry said, "Joe, you know we can get high if we eat Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds. They are cheap and I bet they have them in here." So we went in and sure enough had them and it was only a few cents for a pack of them. It must have seemed a bit strange to the workers that two hippies come in and buy one pack of Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds. But we got em and left.<br />
<br />
Then Barry explains that we need to wash off the pesticide and we went into the rest room of a gas station and used that gravelly Borax soap to wash the seeds. We left and walked out to the edge of town to a diner out there that had like a dirt road leading up to it from the highway. We ate the seeds and sat down to wait for a ride. There was like no traffic at all and we had to wait for someone who would pull off the road. We got very stoned. A weird kind of drunk psychedelic high. Hard to explain. Sloppy and stupid with bright colors. So hours passed and then a car with some hippies pulls up. <br />
"Hey it’s Country Joe and The Fish," they yell out. "Do you guys want a ride?"<br />
<br />
I mean what are the odds of some Berkeley hippies pulling up and recognizing us and asking us if we want a ride. It was a miracle! But we were in the troughs of Heavenly Blue morning glory seed stupidness and we just stared at them for a while and then shook our heads and said, "No thanks." They said, "Are you sure?" We nodded our heads yes. They said, "OK, goodbye," and our ride drove off! <br />
Then it hit us how stupid we had been. It was hours before we finally got a ride from a guy in a small sports car and it was dark. Barry went to sleep in the back and I remember being there cramped in the front seat while the colors in my head just kept flashing on and on and on. We finally reached New York City. We then realized that we had no idea how to contact Albert Grossman. We looked in the phone book and of course did not find his name. I can’t remember where we stayed but we stayed somewhere and we were broke. I remember panhandling in Greenwich Village. It was the only time in my life I ever panhandled but I remember being very grateful when someone gave me some money. I try now to always give out money to people panhandling on the streets if I can.<br />
<br />
New York City can be overwhelming to someone who has not really lived in a big city. When I was in the Navy I was stationed in small towns. I went on liberty to Yokohama a few times but never to Tokyo. When I was a kid my mom took us to downtown Los Angeles but it is very spread out not like New York of other big American cities. I remember going to the section of New York called the Bowery where all the homeless, alcoholics live on the streets. I started out on the first block giving out some quarters and thinking that there were a lot of bums. On the second block I thought that this was more homeless bums than I had seen. On the third block I thought, "Wow there is a real problem here." On the fourth block I could only think that, "there sure is a lot of fucking bums all over." In the fifth block I called for a cab and got the hell out of there. There was just more than I could deal with. New York was that way for me ... more than I could deal with.<br />
<br />
Barry and I finally gave up on the idea of finding Albert Grossman. We had made contact with Ed Denson and he was driving the Blues Project’s amps back to the west coast in a Volkswagen bus and for some reason the Berkeley based Tacoma recording artist and 12 string guitar composer Robbie Basho was to travel also in the bus. We all piled in and took off. What I remember about the trip is that we went really really slow in that Volkswagen. Especially because it was chock full of band equipment and weighted down. It went about thirty five miles an hour on an upgrade.<br />
<br />
There was not much room in the van so three people could be up front but one person had to lie in the back on top of the amps. I remember thinking as the wind in the midwest whipped the van back and forth that it would flip over and I would be crushed to death by a Standell Amplifier.<br />
<br />
As we neared the Rocky Mountains and started to climb over Robbie Basho began to get all kinds of physical symptoms or illness. He was you might say a hypochondriac. We stopped in a few emergency rooms but they never could find anything wrong. At the top of the mountains Barry, ED and I got out to look around the forest and commune with nature. I remember Robbie just kept honking the horn because he thought he was dying and wanted to go to another hospital. We eventually made it back without being made famous and got on with our modest careers that at least got us food money and paid the rent on the apartment, playing music as a rock and roll band.Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-32762843710193537082010-09-16T18:33:00.001-07:002010-09-16T18:33:45.397-07:00Bananas<center> <h3><img alt="Country Joe's Place" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmhead2.gif" /></h3><h1>The Banana Affair</h1><img alt="_____________________" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> </center> <br />
<table align="CENTER"><tbody>
<tr><td colspan="2"> <img align="LEFT" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/banana.gif" /> <span style="font-size: large;">T</span>he electric Country Joe and The Fish band played in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, many times starting about 1967 and ending in 1969. We mostly as I remember it played at the Kitsilano Theater in the Kitsilano District. That was where most of the hippies lived. They had an underground newspaper called the <i>Georgia Straight</i> named after a body of water. I remember some of the local bands, Painted Ship and United Empire Loyalists. Chicken told me on a plane ride up to Canada that he had figured out that banana peels could get you high. He said that the peelings had the same stuff as marijuana in them. This was not true at all. The banana does have something in it, tryptophan I think, that does produce a mild feeling of calmness and relaxation. Maybe Gary had read about that, I don’t know. But he said if we dried out the peelings and scrapped off the white stuff and rolled it up and smoked it, it would get us high. We were living on peanut butter and banana sandwiches at the time and just throwing the peelings away, so this seemed like a good idea. <br />
After the plane landed and we got to the theater and the roadies were loading in the equipment we went into the Psychedelic Shop across the street and told Linda about the banana thing and asked if we could use the oven in the back room to dry out the banana peels. She said sure. So we went up on the corner to the little mom and pop store and got a bunch of bananas and brought them back into the back room. We peeled the bananas, ate the bananas and put the peelings in the oven at a very low temperature, so as not to destroy the THC in the banana peels. Then we went across the street to the theater to do our sound check. <br />
The stage crew told us, "You see that water jar over there on the side of the stage? We just dissolved a bunch of LSD in it. If you want some during the night just help yourself." So we went over and took a few sips off the water jar. Then we did our sound check. Then we went back across the street over to the Psychedelic Shop into the back room to see how the banana peels were doing. <br />
<img align="RIGHT" alt="" height="284" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/bananas.jpg" /> Well they were much too damp to smoke so we just sat around talking until the roadies came and told us it was time for our first set. So we went across the street to the Kitsilano Theater. Went up on stage. Took another couple of sips from the water jar and played our first set. Then we went back across the street and into the back room again to check on the banana peels. We decided that they were dry enough to smoke, so we scrapped off a bunch of that white stuff. We went up front in the shop and asked Linda for some rolling papers. Got em. Came back into the back room and rolled up a bunch of banana joints. <br />
We lit them up and started smoking them looking at each other and asking, "are you getting high?" "I don’t know how about you?". We must have smoked about twenty of those banana joints. Then the roadies came and told us it was time for the last set. So we stopped smoking and went across the street and into the theater to play our set. But before we started we took a few more sips from the water jar. <br />
That night for our last set we started with "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine" but just could not seem to stop playing it. We played a forty-five minute version of that song that night to our amazement. After the set we ran across the street to the Psychedelic Shop and into the back room and started smoking those banana joints saying, "Man this shit really works, I am so high I can’t believe it." <br />
So after we packed up the equipment we went to some parties in Vancouver that night told people "bananas get you high." They thought we were crazy.… <br />
We went back home to Berkeley and right away played a concert at California Hall in San Francisco that was a benefit for NORMAL, the campaign to legalize marijuana in California. We passed out 500 banana joints to the audience that night and told them, "It’s banana, it gets you high." <br />
Next day I went up on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with a pipe filled with banana yuck and made my friends smoke it. I told them all, "IT’S BANANA, IT GETS YOU HIGH" <br />
The next morning I went to the Co-Op to get our breakfast and there were no bananas in the banana bin. So I went over to Safeway and there were no bananas there. You could not get a banana in Berkeley that day. On the way home I saw a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle with a three inch headline that said, <br />
<br />
<center><span> BANANA TURN ON, NEW HIPPY CRAZE<br />
</span></center> Then we forgot about it. Three months later I was reading in the Chronicle and way in the back I saw a small headline that said, <br />
<br />
<center><span> DEA SMOKES BANANA JOINT <br />
</span></center> It seems that the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington DC had a joint smoking machine and they puffed a banana joint through it and found it did nothing. It came out zero. Then I remembered the jar of LSD water?! So I took the paper over to Chicken’s house and told him, "You told us banana gets you high but the DEA smoked banana and it does nothing. It was all that psychedelic water we drank that night that got us high." He said, "Forget about that. I figured out last night, if you smoke a cigarette through a bell pepper it gets you really stoned." Those were desperate days. <br />
</td></tr>
<tr><td valign="TOP"> <table cellpadding="20"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff"> <span> FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION<br />
FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, MAY 26, 1967 </span> <span>Was it all a hippie hoax? </span><br />
<span>A laboratory apparaus "smoked" dried banana peels for more than three weeks and never did get high, the Food and Drug Administration reported today. </span><br />
<span>"The Bureau of Science has made an analysis of the smoke obtained from several recipes for dried banana peel and concentrated banana juice," the FDA said. "There were no detectable quantitieg of known hallucinogens in these materials." </span><br />
<span>The FDA began the laboratory test after its Bureau of Drug Abuse Control received reports that dried scrapings from banana peels were being smoked for their hallucinogenic effect. </span><br />
<span>The FDA's "smoklng machine" consisted of a series of tubes and retorts which trapped the smoke. The chemical components of the smoke were examined by ultraviolet and infrared spectrophotometric procedures. </span><br />
<span>Small amounts of known hallucinogens were introduced during some tests to determine whather the substances could be detected in the smoke. The added hallucinogens were recovered and identified. But none was found in the tests of banana peels alone. </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table></td><td valign="TOP"> <table cellpadding="20"><tbody>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffff99"> <span> And "Donovan," as a generation of flower-children knew him ... did not get away without telling your own Swamp correspondent "a true story'' on the side. It was Country Joe McDonald, Donovan confessed, who had tried smoking bananas.</span> <span> Donovan, who brought out the <em>Mellow Yellow </em>album on Columbia Records in 1967, said he had not known until several years ago that McDonald, best known as front man in Country Joe and the Fish, was only somewhat miffed about his fellow singer's success with the banana-bliss song because he himself had tried smoking peels before that jingle came out.</span><br />
<br />
<div align="RIGHT"><span><span>Mark Silva in the Chicago <i>Tribune</i>, March 29, 2007</span></span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>See Joe rap about bananas on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeAIYOF5p8c">YouTube.</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<center> <img alt="_____________________" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /><br />
<a href="http://www.countryjoe.com/index.html"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></a> </center>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-83356441383730723952010-09-16T00:39:00.000-07:002010-09-16T00:39:34.965-07:00Jimi Hendrix<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeDFy5TBSA6IKl2ZcsaiqUE1EG9I-pErM3Z3cCNvn2eLPGWXLBB7W8JRqHf6jZJS8MOXo-Y4PNshL5zcZTOVGuJJZc3xO04LeA2QQPfPRi3LVKAWfvjb-_-vqK94V7ApNbSvLCIK5dII/s1600/jimi:cjf+67.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeDFy5TBSA6IKl2ZcsaiqUE1EG9I-pErM3Z3cCNvn2eLPGWXLBB7W8JRqHf6jZJS8MOXo-Y4PNshL5zcZTOVGuJJZc3xO04LeA2QQPfPRi3LVKAWfvjb-_-vqK94V7ApNbSvLCIK5dII/s320/jimi:cjf+67.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I first saw Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. He performed with his trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was held in June 1967 at the Monterey Fair Grounds in Monterey, California. It was and is quite an important musical event. I was almost in the front row of the audience with Jimi performed and found him quite entertaining and had the feeling that he would certainly be successful. A few weeks later, on July 1st Country Joe and The Fish performed with Jimi and The Experience and a few other groups at the Earl Warren Show-grounds, in Santa Barbara, California. <br />
I have always been plagued with hay fever and at this gig the promoter had put flowers all over the hall. I grew up in Southern California and that was where my allergy symptoms were the worst. I began to sneeze. It did not help to have fans come up with flowers and shove them in my face. This was the time of hippy flower power so it made sense for the promoter to do this but it was terrible for me. I remember going up to Jimi in the dressing room to talk with him and not being able to do much of anything except say hi and sneeze. I was sneezing about ten times a minute. I took some allergy medicine and don’t remember any more of the event.<br />
It was not long after that the Jimi died. It was September 18, 1970 in London. I had just seen him perform at Woodstock. I came early to Woodstock to see as many acts as I could and was there in front of the stage when he performed as the last act of the festival. I remember watching him and thinking that I did not like his new group or what he was playing. But when he performed the Star Spangled Banner I was astounded. I thought that he was the finest electric guitar player I had ever heard and that he was a genius. I thought he was like a great jazz player, much more that any rock player I had ever heard. And then a month later he was dead.<br />
Years and years later I did a little tour solo in Italy. The promoter and guide was Ezio Guaitamacchi a very well known writer and performer and editor of a music magazine. He took me to a man known as Red Ronnie’s house for an interview. At lunch Red Ronnie told me that he had bid on Jimi Hendrix guitar on auction and bought it and then sold it. He also told me some wild story about photos of Jimi Hendrix he had some how got and he brought them out to the table. They were pictures of Jimi naked in bed looking very stoned with two naked women. He had about a dozen of them. I asked him what he was going to do with them. He said he was waiting for Jimi to tell him. Then we left his house and I never saw Red Ronnie again.Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-32549102428374558522010-09-15T11:01:00.001-07:002010-09-15T13:48:45.897-07:00Copiapo<h1><a href="http://www.countryjoe.com/">You can hear the song Copiapo at my home page.</a>How I came to Write about Copiapó</h1><img alt="_____________________" src="http://www.countryjoe.com/cjmrule.gif" /> I was in Santiago, Chile, producing the music to a left-wing movie (<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/countryjoe/joefilm.html"><i>Que Hacer</i></a>) directed by Saul Landau, Nina Serrano and Raúl Ruiz. I got the news: Janis Joplin was dead! She was found in a motel room in Los Angeles choked on her own vomit while high on heroin. She was not yet 30 years old. She was recording with her new band and on top of the world: becoming rich, famous and a "super star." Like the upcoming elections in Chile it seemed as though it was the beginning of a brand new day ... but it wasn’t. A few days later in the remote copper mining town of Copiapó I burned a candle at a small religious shrine in memory of my old girlfriend. Then I walked over to the town square where the film crew had sent the stage for a political rally. But problems had delayed the shoot. So I was asked if I could entertain the crowd ... and stall for time. <br />
So in memory of her that day I sang that song to those people in the little square. As I was singing a young man and woman who had driven all the way from Berkeley, California in a Volkswagen van pulled into the town. They got out and in an LSD fog walked over to one of the film crew and asked "what’s going on?" They were told and looked up and saw me singing the song for Janis. They had seen me many times in Berkeley singing the song. The were amazed at the timing of it all. They got back in their van and drove off. I finished the song and the movie filming went on. Afterwards at the top of a mountain later that night I thought about the last time I had seen Janis … alive. <br />
That evening I decided to walk up the mountain that was very close by and spend the night up there. I took a flash light and a bottle of pisco and a sleeping bag. I walked up the mountain and spent the night up there. The next day I walked down and wrote the song "Copiapó" about my experience.Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-64881787988696601102010-09-14T12:08:00.000-07:002010-09-15T13:53:55.148-07:00Monterey Pop Festival #3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqvlJ1J55DgKMSXaAI3-iAphQkylzGVzRkWgymcDYvayMTmadWoQQ7oqj4SBE8UVQc0FumQqyZ-C7EYJi2iL9YzK3-OLAyv2Ewm_28353tvZKgweTYHfL9AV8Y_gInzOMKKh1255NlR9k/s1600/pop2001a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqvlJ1J55DgKMSXaAI3-iAphQkylzGVzRkWgymcDYvayMTmadWoQQ7oqj4SBE8UVQc0FumQqyZ-C7EYJi2iL9YzK3-OLAyv2Ewm_28353tvZKgweTYHfL9AV8Y_gInzOMKKh1255NlR9k/s320/pop2001a.jpg" /></a></div> In the evening of some day at the festival I found myself in a room with a guy in a white suit and a woman dressed in black leather pants and top. The guy must have been Derrick Taylor an english PR person. I don't know how we got together or why he was there and have no memory of us talking or anything. Then I found myself in a room with the woman in black leather. I now realize she was Nico. There was such a strange vibe. We just stood looking at each other and being in the same room. No words were spoken. That is all I remember about that.<br />
So Country Joe and The Fish performed on the main stage and on the free stage. I took STP. I saw lots of the acts perform. I had an encounter of the strange kind with Derrick Taylor and Nico. I also found out later that Robin Menken came as a guest of David Cohen. Were they boy friend and girfriend or just friends or what? I don't really know. But she had climbed on the truck as we rolled into Kesar Stadium at the big 1967 war protest that had taken place a bit earlier. So I guess they got to know each other. The main reason I mention it is Robin Menken and I became friends soon after Monterey Pop Festival and got married and had a child born in 1968 I named Seven Ann McDonald. She was my first child and it was my second marriage. <br />
I remember being in a grocery store in Berkeley a few days after the festival and looking at the oranges and thinking that they really were very, very orange. Then realizing that I was still high from the SPT. It was a very psychedelic experience. The first few days were like being in a giant Monet painting. He painted these large paintings of water lilies. Also a few days after the festival I asked the roadies where my guitars were and they said they did not know. I told Barry Melton about the missing guitars and he simply said no problem. I know where they are. It seemed like Barry's friend Louie was not only a speed freak but a known thief also. Barry and I went over to a house in the Haight Ashbury and he crawled under the house in the crawl space and came out with my guitars. He said here they are just like I thought. So that is how I got them back.Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-8345017425924252342010-09-13T16:07:00.000-07:002010-09-13T16:07:49.824-07:00Monterey Pop Festival #2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNS1kxKY3KfuJy8kwts1BCqaMvUqChDnpVKOb8HgBpjqQH-O6vxhNkwztRrFauxAYb0Xb4ypOvOmhi78RW7hoIhC1xpfOrqy2gYLR8yeX4g60OwY5-UUqRHph0AslDyvt2fBDVy1bVnE/s1600/montpop-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNS1kxKY3KfuJy8kwts1BCqaMvUqChDnpVKOb8HgBpjqQH-O6vxhNkwztRrFauxAYb0Xb4ypOvOmhi78RW7hoIhC1xpfOrqy2gYLR8yeX4g60OwY5-UUqRHph0AslDyvt2fBDVy1bVnE/s320/montpop-1.jpg" /></a></div> We must have arrived the day before because I remember lots of stuff from the next day. Country Joe and The Fish played at the "free stage" sometime during our stay there. A few years ago while on tour with Bruce Barthol (bass player for CJF) David Cohen (keyboard and guitar player for CJF) and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh (drummer for CJF, we got into an argument about if we played at the "free stage". At a gig in Portsmouth, England on the pier a fan brought a photo of us on stage on the "free stage". So much for memory.<br />
I remember walking around and looking at all the booths in the fair grounds selling hippie stuff. It was a beautiful day. I saw Brian Jones, guitar player with the Rolling Stones, walking around looking very, very hippie and enjoying himself. I sat in the audience and watched quite a bit of the show. One of the perks of being part of the show is getting a good seat. I never did enjoy the back stage scene and that is probably why I missed jamming with Jimi Hendricks and the rest. Those jam sessions were always about lead guitar players and I was of course a singer/songwriter and rhythm guitar player. So it was never fun for me. I always enjoyed watching the show especially when there were lots of acts many whom I had never seen before.<br />
I was out there watching when Jimi set his guitar on fire. I was very amused watching him pretend to have sex with his amplifier. This was a new kind of show business. He had a hard time breaking his guitar. It just would not break. Then he took out this small can of lighter fluid and set it on fire. It was not much of a big deal from the audience. But it looked great in the movie. This was of course years before the group KISS and big time stage effects we are now use to. I remember one time in Los Angeles we (CJF) went to a magic shop before the show and bought some flash paper and some powder that "exploded". We had a budget of about 20 dollars so we could not buy much. We were playing the Shrine Auditorium I think. At a certain point in the show we lit the flash paper and powder we had put in front of us and it went like poof. You really could not see much and I am sure that the audience never even noticed what we did.<br />
I saw the Troggs play and they were very strange to me. I saw Ravi Shankar and he was cool. I loved Michael Bloomfields' new band with all those blues guys in it. Super! I could not understand what David Crosby was on about talking about JFK and seeming to try to be political. He had on a strange fur hat. But I should not say anything about costumes as I sure was dressed strange. I don't know where I got that civil defense helmet I had on. I was wearing beads that Janis Joplin had made for me and a leather bag on my belt she had made for me when we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Her and Nick Gravinites wife Linda Gavinites were making lots of beaded stuff together. Of course watching the Who destroy their equipment was funny. We had worked very hard to buy our guitars and destroying them seemed odd. <br />
Country Joe and The Fish never got a sound check and went on stage using someone else's equipment. I remember when we started playing Section 43 Bruce's bass was making a weird fuzzy sound because someone had not taken off the fuzz tone effect from the amp he was using. It was one of the strange things that happened during that song. I always played a harmonica solo in Section 43 but in the Monterey Pop movie there is no harmonica. Go figure! But I was so stoned I maybe just forgot to play it. We did a thing I wrote called The Acid Commercial<br />
<i> If your tired and bit run down. Can't seem to get your feet off the ground. Maybe you ought to try a little bit of LSD. Only if you want to. It will shake you head and rattle your brain. Make you act just a bit insane. Give you all the physic energy you need. To eat flowers and kiss babies. LSD. For you and me. </i><br />
During the song David Cohen took LSD! Like I mentioned before I took the opportunity to tell the audience about my experience with the porpoises that morning. Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-4567385935987053222010-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:002010-09-13T13:33:21.393-07:00Monterey Pop Festival #1 I drove from Berkeley to Monterey with Barry Melton and friend of his named Louie Nestor. Barry of course was one of the guitar players with Country Joe and The Fish. Louie I found out later was a speed freak. I don't know how Louie and Barry knew each other. We drove in my car. I don't remember Barry having a car in 1967. As we drove past the military base and stopped at a stop sign another car pulled up beside us. Driving was an army officer, probably going to work on the base. I could tell he was a pretty high ranking officer because his hat had "scrambled eggs" on it, indicating his rank above major. Louie looked over at him and gave him the finger. The officer cringed and drove off. Probably thinking about the hippies invading his town for the weekend.<br />
We arrived at our motel and checked into our rooms. It was an old school 50's kind of motel. The room was full of what is called knotty pine. This was very fashionable when I was growing up. We went over to the fair grounds and got our passes and checked out the stage area. We met Augustus Stanley Owsley, later known as Bear, hanging out behind the stage. He said he had just made something he called STP a new kind of psychedelic drug. It was a little pink pill. I doubted its strength so I asked him for a couple and took one and a half. I split the rest with a friend of our manager Ed Denson. His name escapes me. But I knew him because he was an old boyfriend of a girlfriend of Ed's. She rode a motorclycle and lived in Berkeley in a closet. Yes, she shared an apartment on old Grove Street near Ashby and her part of the apartment was the closet. It had a single mattress on the floor. I spent the night there one time and we had sex in her closet room. Odd.<br />
No one told me but there was a room in the back stage area for musicians with food and drinks and amps and everyone jammed together. They never told me anything. So I went back to the motel with Ed's friend who was also staying there. It was very close to the beach. Of course it is Monterey, California. The whole town is right next to the beach. So I was in my room and the STP began to work. The knotty pine walls began to move. The knots in the pine sent out ripples like when you drop a stone in water. I heard a train coming from the left side of my head. It got louder and louder and then roared right through my head and out the right side and off and away. I thought hmmmm this is kind of different.<br />
It became evening and a bunch of us got into a car to go to the local coffee shop for dinner. I was still smoking cigarettes then and the fire from then end of my cigarette fell onto the floor at my feet in the back seat where I was sitting. I looked down to find it and stick it back onto the remaining part of my cigarette. There were about a dozen red coals down there. I knew that only one was real the rest were hallucinations. So I just poked around until I found the right on and kept on smoking my cigarette. We got to the coffee shop and I remember it was full of people and cars but I don't really remember eating or what happened after that. But eventually it was starting to be dawn and I was on the sea shore with Ed's friend who was having a bad trip. I remember saying how great it was for me and him saying it was not great for him.<br />
We walked along the shore and a school of porpoises swam by. They were leaping out of the water. I was wonderful. I got excited and started yelling to them. It seemed like they paused and looked back. Later on that day I would tell the audience about my experience. I don't think they understood at all and just thought I was stoned. Which I was of course. I mean I stayed up for a week on that STP!Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743312903639628209.post-89628954255090564862010-09-13T01:29:00.000-07:002010-09-13T01:29:34.159-07:00autobiography<div style="text-align: justify;"> I wrote about 100 pages of an autobiography. It was mostly a collection of stories. I did not really like it. The reason was for the most part that it had no style to it. Woody Guthrie complained about writting an about himself saying it was the most boring thing in the world to do. I can see what he meant. What I need is a plot or reason. There are so many different angles to a life. Should it include all the marriages and children and sexual dramas or should it be about music and band adventures? It is hard to avoid having it be like a shopping list or laundry list. After while it just becomes boring and the same. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I have thought for some time that perhaps this blog format could provide a way to go in telling a story. I think I will just give it a shot and see where it goes. It will take a bit of time to get use to the blog format itself. But at least now I remember how to go to the blog page and write a new one and save it. </div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Country Joe McDonaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443052178109282811noreply@blogger.com1