Monkey Bars

 John’s American Express card had kept the group going all the time but by the time they arrived in New York it had been run out. 

Home just in time, broke.

They decided to break the group on the West Coast.  Records were made in California.  It was winter in New York . . . California Dreaming.

The Loving Spoonful were doing good in New York and as an electric band also, the “New Journeymen” were now polished.  McGuinn and Crosby went to the West Coast to become part of the Byrds.

Rachel and Buffy (friends of Cass’s) wanted to come along with the group to the West Coast.  They had some kind of a hashish deal going to make some money.  They asked if they could give their connection Eric’s number (which was really the number of where he was staying for awhile . . . at John Sebastion’s apartment.) 

One afternoon the two girls and Eric were laying around.  They were high and Eric was singing and playing the guitar when suddenly the door is kicked open and nine short young  men with guns burst into the room.  “Hold it.  F.B.I.  Are you Eric Hord?  (They knew his name!) 

“You’re wanted in connection with drug smuggling charges.”  (What?)  Just Eric’s luck they found a small piece of hash locked in a metal box in the closet.

The head F.B.I. man did a check on Eric and found out he was just over from the Islands.  They were sure they had the main man.  (“Me?”)

“Hey guys, put away your guns.  I just have a guitar here,” Eric responded.

There were a lot of questions and then SLAM, CRASH, hell’s doors shut behind Eric.

Robert Kennedy was the new governor of New York and he took a tough stand on drugs.  He made in mandatory jail time to be caught “holding.”

At the arraignment, John and Michelle showed up and told Eric that everything was going to be all right.  Then Eric was taken to 14^th Street.

 Also being taken there were these people that tried to blow up the Statue of Liberty.  There was one fat woman from Canada and two blacks.  At 14^th Street Eric was to be in the company of killers, etc. 

Someone would say, “Hey man, what are you in here for?  (“Hash, how about you?”) 

“I’m in for manslaughter, I killed a federal officer.”

Robert Kennedy.  When Eric played with Ian and Sylvia they did a concert for Robert, Ethel and all their children at Hickory Hill, Virginia.  He did a concert for him and then his law sent Eric to jail for five years.

So there he was in the slammer.  He figured, “why just sit here and contemplate?  I have to do something.  I’m a very active person.”  He said, “Give me a job.  Give me something to do.”

Eric didn’t want to play ping-pong for the rest of his incarceration.  He couldn’t walk up on the third floor cage all the time.  He wanted to work and they gave him work in the kitchen.

In the kitchen were these two convicts named the Brown Brothers.  They were convicted of stolen cars taken across the state line.  They had killed thirteen people in Ohio with butcher knives.  They were working in the kitchen and had complete charge of all the knives.

That’s when Eric learned how to make a salad . . . a jail salad.  The food was good those days in the federal joint.  “If you’re gonna pull time, whatever kind of time, I would rather spend my time in a federal jail than a state jail.  Some of the jails are like country clubs if you have money.  Father Berrigan pulled country club time.  Status,” Eric told me.

Lompoc, Terminal Island, Danbury . . . Eric said to take a good look.  The prisoners get out on passes (political prisoners), ride around the golf courses, play tennis and have television.

If  you didn’t have money than forget about it.  Eric didn’t have money and they called him “Red.”

“Hey Red.”  He was the California surfer.  All he talked about is being from California and going out and surfing and smoking weed and having a good time with his board and playing blues guitar and bluegrass banjo and having a good time playing with this and playing with that person. 

“Now what is wrong with that?”

The first inkling of his situation was when he tried to get a hold of Albert Grossman, Ian and Sylvia’s manager.  What Eric thought was a family situation all of the sudden wasn’t.  Nobody wanted to hear from him.

“Eight months of grime, seeing fights, seeing homosexuality, seeing young guys turning into punks, sexual favors for a pack of cigarettes.  Hard times.  Walking the line.  The block.  Cells, cells, cells.”

A jailhouse lawyer is what you become.  Eric found out what they can do to you.  Ways of appealing.  How to write a habeas corpus.  He did it all himself.  He had to get out of his situation by studying law at the federal law library at Leavenworth.  If you have to do thirty years in the federal system you can get out on technicalities by studying the law from that library.

Raisen-jack was a drink they made in jail.  It is made from the fermentation of raisens with a little water added to it.  Like Dolly Parton’s “Apple Jack” whiskey.  The guards were subject to take bribes at times.  Somehow the heroin got in.  “You could see guys drinking whatever out of cups and then you could see guys lying out in their cells.”

It was a big treat to go down to the infirmary with a backache.  The intern would give you a couple of Darvon pills.  Darvon is a mild pain killer.  You’d palm the pills, pretending to swallow them with some water.  Inside the Darvon capsule was white powder and a little ball that had some kind of opiate base.  With ten of those little balls a person could get whacked out.  Then you had something to trade with.

Those nine F.B.I. men kept investigating Eric.  The head guy looked like Edward. G. Robinson, with a cigar.

If you’re in the penitentiary and you’re black or latino or white you would segregate and become your own society.  The animal cage syndrome would go into effect.  There was a lot of racism in prison.

Eric found out later that the chicks he was protecting were out of jail in a week.  He had to work at getting his own bail reduced.

At the same time, in the outside world, the mothers and fathers of teenagers were calling in irate to radio announcers because they were playing all these songs about drugs, free love, and anti-war.  They tried to resist it but the more you resist a thing the more likely they are to promote the very thing they are against.  It’s psychology.  You cannot force rules on independent thinking people.

The post war babies were eighteen now and could go to clubs.  They were curious about marijuana and they loved the new music that reflected their emergence into adult life.  At one point there were so many people converging onto the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California the National Guard was called out. 

I (me Molly) was there up on a storefront roof, watching it all down below – it also had to do with the students killed at Kent State in Ohio.

The store owners were afraid to go home at night and you could see them peering out from inside their stores while scores of young people were filling the streets so that no cars could drive down them.  It happened night after night.  Stephen Stills sang “There’s Something Happening Here. . . What It Is Ain’t Exactly Clear.” 

Pandora’s Box was a focal point and was eventually closed and torn down.  The authorities were intimidated.  They didn’t know what was happening.  They would harass and bust as many people as possible.  Sometimes they would enter homes and arrest a whole party of people.  They would stop cars and arrest all of the riders.

The people were in search of themselves.  They didn’t know what was going on either.  Despite the over-reaction of parents and authorities, they forged ahead in their quest.

The radio reflected the mood changes of its most commercial age group.  Until 1960 teenagers listened to top 40  format on a.m. radio stations.  They would “reverberate” their car radio speakers making a sound lag that would enhance the sound of the tunes coming over the air. 

F.M. stations began playing rock and roll stereophonically as folk music turned to anti-war music due to the draft that was in effect for the Vietnam War.  Artists were making complete albums of many songs and the F.M. stations were a good venue to play them.

Eric had missed this phenomena as he was spending his time in another world, on another planet.  Jail.  The judge would have let him out on his own O.R. if he was from New York but he was from San Diego.  They thought that if they let him go that he would never come back.  So they slapped a $10,000 bail on him.  He was their “smuggler” and he felt crucified for a piece of hash that wasn’t even his.

The F.B.I. kept investigating and said that there was large amounts of drugs involved?.?

The Mama’s and the Papa’s at this time were hanging around in Hollywood.  They were back-up vocalists and studio singers for various groups.  One of the artists they worked with was Barry McGuire who had a hit out called “The Eve of Destruction.”

Eric knew McGuire from the old days with the Christy Minstrels.  He and Nick Woods and a lot of other guys had come out of the Christy Minstrels.  At the advent of going into commercial music a tremendous amount of musicians that were in folk didn’t understand McGuire’s music until he had his hit by P.F. Sloan.  It was the first international hit, even before the Beatles hit internationally.

After months of rehearsing as a group . . . loving each other and fighting with each other, the Mama’s and the Papa’s was getting to have a name for itself.  They sounded modern.  The leader, John Phillips, was a good song writer.  They went on a few auditions around town and finally went over to Dunhill Records.  They were seen by Jay Lasker and a young producer named Lou Adler.  Lou also handled Jan and Dean.  The Mama’s and the Papa’s went right in and cut “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreaming.”  John had been writing for a long time and his talent showed.

As soon as the Beatles came on the scene, everything changed.  When the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” album and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” album were released, the folk music people started to come together.  Everyone was trying to hit it really hard.  The stage was set. 

The Byrds (including Roger McGuinn and David Crosby) came out with “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and the Doors with “Light My Fire,” Dylan with “Times They Are a Changin,” the Turtles with Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan sang  “So Happy Together,” and the Mama’s and the Papa’s with their hits.

They all lived up in the Hollywood Hills on Kirkwood.  Cass lived on the corner of Kirkwood and Ridpath.  John, Michelle and Dennis lived on Lookout Mountain Drive.

A guard would come and get Eric at 5 a.m. in the morning.  It was still dark.  Went to the first floor kitchen and under the supervision of Captain Robinson, made fifteen hundred pieces of toast.  That lasted until around 7 a.m  and then he made eggs on the grill and made the coffee.  Everything was set on the steam table and everyone filed past surfer Red.  It was like the military.  Like the Navy.  Government issue food.  Captain Robinson owned three barbeque places up in Harlem.  He offered Eric a job when he got out, if he wanted it.

Eric’s day consisted of showering, reading mail if he had received any, reading magazines or going to the library.  He even worked in the library filing books for awhile.

Eric’s layer didn’t even tell him the chick were out of jail.

There was more grilling from the F.B.I.

Eric’s father said to keep on the sunny-side of life.

There was LSD in the joint.  Eric had taken acid for days and days in a row at the islands so it didn’t bother him to take it in jail.

One day he was walking.  He just couldn’t imagine what he was doing in the joint.  Where was everybody?  This heavyweight weight lifter; 420 pounds, massive, solid straight muscle, even his eyelashes were muscle, told him that the one thing to learn was to walk slow and drink lots of water.  “You ain’t going no place and the water and walking are something for you and your body to do.

One day Eric saw the Mama’s and the Papa’s come on a television set that was down the hall from where he was.  If you can believe your eyes and ears.

Just at the same time someone threw a chair through the air and everybody does off against each other.  Black against brown with Eric in the middle.  A dude goes down with blood all over his face.  Someone hits Eric up the side of the head and as he goes down a pointed shoe goes into his ribs.  He grabbed the guys hair and hit his head against the bars.  The guards finally come in and take the wounded to the infirmary.

Eric finally was able to get his bail down to one hundred dollars and his friends in the jail helped him get the money up.  Good-bye jail.

He took a drive-away car back to the West Coast as his friends had already gone there.  He jumped into that Cadillac and headed west driving past a lot of cities that he had played engagements at.

Virgin Islands (Beyond the Cosmos)

Eric came back home to the West Coast after playing with Ian and Sylvia.  He went back to the peace and quiet of Ocean Beach in San Diego.  He needed to recuperate and digest his recent experiences. 

By day he gave guitar and banjo lessons and by night, he would lay off the bridge at Mission Beach just drifting and dreaming.  “If you didn’t want to fish you just get down to your shorts and drop over the side.”

Roger, the Zen bum, called out while Eric was lying there one evening.  “New York calling . . . Phillips.”

“Hey man, what’s happening?  Would you dig coming back here and playing with Mich, myself, and Dennis?  We’ll be the New Journeymen.  We have club and concert dates already booked.”

“Goodbye sweet harbor by the sea . . . hello Big Apple.”

Eric checked into the Earle Hotel and was in the company of Peter Outlaw, Lisa Kindred, Karen Dalton, Freddie Neil, David Crosby, Sean Phillips, Jim McGuinn, Scott Elam, John McLeash . . . “I could list sixty names. “

They had a lot of fun at the Earle.  Times like when Jim McGuinn came into Eric’s room with a new longer hair style singing “She Loves Me, Ya, Ya, Ya.”  Eric was half asleep.  The Beatles.  Get ready world.

John Phillips had at one time a group called the Smoothies.  They were doing songs like the High-Lo’s.  Very smooth.  Like the Four Freshmen.  Then he became a part of the Journeymen also with Scott McKenzie on lead guitar and Dick Weissman on banjo. 

The Journeymen were on the same label (Capitol) and managed by the same manager (Lenny Warner) as the Kingston Trio.  The Journeymen were the East Coast folk group as compared the Kingston Trio, which was West Coast.

Michelle Gilliam came from Los Angeles to New York to become a fashion model.  Eric had seen her picture in the paper advertising some clothes.  She met John and they were married.

Dennis Doherty was singing with the Mugwumps which included Cass, John Sebastion, Zol Janovsky, Amos Garrett, and Jim Hendrix.

Cass had come from Alexandria, Virginia to New York.  She was always a jazz singer.  Cass was doing a lot of stuff reminiscent of Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horn, or Annie Ross of Lambert, Hendrix and Ross.  She was coming on as strong as anybody in the folk movement. 

Besides performing with the Mugwumps, she had performed with Tim Rose and Jim Hendrix as the Big Three.  They recorded and afterwards she had her own group at the Shadows Club in Washington, D.C.  Cocktail stuff . . . good music.

As for the disbanded Journeymen, Scott McKenzie was exhausted and had a breakdown.  He couldn’t make it anymore.  He did get better and went on to record “If You’re Going To San Francisco Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair.”  Dick Weisman wanted to go to Denver, Colorado and start a folk music school, which he did and may still be going strong.

John and Michelle were living on Seventh and D in the East Village.  The East Village (right next to the East River) was always remodeling.  Always something new.  New modern foods such as macro-biotic.  New bars and shops.  It was an up and coming neighborhood. 

John and Michelle had two white poodles.  They lived in a street level walk-up brownstone.  Dennis lived down the street (on Seventh) over some guy that kept eight or nine dogs in his apartment.  The smell of dog shit permeated the air.  Eric moved in with Dennis.

Dennis, Michelle, John and Eric would rehearse at Dennis’ as well as John’ house.  They would sit around and make up a lot of songs.  Different folk songs, different kinds of melodies.  Always working, constantly working to improve the song structure.

Dennis and Eric would trip-out in town and check everyone out.  A lot of groups were coming in and out.  There were a lot of parties. 

The New Journeymen were booked into colleges that were in the New England states.  John wrote tons of good songs and lyrics but his chords were never good.  So it was up to the good “Doctor” to sit up with him night after night and go through chord charts of various tunes.  How do you make this chord?  How do you make this note?  What’s the fingering on this position?  Eric was a right-hand man, consultant, and mixer of the drinks.

They were on stage in Upper State New York.  Eric was dressed up and had his banjo and his new guitar and his black doctors bag which was given to him as a going away present from Roger, the Zen Bum.  The black bag had all the picks in it, all the strings, all the capos, and all the drugs.

It was Ted Gerny who brought over the acid that first time they all took it.  Ted offered them little sugar cubes with a small brown dot in the middle.  He said that he didn’t know if the acid was good or not because he kept it in the refrigerator.  Well, I guess they needed a break from our rehearsing because they all took it. 

One hour later John calls Ted on the phone and tells him that nothing is happening.  Ted brought them eight more tabs but from a different tray in the refrigerator.  Two more tabs down the old hatch. 

It must have been right after he left that Eric started looking around the room.  The crystal chandelier caught his eye.  John and Michelle were playing with the rheostat on the wall by the kitchen.  Eric started for the dining room and fell over Denny who was lying on the floor with headphones on and a stare on his face. 

Suggesting complete madness, John said “Let’s go to the World’s Fair and see Scott who was working there.”

Everybody got into the car.  I was a small Volkswagon with no room to spare.  They pulled out of Eastside Drive at sixty miles an hour.  Past the U.N. building and onto the fair.  The fair was just closing down when they got there. 

The cosmos was unfolding.  Giant pillars of concrete and steel were holding up a massive steel beam roof.  The wind was roaring out in the meadowland.  The pillars looked like they would come down at any second.  “The wind began screaming through my brain that was smashed against the rocks of the incredible golden eyed lotus deviled-egg madness.  All in one lifetime of remembering life and death in one minute capsules of your existence.  Next came a snow of optical illusions too small to be detected by the rat-tailed people who seemed to be looking to grab you any time they thought you were about to get away from their knowing grasp.”

They saw Scott at the R.C.A. show.  He was demonstrating how television pictures were put together for the home viewer.  They went and had a hotdog at a stand and Eric remarked to Scott about how weird he looked in makeup.  Scott said to Eric, “Doctor, you look like death warmed over.”  They all laughed at that one.

As the “New Journeymen,” they were doing fine name wise.  The group  could play at a Hilton Hotel in Bermuda, Virgin Islands, Cuba, Puerto  Rico, or San Juan . . . all beautiful tropical paradises for the New Yorkers to go to.  

They decided to go to the Virgin Islands by throwing some darts on the wall map.  Michelle called up her sister Rusty and told her of the plan.  Rusty would come with her husband, Peter Palafian.  Count Peter Palafian, the professionally skilled legendary violinist and legendary mountain climber.

They got it all together with Abercrombie and Fitch.  They bought camping equipment and two white motor scooters.  John had about ten grand in the bank.

Eric’s girlfriend at the time, Daveen came in from the West Coast. 

One Sunday afternoon they all got to the airport on time.  All the luggage got there.  John had picked up his two children from a former marriage in Washington, and Lori (McKenzie Phillips), Jeffrey, Daveen, Eric, Rusty, Count Palafian, Michelle, Dennis, two dogs, two motorbikes and all the gear from Abercrombie and Fitch got aboard the plane. 

They were going to the Virgin Islands to a place called St. Johns.  It was owned by John D. Rockefeller.  They had a plantation called Camille Bay.  Unfortunately they didn’t stay at Camille Bay, they stayed at Camp Torture (because of mosquitos that would bite through clothes).  They went on to Trunk Bay.  About three miles down.  Beautiful cumulus clouds.  Blue clear water.

They got a hold of a guy named Duffy who owned a place on Creeque Alley.  Duffy was an old East Side New York cat.  He said that they could play there for the summer.  So now the whole party moved over to Duffy’s.  Up above Duffy’s tavern there’s a small little bunch of apartments.  They stayed there for about a month while they built a stage.

This was the first start of a folk-rock band.  They had been playing folk music all that time.  Since the advent of the Beatles, if you wanted to stay with it, there was only one way to go . . . you had to electrify.  Dennis was playing bass.  John was playing rhythm guitar.  Michelle was playing tambourine and maracas.

Peter played the drums because they didn’t have a drummer.  They sang songs like “Strangers, That’s What You Are,” and “Walk, Don’t Run.”  Cass Elliot showed up.  She was a waitress at Duffy’s.  Sometimes, part-time, she’d sing with the band.  It was all cooking.

The rich would take their Boston Wailer’s down to Camille Bay.  They had trips that would cruise around the islands on catamarands.  If you weren’t rich you took your camping equipment down to Trunks Bay. 

It was off-season (fall).  They had the island all to themselves.  There was Noble the life guard and there was Captain Jack.  He was a skipper that transported people from St. Thomas to St. John.

On Friday nights the natives of the island would have a dance, a calypso dance.  There was a steel band with a twenty-seven piece orchestra behind it.  The dance went on from 5 pm until 4 am.  Captain Jack, Peter and Eric went there.  They were the only whites among about four hundred blacks.  It was Eric’s first recognition of what it was to rock it with a rhythmic band.  It was a combination of reggae and big band and it rocked.

Eric was in his tent most of the time working on arrangements, working on charts.  Peter would come in and play his violin.  They were really getting good.  There was a bass viola.  At night they could be by the campfire and there would be no one around except them. 

They had a big huge bottle of LSD and a big huge sack of three or four pounds of good Columbian grass.  The weather was absolutely beautiful.  It would rain a light mist around ten in the morning.  Then these huge earth crabs would come out of the earth.  They would look at you but when you started moving they would scurry back into their hideouts.

“It was Paradise revisited with acid.  The total unending madness.  A cosmic existence.  Majestic.  Utterly fantastic.”

Michelle got locked up in the Bastille.  They were on acid one day and Michelle jumped into the harbor as a protest against the greasy-grimy water.  There was no swimming allowed.  Dennis jumped in behind here.  They all jumped in.  Michelle got arrested by the gendarmes.  Eric had a feeling that they knew they were high.  The governor of the island told them that they had to leave.  So they all packed up and got back on the jet plane and returned to New York City.

Greenwich Village

Eric talked a lot about Greenwich Village.  He said it had a small European city feeling and was dotted with small pizza shops.  There were lofts for rent and the artists had moved in. 

Washington Square was a large park inside Greenwich Village.  It was surrounded by coffee houses and hotels.  There was the Bitter End, Gerde’s Folk City, the Dragon’s Den, Café Figaro, Art Ford’s Night Owl, The Hotel Earle and the Greenwich Hotel. 

Washington Square Park is where a convergence of every kind of musician took place.  Every Sunday tons and tons of people who picked a guitar or a banjo would be playing their music around the huge fountain that had no water.  Folk, bluegrass, jazz, and cultural music filled the air.  There was a steel band from the Islands and Armenian music.  Folk music was at its height and Washington Square Park was the place to be.  Eric said, “You could run in twelve different directions and find something new and exciting.  A good time was had by all.”

Eric spent his time maintaining a profile of picking, always picking - scales, arpeggio’s, chords, and always listening.  The more he listened, the better he got.  He said, “I copied a particular style and stuck it into a frame of reference for later on with the intent or will to improvise with it.”  If he wanted to improve his chops he could hang out with guys like Roger Sprung, Eric Weissberg (The Tarriers), and Marshall Brickman.

On a record player Eric would listen to and play along with his idols . . . Big Bill Broonzy;, Tampa Red, Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller and especially Lightning Hopkins.  Eric spoke of an “infection” he got from the black rhythms and the complicated finger picking styles or the complicated originally African rhythms brought down through a “four-four mood or other meters.”

Having enough money to survive was always a concern.  There was enough money for food but never enough for rent.  He slept on couches in the lofts.  Other fellow musicians would take him in basically.  He used to stay at Teddy Fitzgerald’s place a lot.   Teddy ran the In and Out Club on MacDougal Street.  Peter, Paul and Mary and Albert Grossman would eat dinner there.

 

Or if Eric earned a little extra money he rented a room at the Hotel Earle or the Greenwich Hotel.  There was also the University Place Hotel.  The Hotel Earle was a place where a person would live if they were only in New York for three months or so on business.

Eric said that the Earle Hotel was a real flew bag.  In the olden days it must have been a beautiful hotel.  It cost $150.00 a month to stay there.  The smoke on some of the five floors was like pea soup – hashish smoke.

If Eric didn’t have enough money and didn’t connect with someone’s couch, then he stayed up all night in a coffee house on “speed.”  But most of the time he went to parties, dope parties where he stayed and crashed.  It was party time.  Eric also house-sat for a month here or two weeks there.

Eric was in the Village and part of a group, The Highland Three.  He was playing on stage and sharpening his skill.  He started with smaller audiences and built his way up to larger ones (where they had very good sound systems and he felt competent to be there.)

When Eric first arrived in New York he contacted Bobby Gibson who had a talent agency along with his brother Jimmy.  They were working out of the Bitter End and looking around for a little storefront.  Gibson was booking acts for himself and others.  He booked The Highland Three into the Dragon’s Den, Gerdy’s Folk City and Art Ford’s Night Owl. 

They were actually playing around town as was another group called the Halifax Three, formed by a soon-to-be Mama and Papa member, Dennis Doherty.  There was another group called the Big Three with (Mama) Cass Elliot, Jim Hendrix and Tim Rose.

The Dragon’s Den was very small, like a cubicle.  They passed a basket through the crowd that sat in small chairs and ordered espresso while watching the acts.   Dino Valenti had a regular act there that was like a freight train.

At Art Ford’s Night Owl Eric played along with the Modern Folk Quartet comprised of Eddie Ho, Cyrus Faryar, Jerry Easter, Tad Diltz and Chip Douglas.

Gerdy’s Folk City was a club that managers would break their acts from.  Albert Grossman broke Bob Dylan there.  Sunday night was hootenanny night.  Hoot night.  Audition night.  Arrange to be put on the schedule and anyone who wanted to sing could get up and perform.

Eric would go to Washington Square Sunday morning, then to a club to sit in with an act, and then to Gerdy’s on Sunday night.  On Monday night it was the Bitter End.

The Bitter End on Bleeker Street was the final breaking point for an act.  The act was polished and ready to record and go on tour.  The club was formerly called the Cock N’Bull until Freddie Weintraub and his friends took it over.  They changed it from a coffee house atmosphere to a nice stage, nice background of red brick, nice lights and a good sound system.  They featured acts like Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, the Tarriers, Odetta, the Kinston Trio, the Journeymen, Freddie Neil, Leon Bib, July Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Eric would also go to the Bitter End on Sunday afternoon and play with the best guys who were picking in the United States: Freddie Neil, Bobby Gibson, Dave Van Ronk, Henry Bradley, Buzzy Linhart, Hugh Romney, David Crosby, and Jim (Roger) McGuinn.

Here’s a typical stage situation Eric described:  “I’d be on the stage and Freddie Neil would be on a barstool playing “hunchback” guitar.  Lance Wakely would be there as well as Bill Lee, the bass player.  Things would be getting hot, then Gibson would come out of the back room and as soon as he would get on stage and started singing the vocal duets with Freddie, the place would start to go nuts.  Not only the young adolescent girls would go nuts, but that the spirit was moving the whole crowd.  The whole house.  And then maybe Cass would come up on stage, or maybe Odetta.  “Hey, come on up.”  Five or six people were on stage all blowing fast and hard country blues and singing gospel numbers.  A combination of anglo-saxon white gospel against country negro blues.  Everything really worked.”

On Monday night at the bitter End you could see three groups as well as a comic and a star solo signer.  Comics fit in excellently.  Mort Saul, Lenny Bruce, Wood Allen, Bill Cosby and Hugh Romney would entertain.

Hugh Romney used to be a sharp comedian who did Lord Buckley type material.   Eric played with him at the Land of Odin.  Hugh Romney went out to San Francisco with the Be-ins, acid trip and flower-people.  Then he bought a bus and become the Wavy Gravy of the Merry Pranksters. 

Lord Buckley influenced all of the comedians.  He was a comedian from the 50’s and performed and did a lot of albums that were essays in a comic style .  For example: “and Moses was making his trip through the desert and he was leading the people, and the people were rebelling against Moses and Moses says to  God . . . What shall I do?  Bham.  Wham.  A voice came out of the sky with thunder and rockets and Moses said, Who art that:  and the voice said, I am the Nazzzzz.  Follow me to the mountains of eternal bliss . . . “  He was doing satirical, poetic, comedic, monologue in a very hip style.  On a lot of occasions when he would play the clubs, Harry the Hipster would accompany him (Harry Gibson).  He would play a musical interlude during the monologue.

When Wavy Gravy would do his skits at the Land of Odin he would do a couple of pieces in the style of Lord Buckley and Eric created guitar sound effects behind his routine.

Freddy Neil had an apartment over by Sheridan Square where Eric and he would practice.  They wrote a couple of songs together, one of which was called Nashville Twist.  Then twelve other tunes that remain unrecorded.  They were just hanging out, practicing lyrics and creating new tunes.  They’d play “”Blue’s On the Ceiling,” “Cocaine,”   Eric said that some of the changes in “Cocaine” were nice, like C to the E to the F and so on.  Good songs to sing, melodic.  They’d do rhythm things with Juan Serrano and Tim Hardin .  “Heavy shit”. 

 Eric described being on a rooftop in Manhattan with  Dino Valente and Marscellus.  Two or three ladies would go strut by like out of the West Side Story.  “Walking New York City with little pinner joints, real fast walks, and crystal meth.  They’d strut to 46^th St and then to the roof.  We’d all be together on the rooftop playing great music.  Like Freddie Neils’s tune “I Was Standing on the Corner of Bleaker and MacDougal, and “Didn’t Know Which Way to Go.”

Eric received a review in Que Magazine while playing at Art Ford’s Night Owl with Freddie Neil.  They received two standing ovations.  Outside people could see through a big glass partition.  “The air was so thick with smoke from grass that you could cut it.  The cops walked around in the blizzard.  They were always taking a little change here and a little graft there”.

The parents were all afraid to let their kids go into the Village, yet into the Village they came.  There was a Jewish girl named Shelly Kowalski who lived in Brighton Beach.  Every Monday night Shelly and her girlfriends would come in and sit around a table and look up at the acts and pick out their stars, the ones they liked.  Nothing is happening in Brighton Beach but the young Jewish girls can see their favorite star in the Village.  Eric went home with her once when he was sick and her Mothers gave him Matzah ball soup and he got well.  He hung around for awhile, then he was back at it.

The first time in the recording studio recording on a real album was with the Halifax Three which was composed of Dennis Doherty, Pat La Croix and Dick Burns.  They were recording for Epic Records.  The Halifax Three came down from Toronto looking for a banjo and guitar player.  Pat La Croix couldn’t play and Dennis and Dick could only strum.  After seeing Eric with the Highland Three, they encouraged him to come and play with them in Toronto.  They said they had work at a couple of clubs (Bohemian Embassy and the Colony Club) and they knew how to sneak him into Canada without a working visa.

There was no grass at all in Toronto, nothing but booze, booze, booze everywhere.  They had a different type of bar in Toronto that impressed Eric . . . one side for men and the other for ladies.  Now and then you could see a woman who was a guest of a man on the man’s side and vice-versa.

At the Village Corner Club Eric saw Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker play for the first time.  He also saw Gordon Lightfoot as a young man in a checkered suit.  Also Amos Garrett, the only other American Instrumentalist.

At the Colony Club Eric saw Ronnie (the Hawk) Hawkins and the Nighthawks which later were to be called “The Band.”

So they played the Colony, the Bohemian, and the Fifth Peg (a plush folk music club).  There was Juan Serrano, the Flamenco guitarist, and David Troy, who used to be lead singer with the Diamonds (“Little Darlin”).

A little while later Dennis Doherty joined a group called the Mugwumps, which also contained soon-to-be Mama Cass Elliot.

Ian Tyson was impressed with Eric’s five-string banjo work.  He asked him to join Ian and Sylvia.  They were handled by Albert Grossman who worked as an independent producer and was getting together with John Court from International Talent Association (ITA).  Ian and Sylvia recorded for Vanguard Records.  Maude (Sylvia) sang some blues.

The Mariposa Folk Festival was held outside of Toronto, Ontario.  It was big and beautiful farming country.  The Canadian people live exactly like the American people do.  EricI was the only American guitarist to play at a Canadian folk festival.  It meant something to him. “ I was a competent banjo player.  I played at the Topanga Canyon banjo contests against all the greats, played at the Ashgrove, played all the places that were happening.  The kids, the college kids, loved the bluegrass.  Kingston Trio was passé.  Let’s get into singing bluegrass.  I had the banjo out and was doing my thing”.

Eric did a couple of workshops there at the Mariposa Folk Festival.  He played with Ian and Sylvia on stage.  Their music was very dynamic and vocal.  “The people were very, very beautiful”.  “”Four Strong Winds” was a hit in Canada.  “Someday Soon” would be soon.  Eric said, “Sylvia was honest and meaningful.  Ian was downright serious about his country picking.  Ian always told me that there is a real big difference between the strummers and the pickers”.

After the Mariposa Folk Festival, They went on to play the Newport Folk Festival.  Joan Baez was the head of the ’63 festival.  Dylan was playing his songs, Donovan was there.  The old-timey traditionalists were there.  Actually, they all were there.  The thing to do was to head for upstate New York.  Eric said, “I felt good about it.  I was playing with Ian and Sylvia and I was playing at the festival.  I spent hours and hours of time playing arpeggios and trying to do the blues guitar like Mississippi John Hurt or John Lee Hooker . . . the things that sounded good.”

“A good time was had by all.  Protesting, civil rights, being in love – it was the place to be.  Heavy.  The expansion of your consciousness with the important  thing.  Mini-macro New York summer scene.  Like a dream of people with painted faces marching through the weeks, which turn into months, and then years, with a constant feeling of love and happiness.  The be-ins, the situation with the folk music – it was so fantastic and beautiful.  It seemed like everything had shut down . . . politically, the magnificence, the warmth, the drugs of it, all with colorful pictures."

  

“More people getting into the influence of ‘got some music to sing,  got some national heritage, Americana, in the most happening city in the world’.  And we are it.  The people are looking at us.  The people are looking at Judy Collins, Bobby Dylan, Joan Baez, the Halifax Three and the Journeymen”.

“Our music is exciting.  It contains protest, bluegrass, folk . . . our music jumped all over everyone in the world.  The Russians and Chinese picked up on it.  Their teenagers listen to our music, not their propaganda”.

Eric ‘s Early Musical Influences and Performing with Judy Henske

Eric was driving a 48 Chevy, “yellow, chopped and channeled,” to San Diego High and stopped to pick-up a hitchhiker, Bill Tollefson.  They became friends. 

Bill had the largest record collection that Eric has ever seen.  He also had a Martin 28 guitar.  Bill taught him how to play chords, melodies, and who to listen to and play along with.  There was Django Reinhardt, Sabicas and Segovia from Bill’s private record collection.  Bill had some Chicago blues . . . Big Bill Broonzy and some folk blues . . . Josh White.

On the hillbilly station he heard Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe.  From WULA-Texas he could pick up Wolfman Jack’s program with Lightning Hopkins.  On television he saw the “Bostonia Ballroom: with Smokey Rodgers.  He saw Spade Cooley and his Western Band and the Town Hall Party with Mel Travis and Clancy Snodgrass.

Eric decided he needed his own banjo as well as a guitar.

Eric talked about nights spent in the drive-in coffee shop eating salad with blue cheese dressing and deep dish apple pie with lot’s of vanilla ice cream on top.  There he would listen to the overhead radio playing songs from the Grand Ole Opry with the Delmore Brothers.  Kitty Wells sang “It ‘Wasn’t God Who Made Honkey Tonk Angels,”  the Crows sang “Gee,”  Ella Mae Morse sang “Wheel of Fortune,” Patti Page sang “Shrimp Boats Are Coming,” Hank Thompson and the Brazos Valley Boys sang “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette,” and Earnest Tubb sand “Walking the Floor Over You.”

When Eric got home from school he went straight downstairs to the rumpus room to listen to and play along with Mel Travis, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Laurindo Almeida.  He practiced scales, arpeggios, chords,  and suspensions.  Thumb, first finger, second finger, “boom shakalaka.”

Eric even liked to study the musicians playing on the street in Tijuana, just across the border in Mexico.

He hung out at Thearle’s Music Store near the high school.  They had listening booths where you could listen to records or you could even try playing the instruments they sold.  The clerks liked him to demonstrate either a guitar or banjo for their customers, until the day he left a lit cigarette stuck into a fret board and burned a banjo badly.

Then he moved on to Ratner’s Music Company and listened to rhythm and blues and jazz and folk music.

Eric was friends with the O’Conner family (Maureen O’Conner eventually was a council woman and then Mayor of San Diego).  There were thirteen kids in their family and they lived in the Mission Hills area.  Eric met some of Maureen’s older brothers at St. Augustine Catholic High School before he got kicked out for smoking.  They would drive around with Eric in his Chevy.  The brothers got lifeguard certificates and Eric hung out at the beach a lot then.  That is where Eric met a longtime friend, Mark Ashmore.

In college Eric played music with Mark, who played drums,  Lester MacIntosh who played bass,  and a fellow named Bob who played flute.  They performed in a play in theatre arts.  Mr. Neumann and his living theater was putting on “As You Like It.”  The whole cast went to a party at a big house out on Sunset Cliffs owned by two guys who owned a record label.  That’s where Eric met his next music partner, Judy Henske. 

Judy was a tall good looking girl from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  Eric used to call her a young white Bessie Smith.  She was the best white girl blues singer ever.  Nobody could sing the blues the way she could.  Her voice was so powerful that she didn’t even need a microphone.  Night after night of putting it out eventually led to a vocal cord operation.

Eric would accompany her to songs like “Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” “Empty Bed Blues,” and a North Carolina murder ballad called “Little Ronny.”

Fred Gerlach also would accompany Judy.  Eric said he was the greatest twelve string guitar player alive. Fred showed Eric a lot of finger-picking style blues licks.

Judy and Eric put an act together at Bob Stane’s Upper Cellar.  It was located on 60^th and El Cajon Boulevard and featured local acts for an audience of about forty people.  It was the typical coffee “expresso”  house to go to in the post-beatnik and poetic time of the late 50’s.  The ladies would wear black leotards, long skirts, long hair, sandals and turquoise rings.

Beside coffee, you could order good teas, hot chocolate with whipped cream or hot cider with a cinnamon stick.  Some patrons played chess and discussed the poetry of Miles Payne, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Eric “Big Daddy” Nord.  There was usually an astrologer or a Tarot card reader in the group as well.

Bob Stane eventually moved the Upper Cellar to University Avenue.  It was a larger, feature act night club with black décor.  Judy and Eric played on the same bill as the Tarriers and Ted Markland who was doing Lenny Bruce style comedy.  Eric met Nick Woods who got together with Randy Sparks to form the large “Christy Mistrel” group.  They wrote “Green, Green.”  Barry McQuire was in the group.  Eric would eventually record an album with Barry.

Eric also got to know Paul Sikes, a San Diegan artist with a beautiful voice, and Mason Williams, a sailor stationed in San Diego who sang “Classical Gas” and was featured on the Glen Campbell show.

Eric talked about hanging out with the poets until dawn, drinking wine and smoking weed that he got from Chango in T.J. for thirty-five dollars a kilo.  With the profits he bought his first Fender electric guitar.

After playing the local San Diego clubs, Eric and Judy gave Los Angeles a shot.  They played at the Troubadour, the Ashgrove, and two clubs owned by Herbie Cohen; The Unicorn and Cosmo Alley.  Herbie’s brother Martin (Mutt) Cohen managed them.

At the Unicorn there was Gat, the bartender and Freddie Engelberg singing “Ragtime Rabbit” and “Somebody Finked to the Fuzz and We All Got Busted.”  The owner of the Ashgrove, Ed Perl, wouldn’t let Judy sing at the club for awhile claiming that her music wasn’t traditional.  Finally, he did let them perform.  At the Ashgrove Eric met every performer that was in the field of traditional folk music, night and night.

They lived on Hayward Avenue, right off the Sunset Strip.  Jessie Fuller would come over and stay with them.  Harry Dean Stanton and Michael Green lived nearby in the hills.  They stayed there for awhile.

They would always eat at Barney’s Beanery . . . the watering hole for anyone with creative talent and a night time schedule.  Artists were there like Genie Riley, Freddie Engelberg, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bankston, Edward Hewitt and Tom Ewing, to mention a few.

Martin Cohen booked Judy and Eric into the Barvacquie Club in Scottsdale, Arizona and then the Gate of Horn in Chicago.  Martin drove them to the Scottsdale gig and boy did they get lost.  They arrived just in time to do the date. 

They then took the train to Chicago.  Then on to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to meet Judy’s mother who was an avid cribbage player.  They spent the winter playing cribbage and eating fresh hot sausage and drinking lots of beer.

Then back to Chicago to play the Counterpoint Club and the Old Town School of Folk Music.  Then they went back to Oklahoma City and then back to the Buddah Club in El Cajon in San Diego.

Eric and Judy “broke up,” and Judy went on to become a famous recording star.  She recorded many albums until she retired to become a homemaker.

In 1959 When Eric was all of 21 years of age, he was back in San Diego playing solo dates at many clubs:  the Upper Cellar, Mantiki, Sip and Serve where he met Fred Thompson of the Fred Thompson Duo), the Poor House and Circi’s Cup.

Eric sang and performed the blues and bluegrass.  Some songs he performed were “Lady of Spain,” “Bill Bailey,” “The Wild Goose,” “Just Because,” “Dark As a Dungeon,” and “Streamline Cannonball.”

He lived in South Mission  Beach and played congo’s many nights with David Boyle and Mark Ashmore.

Fred Thompson, who also happens to be the world’s greatest ukulele player, called Eric from St. Paul, Minnesota with a job offer.  The Fred Thompson Duo (with Bob Casto) was a San Diego based folk group a lot like the Kingston Trio.  They wore bright red cardigan sweaters and Eric wore a red one. 

The “Twin Cities” St. Paul and Minneapolis are next to each other in Minnesota.  St. Paul was dry.  You couldn’t buy liquor there, but in Minneapolis you could.  The bars were in Minneapolis but the coffee houses and the coffee house scene were in St. Paul.

That is where Eric first saw Bob Dylan.  He also saw Sonny Grover, a white blues harmonica player, who later wrote a book called “How To Play Blues Harmonica.”  Spider Koerner was another one of the better blues guitar players in St. Paul.

It was that winter when the Duo played a club called the Padded Cell that Eric met John Phillips who would eventually form the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  His group, the Journeymen,  was  booked into the act with the Duo.  After the gig Eric went to John's motel room and there was a party.  They all played music together.  John said to Eric . . . “If we ever break up, I’ll give you a call, Eric.”

After the Fred Thompson stint, Pat Garvy, Ivan Kubista and Eric joined together to become the Highland Three.  They had seen each other on stage and decided to audition for a job they had heard about in Duluth.  They set out in a small Fiat, three men, three guitars and a banjo.  Duluth sits on the southern tip of Lake Superior.  When they arrived the temperature was twelve degrees below zero, not including the strong wind chill factor.  The first thing they did was fix the heater in the Fiat and then call to find out that the auditions were called off.  So they decided to take their act to New York City.

Fort Wayne, Indiana was on the way to New York and they knew about a coffee house there.  They were hired immediately and stayed on for two months and sharpened up their act for the big city.  Their act was well polished and they had a shot at it.