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.