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.