Riot on Sunset Strip recounts how electrifying musical scene which included such legendary band as the Byrds, The Doors, the Buffalo Springfield, the Mammas and Papas, the Turtles, Love and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention came together and then fell apart. Riot on Sunset Strip evokes a raucous revolutionary time in American popular culture. Joining tonight's author are some very special guests, each of whom Dominic Priore will introduce later in the program. So without further adieu please welcome author, cultural historian and television producer Dominic Priore. I have a lot of my friends here and I I see all of you in front of me and I just want to first thank all of the guys for supporting me all these years. Because this took nine years to make and I was living in San Francisco when I started writing this book. And some of you came over to my apartment and looked at the pictures and and were going, oh I like that oh I like that and you all were a very big help. I really appreciate that and just throwing your records at me and everything else that happened and I really appreciate all of you coming tonight and and just hanging out with me anyways. Its just fun to be back and I am going to get emotional, so. As Thomas said I have got Bart Davenport who is going to sing a couple of songs for us a little later. And then a little later on Michael Stuart-Ware who played drums with the band Love on my two favorite albums with them, Da Capo and Forever Changes. We will talk to him for a while and there will be Q&A. And he did a really cool book and Michael what's the title of the book please a long title Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel With the Legendary Rock Group, Love. Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel With the Legendary Rock Group, Love and so and it's not easy to get. I was in London a couple of years back when the Smile documentary was being done by Showtime and I went to the Helter Skelter Shop there before it closed and picked one up. I still have the pound receipt on it so I can show off that I was buying it in London. And it's a great looking and we have it here. So you know, you should have checked that out. It's a great like first person, band story. I have never read you know, band story by a first person, anybody that is as good as this. This is really great. As my back up I was turned on to be by Mike Stax of Ugly Things Magazine who was an editor on this book by the way, a friend of lot of you people here. And Mike just was reading on an internet or something, said this is just the most fantastic book. And so eventually I managed to get a copy, so I do encourage you to take a look at that. I am going to start out by reading something that the very first chapter I wrote in this book was more about the atmosphere and the environment of the Sunset Strip, because in the mid 60s I was fortunate enough to have my family is from New York, I was the only one born out here in California. So we always had relatives coming from the East Coast and all they want to go to Disney Land and so and so forth and but in those days, in mid 60s everybody want to see 77 Sunset Strip, right, which was Dino's Lodge. It was it was actually more of a lounge place, you know but it has this really incredible neon sign and there is this photograph of it in the book. And so you know, we and I naively get in the car, super huge traffic on Sunset and it's just like we are backed up, seeing like for miles, it's a 1.7 mile stretch there. And so there we are stuck in traffic, slowly, can't go anywhere, good for me because I am seeing everything up close. It's nothing but teenagers everywhere. It's just like jam packed. And I was listening to the radio a lot, just was a little kid, and I couldn't go to the club, I couldn't participate in all the fun life style I guess but vicariously I was able to watch it on television because there was shows that were shot in LA that just cover Rock 'n' Roll more than any place in the world ever. Shindig! was being shot in Los Angeles. Lets see Shivaree which was also ABC both of those shows, Hollywood A Go-Go which was my favorite which is being shot on Channel 9 and Shebang, which was on Channel 13,with host Casey Kasem and Thackston has his show on Channel 5. And Lloyd Thackston and Shebang are opposite eachother so we which is a better song, you just click back and forth. And so they kept on you know, having these television shows and I just was watching and see people dance and I got the vibe of it and when I got to go the Strip, the one time it was just like you know I got to see everything, slowly but surely all the way down so finally get the Dino's Lodge and then my uncle goes, there it is, 77 Sunset Strip you know. And I said, thank you uncle. So I am going to read you something here that I wrote about the atmosphere of the place and time. Then there was Sunset boulevard itself which winds romantically through the Hollywood hills in curves that seem to bend with the texture of the architecture. After passing majestic zeros on a modest regale incline several changes begin to draw attention, such as the left curve at the Trousdale apartment sweeping downhill through the area where the Seawitch, Dino's Lodge, Fred C. Dobbs, the Playboy Club, the Trip and Ben Franks melted into the 1920s colonial structures of the Sunset Plaza. The panorama from the corner of Sunset and Louisiana go faces with South West over the incline creating a mystical turn of the wheel as it overlooks the most angular vista in the region. What spread out before you were endless streams of twinkling lights from homes designed by Richard Neutra and Pierre Koenig in the hills above to the far reaching residential horizon below. This highway veranda funneled into neon club marquees ahead, with the ocean peaking through in the distance. Sky reaching movie premiere lights somewhere of in the distance often accentuated this view. The combined effect looked from the distance like the Pixie Dust from the Tinkerbell's Wand. Much like the club in the Jetsons, if you saw the the jet streamer episode that is. A trip to the Sunset Strip in the mid 60s felt to many visitors like a journey into outer space. Stepping out on to the street, into this atmosphere following an intimate performance by the Byrds, Love, Them or any of the bands playing regularly on the Strip brought on a sense of shared euphoria. Well LSD25 was until October 6th 1966 legal and readily available and accompanied many of these trips into the unknown. The prevailing mood of the unprecedented surrealism on the Strip meant that drugs often weren't needed to feel sky high. Sunset Strip in the mid 1960s represented one of the most successful applications of space age pop motives on to 20th century curvilinear street layout. The survey engineering and road layout dramatically complements the contour of the hills and their scenic merit. Like the panoramic break in the middle of the Beach Boys Good Vibrations this futuristic Utopia reached its peak with a jangling fusion of space age design and the culmination of Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, Bauhaus and Modernism. These diverse elements at work in sound, art and architecture in the mid 1960s LA encompass all the loose ends of science and physics as in Einstein's Relative Theory. Taking that part out because like I can't remember what it was actually called. Pop art brought to brought the future to the present. The ethereal other worldly outer space experiences on the strip made real the dreams first presented at the 1939 New York World's Fair. That vision of the future which seemed all important during the depression had come to life, the future was now. On a drive to the Strip's Central Plaza at La Cienega one building was impossible to ignore, Dino's lodge. It sat at right in the middle of the Seawitch, Fred C. Dobbs Coffee House, the Playboy Club, the Trip and then Franks. Nothing made you feel that you were in the center of the dream more than catching site of Dean Martin's lacadazical mug flashing and alternating red and white neon neon in the middle of the most crowded area of Sunset Strip. It gave the feel of some illusive illicit thrill. If any place was swinging this was it. The facade Dino's Lodge had been foretold as the holy grails since its use in 77 Sunset Strip. And its impact would only intensify as the mid 1960s music scene blossomed around it. Prodigy journalist Sandy ____ summed up the importance of Dino's Lodge with the declaration; your roots are there, my roots are there, okay. That's the first part. Now I think at this point I want to share some music this is what really the book isn't really just about music. It's about a music scene much like what happened here are San Francisco at Haight-Ashbury and Summer of Love and things like that. It was it was you know, a sort of revolutionary music and very socially conscious. But the difference is that in Hollywood it could be broadcast with the other movies. And also television and also radio, and radio networks which we are just starting at the time, unfortunately it led with to something like Clear Channel but the early radio networks were actually coming out of KHJ, smooth jazz. But I mean like, I think Sean Bonniwell of the Music Machine talks about how their second single they gave it to the wrong station and so that it kind of ended their string of hits at one, you know. So you know that kind of thing was just starting. But ultimately the reach that you can get out of Hollywood from the music and and it lead to a larger social consciousness happening because you have the Byrds, and the Dylan collaborating and that type of song was becoming more of a pop song as opposed to previously Dylan songs, may be there were a couple of hits by Bob Dylan and they were done by Peter Paul & Mary. And Dylan started having his own hits after this. So it changed the texture of pop lyrics definitely in 1965. Now I am going to bring up my friend Bart Davenport here and he is with Eric Shay and they are going to sing a song by the Byrds first and another one by Love after so, Bart - So it's just you know, 10 years in the making of this book, but I feel like it's more like 20 in the making, just in how long you have been kind of thinking about all this stuff, you know. I went to visit Dominic may be when I was about 19 years old and he said hey, let's go for a drive. And he gets me in his car and ended up showing me you know, a guided tour of like all this stuff that's probably in the book. Its like oh you know, here is the bla bla bla you know, there is the Whisky and like there is the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium where the T.A.M.I. Show was filmed and all this stuff. And it was like very it left a really strong impression. I was trying to think today of what we would do and - it never really occurred to me how much the music from the era has been such an influence, because so many of us are influenced by that stuff. So you sort of take it for granted. And then when I started having to trying to think of what songs to do, then there we like a 100 songs to choose from easily, so we are going to try singing this I think it's probably by Gene Clark Eric - Daytime just makes me feel lonely At night I can only dream about you Girl you're on my mind nearly all of the time It's so hard being here without you Words in my head keep repeating things that you said When I was with you And I wonder is it true do you feel the same way too It's so hard being here without you, being here without you Though I know it won't last I'll see you some day It seems as though that the day will come never But there's one thing I'll swear though you're far away I'll be thinking about you forever The streets that I walk on depress me The ones that were happy when I was with you Still with all the friends I know and with all the things I do It's so hard being here without you being here without you. Being here without you being here without you. And that that's Eric Shay. People of our parent's age must wonder like what we have of our own. What we have is their record collections. Stars up in the sky, I do wonder again Wonder who am I and all I do because I know it's true Just like I know you and if you realize The things you are saying I am seeing la la la la la Goods are in the sky and I do wonder yeah Wonder where they fly and all I do because I know it's true. Just like I know you and if you realize The things you are hearing I am hearing la la la la la. La la la la la ba ba ba ba la la la la ba ba ba la la Love you; I really do love you yeah Love you; love you - la la la la la People come and go and I do wonder la Wonder to unfold life you do because I know it's true. Just like I know you and will you realize The things you are seeing I am seeing la la la la la La la la la la ba ba ba ba la la la la ba ba ba la la Ba ba ba ba ba Thank you Bart Davenport and Eric Shay, Bart by the way I am making up to the Bay Area about nine times in 1989, 88'-89' when I first met him and I stayed at his place every time and the conversations went till 6 AM in the morning you know. Ofcourse was like five other people, we were all just you know, it was like salon time but we didn't really know it. I have heard I have heard salon use you know, so we used to have our salons in there. We didn't call them that way. We didn't call no, no I just learnt that word since I became an author. And so and so to speak, okay so that said you know, I just want to just give some acknowledgement to some of the groups that we are not going to talk that much about, well first of all the first word I want to say is Frank Zappa because you know, growing up in Los Angeles even in the 70s it's you know, it was like very communal thing that we all kind of understood is that we all listened to Zappa and it wasn't like we listened to one album or anything. We listened to every single album that came out and then discarded it and then went to the next one because he was like a running commentary on on everything that was going on always, you know from the first album Freak Out all the way to I guess you know, the mid 80s what ever you sort of you know, I don't know, at the some point I lost track of them, but or I lost track of those friends but Frank Zappa was very, very, very important to us all of us you know, just he was a conversation piece for ever. And you know, of course the Doors were the other most famous group of at the Sunset Strip outside of the Byrds and Love and then you have like the Mammas and the Papas and the Monkeys and just people you never thing about, like Sonny and Cher and the music that you keep on hearing you know, there were just so many great acts and I do like a little bio of the more famous acts or I like a little more obscured groups. And I tried not to like emphasize the more famous groups or the less famous groups. I tried to listen to to as many songs as I could by every body and then just said, okay where is the merit in the records, you know. It wasn't about oh you know, lets try to sell a book and lets try to you know, lets do a book with the Doors and it's just going to sell X amount of but it was more or like like I noticed that Curt Boettcher's name ended up in the book a lot more than Jim Morrison's name, because he made more good records. You know strangely, but true. And I think that's sort of becoming more recognized now with Curt for example, who is a friend of mine and and a lot of people you know, have like we know Morrison just passed away, but just a lot of people have passed away and and just you know especially one person I think important to all of us this guy Greg Shaw. He just passed away a few years ago and he was very important to this book because in the mid 80s he started this club called the Cavern club in Hollywood. And we all used to know, go down there and address something like this. And you know, there was just a whole group of people and and I was I was just coming out of college and I was just whatever, wearing jeans or whatever and I would walk in there. And this you know everybody used just more up you know, and stuff like that and I said, well how will your dress? Well, you know that movie, Riot on Sunset Strip, just like that. You know that was the advice people gave me and I was like well, okay. I mean I was like that but I didn't realize it was a fashion statement so. It was just interesting that there was a whole new music scene in the in the 80s. Based around this style of what they called the garage music. And Greg was an interesting guy because I think he had something to do with invention of the phrase Punk Rock, you know and later you know he took new wave and applied that to music too. In his magazine he will put the bomb and I got to spend many hours at the bomb archive. Putting together on my first book Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile which was about the Beach Boys unreleased album Smile. And but in there, there were tones of magazines you know, just every magazines from the 60s and that's a lot of how I filtered all this information, because Greg had it all you know. And I think his collections are devoted to the Rock n Roll they gave to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame after he passed away. So it was a great place to research and a great place to grow up in that sense of of finding interesting things Now I am going to read a couple of things about the Byrds and also the LA art scene and how they kind of went together in a way and I think it's best to read this. This is a quote from a guy who is a dancer, the Byrds brought with them nine dancers on the road on their very first tour. And it was this guy Vito Paulekas who who had a Sculpting Studio and he taught Sculpting I mean he appeared on the cover of Chico Hamilton Album in the 50s. He is just a long time archive and eventually Love - the original Love and the Byrds and I think even the Mothers all rehearsed at his studio. So he was a very important guy in the scene and also brought all these dancers into it. And it was about dancing which is another thing a lot of us we are all my friends here, you know, we would like to go and dance you know. And lot of times, like in the 70s people thought that rock wasn't a music to dance to so much. Because it was like the heavy handed Led Zeppelin days or something like that and and I mean I went to see Led Zeppelin on concert and nobody really danced, it was it was not like that. But this was really dancing music you know and there is a lot of pictures of people in here dancing. So when you think of it being like heavy socially conscious type of lyric or something, we always keep in mind that it was also you know, music to dance too as well. That was made made a little bit better in my feeling. So I want to read this. The Byrds were in my estimation the best dance band that Hollywood ever saw, said Carl Franzoni, because they made people dance with that kind of music. Those guys were forever fighting with each other but when they got up there they really cooked. Love weren't the dance band that the Byrds were and neither was Frank Zappa. The combination of the band members, the different fractions of what kind of music they came from, it was just such a fantastic blend that it was so full from all different parts of United States. I always think of dancing to the bells of room and like it's the church you know. So they brought that kind of music into Minnesota, Iowa, places like that, those kids were just wow where did you come from. They could have started their own church with that kind of music they were playing. Derek Taylor recalls, the Byrds impact on Hollywood, on the BBC Television Special, All you need is Love, which first appeared in 1975, describing how Peter Fonda booked the group to perform at a birthday party for his sister Jane in 1965, quote. "It was in itself very unusual for anyone in movies to know anything about Rock n Roll. It was my job to make sure all of the Byrds met Peter Fonda and Jane Fonda and Henry Fonda, who as well, who was not to be too upset by the appearance of the Byrds. Well, I hadn't thought about it before that all of the Byrds followers knew no rules. They got high, they went any where the Byrds went and they crabbed the party looking absolutely terrible for those days. Henry Fonda was quite astounded, like what's this, what's going on? They were panic and appealed to the Byrds manager Jim Dickson to calm the situation. Dickson's response whatever was simple, this is new Hollywood. They want this madness. That's why they got the Byrds here. This is the beginning. This is where worlds meet again." When the Byrds debuted Mr. Tambourine Man at ____ on March 26th 1965 with Bob Dylan there in support one of Hollywoods most exclusive land marks found itself at the threshold of the social revolution. The Byrds had successfully electrified Bob Dylan. According to music journalist Ellen Sander, almost immediately after the Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man Dylan took off on a mass commercial level. His time it was bursting with over dues and the Byrds were merely the in last series of booster rockets as McGuinn would later put it. Bob Dylan was already the stuff of folk legend and his "blowing in the wind" had made a huge impact on commercial radio by way of Peter, Paul & Mary's 1963 hit cover. And he also played it at March on Washington in 63' by the way. Dylan's folk songs appealed to a small but enthusiastic cult. But pop music in general did not quite feel his overwhelming influence until the Byrds recorded Mr. Tambourine Man. The day after the Byrds performance of the song at____, Dylan also seemed aware of the potential impact of his absorption of Rock n Roll telling Paul J. Robins of the Los Angeles Free Press. You can make all sorts protest song and put them on the Folkway's record. But who hears them. On June 5th the Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man hit number one on Billboard's Hot 100. 10 days later Dylan entered the studio to record Like a Rolling stone, clearly influenced by new sound of the Strip. According to Ellen Sander the single, released on July 20th clawed its way to the charts there was its power, its visceral intensity, it was a frontal attack echoing the memorable concert at Newport that same year, where with that very song, he had blown the scene apart. Next came the landmark yippee Highway 61 Revisited which completely resolved the Dylan change in style. Amid the controversy of Dylan going electric, Pete Seeger who tried to chop Dylan's amplifier lead with an axe Newport, many initially forgot that he had always aspired to the Jeans and Leather Jacket sensibility's of rockabilly and the rhythm verse of Chuck Berry back when he was still known as Robert Zimmerman in his home town of Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan played in a rock halls like the Golden Chords and the Rockets. The Rockets demoed a Zimmerman co-write Big Black Train at Minneapolis's legendary K Bang Studio where The Trashmen recorded "Surfin' Bird" and The Castaways recorded Liar, Liar. Dylan's aim was to be a piano pounding hell raiser in the mold of Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis. "He did a good job on the Little Richard song" recalls Jim Propotnik a member of both the Golden Chords and the Rockets and I thought he kind of looked like him with the hair standing straight up. With hard core Rock n Roll on its way out following the payola scandal at the late 1950's, Zimmerman adopted Woody Guthrie approach to music entering and conquering the New York City folk circuit. "When I was to the University of Minnesota, Bob Zimmerman looked me up", said Propotnik, I went down to check him out and I saw all kinds of beatniks beings sitting around, drinking espresso and eating little sandwiches. It just wasn't my thing and also his style of music had changed considerably. Folks popularity grew just as Rock n Roll radio was being flooded with the bland teen idols that began to usurp R&B and rockabilly by way of American Bandstand from 1958 onward. But by the mid 1960's Dylan wanted to re- immerse himself in Rock n Roll. Tracks such as Subterranean Homesick Blues meld with the lyrical constructions of Dylan's folk years with this Chuck Berry roots. When he then introduced The Beatles to Pot at Delmonico Hotel in New York City on August 28th 1964, the combined smoke and inspiration in the room would reverberate 3000 miles away in Hollywood where the Byrds develop their synthesis of these two great musical forces. And now I am going to go on to the art part about it, this is related I guess. The Watts Towers, the product of 33 years of steady work between 1921 and 1955 by the Italian architect Sabatino Simon Rodia still stand as a permanent embodiment of the independent artistic spirit of Los Angeles. During the mid 1960s however they were rivaled by a temporary display that took a similar form, the Artist Tower of Protest. Organized by Walter Hobbs, the curator of both the Ferris Gallery and the Pasadena Art Museum and assembled by the conceptual sculptor Mark di Suervero, the monuments stood for three months at the intersection of La Cienega and Sunset. Two foot square panels were painted by 418 international artists for the exhibit and joined together on a together on a 15 foot height scaffold to form a continuous, a 100 foot long billboard that art like a Cinerama screen. Rising above a steep hill over looking the La Cienega incline, the Artist's Tower of Protest was completed in March 1966 with a groovy surfing style sign read, "Artists Protests Vietnam More". Susan Sontag spoke and Judy Collins was there to sing. As one of the earliest examples of public resistance to the war of Vietnam, the installation of the of Artist's Tower of Protest had far reaching ramifications in terms of encouraging political thought in the music scene. But in these Pre West Times and this is the West Magazine was a part of Los Angeles Times, that was the first progressive thing that they ever did. The news media largely ignored the work. John Wilcock of the Los Angeles Roy Lichtenstein's Mushroom Cloud and nuclear disarmament logos and that symbol that obsessed the right wingers, a giant dollar bill, on which the face of George Washington had been replaced by that of Ho Chi Minh. Other panels according to Wilcock includes council's slogans such as Body Count, war is very bad for children and I hate war, I love life, let me live. Some what ironically the US State Department's Art in Embassy's Program began in 1963, had previously commissioned Walter Hobbs to select words for high level international exposure. In the interview with the art historian Francis _____ Hobbs notes that the government officials felt that the United States ought to have a pronounced, highly visible presence in the cultural world. Hobbs calls United States Information Agency, which was at the forefront of this policy, a major propaganda arm but the State Department was tolerant over artist's radical statements as long as they could be contextualized by or as American art. ____ continues, the Johnson administration was concerned with its public image at home during the summer of 1965. Having realized that the escalation of the war in Vietnam led to a substantial increase in organized protests. President Johnson asked the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to use RAND Corporation, Military Planning Committee to research the Artist's Protests Committee critique of US Foreign Policy. A Public Relations Agenda, says ________ was becoming urgent for the government. When Hobbs assembled the same group of artists for a display of solidarity against the Vietnam War, the impact was directly addressed by the Oval Office, after an Artist Tower Protest Committee read anti RAND quote at the Santa Monica Pier, here itself, a pair of debates were held between the two organizations. The first close session on July seventh 1965 was followed by an August third public debate at the Warner Playhouse on La Cienega. Admission to dialogue on Vietnam was free, 800 people showed up to the (indiscernable) theater. So many had listened to discussions from speaker set up the parking lot. Artist's Protest Community member Irving Pelton, then a teacher at UCLA have received inside information from a RAND informant Roman ____ on polices of technological warfare and population cleansing and confronted the military organization with these, that satisfied with the RAND's response the committee decided to organize and promote the tower. As influential as it might have been on other artists and musicians however the direct impact of the tower was perhaps not as widespread as the artists involved might have hoped. "The Artist's Tower of Protest was a pivotal moment when the nature of protest was changing", notes those art critic Richard ____ Smith. The transformation were due in part to the expansion of a mass media and the power that reporters and editors had to publicize or silence. The dilemma facing intellectuals engaged in protest in the 1960s sprang from the changing nature of the celebrity and distinction. Those who understood this change successfully injected themselves into public discussions and change public consciousness, those who didn't found their efforts failing to ignite public attention. The spirit of intellectual art and protest did not begin to have an impact on mass consciousness until essential help came from the Hawaiian Sunset Strip Teen Scene. The anti war movement was able to consolidate with a general audience only once it had been absorbed, applied and transmitted by those who also embraced the flipping attitude of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Statue, modernist beat clubs and the music created there in. Broadcast music filtered pop art and protest into something more digestible which was then assimilated by the denizens of the Strip and twinned with the sense of natural rebellious energy. L.A. Rock and Roll therefore was the Trojan horse that brought these socially conscious artistic concepts into discourse of the every day public awareness. So that's kind of how it worked, anyway. The songs, Dylan songs I mean - the Byrds had a hit with Mr. Tambourine Man. So every body copied it. The Turtles were the first, "it ain't me, babe" and then suddenly the association are doing one too many mornings and Cher is doing "all I really wanted to do" and I think by 1969 Al Aronowitz a near critic used for the village voice. And he said some thing like they were having the Doors, actually it was a Doors PBS Special and the critics were sitting around, I think it was a DJ named Roscoe and Al Aronowitz and a couple of other people, and you know in his argument Al Aronowitz said, there isn't very there is very few songs today that don't have Dylan's influence, you know, this was 1969. So I think it was like the second half of the decade. We kept on hearing these ideas transmitted, so you know the Byrds kind of kicked that off and that started from Zeros and they worked together at well set up studios together, with Dylan and the Byrds and eventually, it had an influence on artists like Arthur Lee of Love and various other people who wrote their own lyrics and just copied Dylan songs and you know a lot of great music came out of that, that concept of putting you know of putting pop and social consciousness together. So with that reading I want to introduce an actual member of a very important group, he play drums originally in a group called the Sons of Adam who were just one of the greatest - you know, garage rock groups. They featured a guitar player named Randy Holden who later came up here and played with Blue Cheer after a while. But the Sons Adam records really are more of my favorites. And then after a while the group was sort of of splintering and my friend here will joined Love and he was on their albums Da Capo and also on Forever Changes which is you know one of those rock critic things that every body loves, I want to introduce Michael Stuart-Ware from the band Love, and Sons of Adam. Thank you, Dominic. First of all I want to congratulate this guy who wrote an incredible, unparalleled portrait of the times, really the book is incredible, I am only about half way through, I keep re-reading parts. You know I guess I will finish it some day, you know. But in late 64' I was playing with the Sons of Adam at a little beer bar in Westwood called A Beaver Inn and Kim Fowley came in one night with a entourage of beautiful girls. And on our break he said, you know you guys should go up to Hollywood, what are you doing here? And so we I think he got us an interview with Bill Gazzari and so we talked to him and he gave us a try and we were there for about four months. But during that time we took advantage of the fact that we were in Hollywood, we went to Zeros and we saw the Byrds and it was incredible. I mean those guys, instrumentally they were perfect, vocally they sang like angels and we realized we have to go on another road but we didn't have that kind of vocal power. And eventually we sort of ran out of steam, you know you really can't make it without good vocal. And so about that time Arthur saw us one night at____ and he asked me to join and I I was reluctant at first because I knew their drug history and reputation and that really wasn't where I was coming from. You know I knew the dangers but, eventually I realized that it was worth the chance. So hooked up in August of '66 and started doing the rehearsals for Da Capo up at Arthur's house. And the first thing I was impressed with aside from the music was the rapport between Arthur and Bryan. Those guys were like brothers. And they really fed off of each others energy. And it was non stop humor, I mean those guys, they went from one joke to another. They were they were as tight as any two people I had ever seen and that would change and when that changed that spelt the end of the group and there was hard feelings. And the first set of hard feelings came in the very beginning the songs, the first song on Side A, Stephanie Knows Who. This was a girl that they both wanted to be with and Stephanie couldn't make up her mind. And at one point she decided, finally and firmly she wanted to be with Arthur and he wrote that song sort of as a celebration of his victory. And he put it on the album and then she went back to Bryan and I don't think Arthur ever got over that. I mean he was humiliated you know and there were other things that happened. It didn't do any good for us actually when Bryan sung Alone Again Or, which was chosen as the first song on Side A for Forever Changes. I sort of got the feeling that Arthur thought that's it you know, I can't go on like this, you know. I think he felt like he wanted to start with new people and so that's eventually what happened, you know. But anyway, the music itself Arthur the first album was the one that I was really impressed with. I loved the songs on that album. The simplicity of Arthur's lyrics, You all will be following, I went to Johnny, I went to Conka, one of them told me that he was holding. And he couldn't remember which one, so he had to go to both. And it was a song about acquiring drugs at the time when people played that close to the vest. You know, you just didn't talk about it. And there were narks right outside the club you know. And he got arrested several times after they played. It was something he he didn't care. That was his product. And he wanted to sing it. And Sign DC, I pierced my skin again lord, you know those were songs that they were a sign not of those times but of the times that were to come. Because there were a lot of people around Arthur that were way further down the drug road than any of us were and and so he had to deal with those people. There was a lot of people trying to get him to go down that drug road, the heroin road. And my flash on you, don't try to push your smuggled drug my way because baby I have cleansed my soul and that's where it's going to stay. And it didn't stay there. And so the drugs didn't help and they definitely hurt all of us. But we all went down that road at different times. So it was something that we dealt with sometimes not well. But eventually you know, when all was said and done, I used to think if Arthur could have just stayed away from the drugs and just kept writing songs, singing and enjoy the group together because without Bryan it couldn't be Love. So his his thought of of having a Love without Bryan MacLean over his shoulder was it was inaccurate, it couldn't happen. And when all were said and done his thought process was a necessary component to the product that we put out. And so there was no other way. What we ended up with were three great albums the first three albums were tremendous. And so I was proud to be a part of the second to to Da Capo and Forever Changes and it it was a lot of fun. So - Without saying by the way what time do we have here? 15 okay good, that's it. We are timed well. You must move closer to okay, because I am going to do a little bit talk up you will have a conversation I guess because I want to know a few things. Well, I have been reading his book and and first of all when he is talking about drugs you know, what it's really funny, is it impeccably every chapter like constantly people are reaching into the ashtray of their cars pull out joints. And it was just it was just constant and you know, I guess when when we were having the revival of interests in 60s music in the 80s, one of the guys who was the Three o' clock Michael ____ - he would talk to the press and about well, why are you doing in 60s music and says, well we are trying to do this by correcting the mistakes speaking of drugs. That's some of the original bands, they were trying to reapproach the music. So I think a lot of the younger people don't you know, don't really want to go that route which is it was positive, but I think we have got something from the music, which your book reflects a lot, I mean so far that I have read I have read about half of your book too. So we are sharing that. But the first group you are in, the Sons of Adam started out as as of surf group called the Fender Four. You made some really great records, you were not hear some applause. I was in the Fender Four. In fact we were the Fender Four when we were at the Beaver Inn. And one of the things that Kim Fowley said when he saw us, he said, drop the Fender Four and call your self the Sons of Adam. And we thought, hey we liked that. The Sons of Adam, it's better than but see, Randy - the reason we called it the Fender Four Randy has struck a deal with the Fender out in Riverside at the factory out there, I think it was Riverside they gave us free equipment you know. So we called ourselves the Fender Four and in fact even though we went to Sons of Adam you know, we didn't have to give anything back so. Now this is something that's kind of interesting and much different than today is that bands like the Sons of Adam would have a regular house band gig and were playing in the same club like for example you had a house band gig at Gazzari's? Actually we went and right after the Walker Brothers left. The Walker Brothers have been there for a long time as well. It wasn't an official house band thing. It's just that bands would go in there and they just say okay you know, see you next week. So they don't they never really said you are going to be here for a month or two months or anything like that you know, we just we just got to be and in fact I remember we were very shocked when they finally said, okay we won't need you after next week. And I thought wow, okay you know that was that was part what happened was we actually we were at the La Cieniga Gazzari's and then we moved we opened the the Sunset Boulevard Gazzari's and it was a kind of club where - like David Nelson, Ricky all the guys that played the Fraternity Brothers on the show, they used to come into that club. You know, movie directors and actors and people like that they used to be there and a few of the art crowd used to go there as well. So that's how we began to meet people that also went to ____ and Cero's and places like that. But for the most part Gazzari's were pretty much a straight crowd, you know. Like my my question because like a lot of these bands okay this is something it's should be discussed to our teenagers. And you know, you guys were all really, really young and yet when you listen to the records everything is so, so tight and so good. And my feeling is that may be you could reflect on this some how and explain it better is playing some place regularly such as I mean you must have improved your ability from when you started out as a band in garage or whatever to. Talking about playing for those audiences and getting tight, that's interesting. Yeah, the Fender Four were really tight group of four I ever saw for the first time. They were playing at the a club called the Mirage on Santa Monica, they had another drummer and I didn't even know they were dissatisfied with him well I just fell in there one night, I one night, I was in my junior year at UCLA. And I was out with a friend and we went into Mirage and saw them saw the Fender Four. And they were just powerful, man. I mean I felt then the way I felt when I went to see the Byrds the first night. I mean it was packed, it was "wall to wall" people and these guys were cooking, man. And and Mike Port the Bass player he was all over that thing, man. Our Bass player was playing a dung dung, dung dung, dung and Mike Port was doing du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du you know, he was playing all that kinds of stuff. So it's like they were very impressive. And right from the get go and so when I was offered the chance to go with those guys and we went and played at the Beaver Inn they had already had all those songs down. They played they played stuff by everybody and they played almost no original music whatsoever. But they played a few Stones' things and James Brown and Chuck Berry and people like that. And they did it very well. And so I just filled as the drummer. I didn't you know, they could have lots of guys playing drums for them. And then when we went to Gazzari's so to answer your question, we were really great there for, I would say the first couple of months. But you know you get stale playing the same club over and over and we really should have moved on before the four month period came. You know, we just didn't try. You know, we were just content to show up there every night and play. But we had started playing at ____ and we got a lot more energy from that place. So so we got some gigs there and then we got another manager who had contacts with Bill Graham up here. So we played the Fillmore and Winterland with the Family Dog and Chet Helms and so that was when we sort of went into another era. And that was great as well. You know, we got to play on the same bill with a lot of wonderful groups, you know, Big Brother and lots of people. Well we also did some gigs with Love when Snoopy was still on drums you know. So and by that time Snoopy had gotten to be a great drummer. He was excellent you know they Arthur and Johnny and especially I guess those two guys, they made up there minds about Snoopy that he was a beginner and he really wasn't a good drummer. But by the time he finished playing Seven and Seven Is, he was excellent very good drummer. What was was that an awkward transition for him because he had to switch to organ or something that he came into ? Yeah he knew it was coming though. He knew all along that they were never satisfied with his drumming and Arthur had told him about me months before. So he told me once, he said you know and he said when Arthur told me about you he said you were better than Conka. And that was whatblew their minds because to him Conka was the best, you know. So yeah that was a compliment -. So he was totally okay with the the switch? Yeah, he was fine with it. He was you know, he was glad to get the pressure off you know. He was under the gun for so long and he is a great you know, I play keyboard, he was a good keyboard artist as well. So you know. Which of the two albums because there is different line-ups, it was that sax player on Da Capo right? Yeah, Tjay Cantrelli - What was the happiest line-up for you? That the Da Capo line-up? That was the happiest period when I was in the group. That was the happiest period in the band because we were working along. You know we had lots of gigs. You know we played in all of sort of like Snoopy and I were room mates and Snoopy was a great room mate. We had fun every day and every night. You know we went to club and stuff you know. And we wanted to play more, we never played enough. You know one gig a week one gig every couple of weeks, it just is not enough, you know. You know if you are a musician you want to play you know, three nights a week, four nights a week at least you know. Sort of the legend is always that Arthur didn't want to tour. Is that really true or is it just what history says? I mean what Well - what happened with that? I think it was partly that he just enjoyed being at home like we all do you know, and he was finally at the place financially where given his rather he would rather stay home in a beautiful house and drive this Porsche and have a good time and get high than he would get on an airplane and go stay in a hotel somewhere, you know. But - Were some of you sort of itching to get on road and pushing that Pardon. Were some of the band members sort of wishing they could get out on the road? We used to call him all the time. You know in the beginning we call them, but we just get on ass chewing everytime. He would say, I don't want to hear, okay yeah. I mean promoters would call us up, members of the band and say, is there anything you can do? You know, can you talk to Arthur? We really want you guys to play. I said, yeah, yeah, we will call him, you know. But you know we did for a while and after a while we gave up. You know he really did not want to it was his choice, he was the booking agent. So everybody else for a long time we were all sitting by the phone, you know. And after a while we just kind of gave up and did other things. I started playing with other people and Bryan started working on his own project and Kenny and Johnny were doing there things, so you know I think there came a point where we figured it wasn't going to happen anymore. So we just sort of moved on. But but I always thought that Arthur was see he was mad at Elektra for one thing because the very first week I was in the group, he said, come on Michael, we are going to go down to Elektra's office, its on Sunset, and talk to them. I said, okay and we went down there and Johnny was with us, so we went in and he said, I demand to be let out of our contract, we don't want it. This is before we started recording Da Capo and and one of the Executives from Elektra were talking to said, sure, I will speak with Jack Holzman. You know, I tell you, you are not going to get out of the contract, so go home and start practicing. And we did, we said, okay. You know he was always you know Arthur was a poor loser. There was retribution to be had when he lost, you know, he wanted to get even and that's what I think Side B on Da Capo was all about
