1. hobbies and interests
2. guitar

O
f all the bands that made up the mid‘60s San Francisco scene, the Wild
flower may have been the perfect
conglomeration of Haight Street expectations. Combining the streamlined, jet-age
folk-rock sound of Takes Off-era Jefferson
Airplane, jammy aspects of the Grateful
Dead, the pretty harmonies of Sopwith
Camel and the We Five, bluesy numbers like
Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big
Brother & the Holding Company, and the folk
punk of the Harbinger Complex, the Wildflower were not some cheap imitation of
these groups. They were contemporaries of
them, sharing smoky nightclubs and ballroom stages from day one. And though they
were there from the beginning, were courted
and trotted out with the best of them, the
Wildflower never landed “the big one,” and
thus, sadly and unfairly, have remained but
a footnote in San Francisco music history.
The Wildflower was born in a time before the
whole world knew about San Francisco and the
fun its denizens were having. The Beat scene of
North Beach had been slowly evolving into something new. The area around Haight and Ashbury,
near where the universities were, was a lowrent paradise filling up with creative young people,
recently untethered from their families and ready
to try just about anything. But as more and more
people arrived to take part in the celebration,
things started to take a turn. By the time Surrealistic Pillow hit the racks at Magic Flute, exploitative articles declaring the Haight a hippy
haven filled the pages of mainstream rags like
Look and Life. People began piling into the City
by the busload and things quickly became messy
and overcrowded. “Not since the California Gold
Rush had San Francisco been flooded with such
a large group of outsiders carrying dreams and
little else,” wrote Pam Tent in her Cockettes
memoir Midnight at the Palace (2004).
Listening to Love is the Song We Sing, Rhino
Record’s recently released history of the Bay Area
rock scene, you can actually hear the dissolution of the fraternity. Things get horny and more
bombastic post-‘67. For the most part harmonies go out the door in favor of scorching leads
and caterwauling vocals. By 1969 the best days
of San Francisco were way behind it. If you want
to hear what it sounded like in the good ol’ days,
dig up a copy of Mainstream Records’ With Love:
A Pot of Flowers compilation LP. Not only is it a
great time capsule of the Bay Area scene before
the major labels came in and turned the Sum-
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121
mer of Love into the bummer above, but it’s
also the best place to hear the Wildflower in their
prime.
L
FOLKY BEGINNINGS
ike pretty much all of the San Francisco
groups, the Wildflower took root in a coffeehouse. The coffeehouse scene of the Peninsula
may not have been as widely heralded as the
Village scene three thousand miles to the east,
but it definitely spawned its fair share of memorable players. Within these dingy haunts, from
San Jose up to Belmont, the guys and gals who
would go on to form some of the most influential rock groups of all time got their start plucking solo or in loosely organized combos like the
Black Mountain String Band, the Faux Pas, and
the Southgate Singers.
Stephen Ehret: The coffeehouse scene was
the only thing that was happening back
then. From The Tangent in Palo Alto and the
Off Stage in San Jose, to the Gaslight in San
Mateo and the Coffee Gallery, Coffee & Confusion and the Drinking Gourd in San Francisco,
something was happening. We didn’t know what
it was, but it was happening.
T
all and outgoing, Stephen Ehret caught the
folk bug in 1962 while a student at the College of San Mateo, just a few miles south of San
Francisco. Taking up the guitar, he formed a duo
called Orpheus’ Children with his then girlfriend,
Eilleen Gammill. “We were into a more contemporary folk sound than the traditionalists like
Peter Albin and Jerry Garcia,” Ehret remembers.
“We played throughout the San Francisco peninsula and North Beach at clubs like Coffee &
Confusion and the Off Stage in San Jose, where
we did a gig with Ron McKernan (Pig Pen) preGrateful Dead. Basically [it was] just 12-string
guitar and two vocals but later Michael Riggs
joined us. Michael was a guy who had a stand
up bass when nobody had a bass... no one was
using electric.” 1
Michael McCausland (poet and Wildflower
lyricist): You two were the West Coast Ian and
Sylvia or Richard and Mimi Fariña. Dylan thought
Fariña was his only competition and he had the
hots for Mimi—who didn’t? Just like [everyone
did] for Eilleen.
I
n late 1963, Stephen, Eilleen and Mike
Riggsteamed up with Charlie Ewers and Ray
Vigil as the Southgate Singers, and in 1964 Ehret
helped organize the College of San Mateo Folk
Festival where they shared the stage with such
future luminaries as Jerry Garcia and his Black
Mountain String Band, the Liberty Hill Aristocrats with Peter Albin (pre-Big Brother & the
Holding Company), folk legend Jesse “Lone Cat”
Fuller (who wrote “San Francisco Bay Blues”
and the Dead-staple “Beat It on Down the Line”),
and the Town Criers (featuring later-Airplaner
Marty Balin). In attendance was future-Wildflower bassist John Jennings. Jennings hung
with a musical crowd in college and was a member of an R&B styled group called Peter & the
Wolves, the Peter in this case being the Peter up
on stage with Aristocrats.
1. Not the same Michael Riggs as the Laguna Beach surfer who
became Bhagavan Das!
122
Orpheus’ Children, Eilleen Gammill and
Stephen Ehret, ca. 1963. (Photo: Peter Albin)
John Jennings: I started off in rock, moved
into folk and moved back into rock. I was in a
bunch of folk groups while in high school. I
first started playing Duane Eddy tunes on the
guitar and singing Everly Brothers songs. The
Ventures were a huge influence as well. Later, in
high school, I got turned on to Joan Baez, New
Lost City Ramblers, Pete Seeger, etc. Simultaneously I was listening to Lightning Hopkins,
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee as well as a
huge amount of classical music (my girlfriend at
the time was a world class cellist). Later, in college, it was the Stones and the Beatles, Sandy
Bull, and finally the Byrds pushed me over the
edge. Peter Albin and I played together as Peter &
the Wolves while we were at College of San
Mateo. And Bob Jones, the lead guitarist for We
Five, and I were best friends while we were at
University of San Francisco in 1963/64.
I
GROWING
n 1965, Ehret and Jennings found themselves
studying art together at the California College
of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. It was there that
the seeds of the Wildflower sprouted.
JJ: September 1965, I’ve escaped my family
again. Living in a basement room in the Oakland
hills, I’m starting my junior year of college as a
freshman at California College of Arts and Crafts;
just a little humiliating but I’m out of the house
at least. Big things were happening: my friends
from the University of San Francisco (where we
had all spent our freshman year) had just released their first single, “You Were On My Mind,”
and it was getting big radio play; Bob Dylan had
just gone electric, and the Byrds released “Mr
Tambourine Man.” My music world was rocked
and was rocking. Being a musician of sorts and a
veteran of a few bands, both R&B and folk, I was
in sonic heaven. I really needed to play and hook
up with some players.
I didn’t know many people in the East Bay. I
had a friend of a friend who lived in Berkeley on
the other side of the UC campus. He was something of an audiophile and so, seeking companionship, I sought him out, negotiating the unfamiliar streets on my Vespa. He had a state of the
art audio system and all the latest vinyl in what
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was happening below the corporate music radar.
He had turned me on to Sandy Bull and Ravi
Shankar the previous year and now he had the
newest releases from them, but more importantly, he had the entire Byrds album. I had only
heard the single up until then and what I heard
from his stereo defined the path I was to take.
Back at art school, I was having a hard time
concentrating. The music was more important
than anything visual. There was energy in the
new forms of song that was emerging. Not so
much with art. I was actually visualizing the
music in my head; organizing tones into colors,
notes into strokes. I had actually expressed this
to one of my more sympathetic instructors and
he encouraged me to pursue this.
There was this guy I vaguely knew from my
hometown on the Peninsula, who was going to
CCAC. A red haired folkie who had a reputation
of getting in your face. His mother had actually
been my Latin tutor during my sophomore year
in high school and the most I really knew of
him was his mother yelling at him all the time
for terrorizing his siblings. “Stephen! Stephen,
you leave (fill in the blank) alone!” I knew he
played 12-string and had been in the folk music
scene at College of San Mateo. We had friends in
common. So I found out where he lived and
made the trek down the hill to see him.
Stephen lived with his girlfriend and former
singing partner, Eilleen, in a small apartment not
far from the campus. I brought all my new
records down for him to hear. We had the Byrds,
the second Sandy Bull release, the Stones (Out
of Our Heads had come out the year before) and
the Beatles. I had a really crappy guitar my dad
had bought for me, a Sears Roebuck Silvertone,
a real log, but Stephen and I jammed to Sandy
Bull’s extended raga-esque version of “Memphis”
and the world was good. But I had to get a better
instrument.
Somewhere in there the topic of starting a
band came up. That was the only excuse I needed
to blow all my savings on some equipment. I
had become enamored of Chris Hillman’s bass
playing on the Byrds release as well as Bill
Wyman’s playing on all the Stones records. So
buying a bass was paramount. And of course an
amplifier was needed. And no one really had an
electric guitar so that was needed, and of course
an amplifier for that. So began the first of many
treks downtown to Leo’s Music, where the instruments were free, all you had to do was sign
your name. Now that my savings were gone I
needed a plan to recoup my investment. And I
know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the subject of playing as a group came up with the intention of learning some cover songs and playing the frat parties over at Cal. At that time, it
was Stephen and I and a guy named Gaeton that
we both knew from the beatnik scene on the
Peninsula, but we needed some one who could
play drums. Stephen said the guy upstairs might
be interested and that is when I met Tommy
[Ellis].
Tom Ellis: We were all going to art school at
CCAC and the art, music, poetry, writing, dance
and all were in the midst of an awakening, but
also an upheaval. The herald sounded and
within a very short span (less than a year) the
idea that all we did was an expression of art...
what we wore, what we ate, what we did with
our days... and how we played together, became
a hippie manifesto. And as the music started to
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play out on the radio—
rock ‘n roll, Motown,
British sounds, Bob
Dylan—Stephen and I
were looking at each
other and thinking
“Why not?” So we got
some equipment—
funky stuff—and got
permission from the
school to use one of the
rooms to practice in at
night. That was the
start of it.
JJ: I remember goofing around Stephen’s
apartment with the
new equipment. I can
remember the first amplified note I played on
my new St George bass
The
(a pawn shop special)
and being blown away by the loudness and deepness of it. That was love at first listening. Of
course that same volume made practicing there
a problem. So a deal was struck with CCAC that
if we could use one of the studios at night for
practicing, we would play at a school event, sorta
becoming the school mascot band. Our line-up
at that time was Tommy on drums, Gaeton on
harmonica (which he was just learning but had
a huge desire to play), Stephen on 12-string guitar, and me on electric 6-string or bass. I had also
recruited one of my old roommates from my
CSM days, Teddy Schneider, to sing and play
tambourine and bongos. There was also this guy,
Lee, who was to play lead guitar but I think he
actually knew less about guitar than either
Stephen or I. But our desire was strong and that,
it turns out, made all the difference.
So here we are at our first real rehearsal, with
all the equipment set up and we can play loud,
sort of. Now we are looking at each other. “What
will play? What do we know?” Big dose of reality
here. We don’t really know anything, but hey,
we look good. So I am suggesting “Walkin’ the
Dog,” like how the Stones do it on the first album. Easy chords, just standard blues progression “and you, Teddy, know all the words.” I
play the lead licks on the guitar and another
definitive moment arrives: No one wants to play
bass, but I’m the only one who knows how the
lead goes. So what to do? “I can show you what
to play on the guitar. Give me the bass; I’ll play
it.” Gaeton never did gig with us. Actually after
that first rehearsal at CCAC he realized that he
didn’t have any musical ability immediately available and gracefully bowed out.
T
he lineup solidified in late 1965 with Ehret
on rhythm guitar, Lee Chandler on lead guitar, Tom Ellis on drums, John Jennings on bass,
and Teddy Schneider as percussionist. The singing duties were shared by everyone. Next up
was getting some better gear.
TE: All we wanted was new equipment, for
the new Standell amps had just hit town and
every bellbottomed, longhaired, little rat-faced
hippy in town had to get down to the candy
store to see them. So after signing our life’s future work effort on a 10-page contract, we now
proudly owned two new Standell 100 watt-2/15
towers and a Vox Super Beatle that even had a
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29
Human Be-In. Some Beat-era poets, like David
Meltzer, formed their own rock bands (in his
case the Serpent Power) and set their prose to
music so the kids could dance to it. Others collaborated more informally as Richard Brautigan
did with Mad River. Some bands even kept lyricists on the payroll. Robert Hunter was basically
a member of the Grateful Dead, though his place
was at a desk rather than on the stage. The Wildflower had a similar arrangement. Though the
guys for the most part shared songwriting duty,
they collaborated early on with their teacher
Michael McClure and even more so with their
friend Michael “Spike” McCausland, who was,
for all intensive purposes, a member of the group
and wrote many of their heavy, heavy lyrics.
T
Wildflower, ca. early 1966
tilt frame so you could aim the sound into outer
space.
ith their new amps and a lot of youthful
enthusiasm, the Wildflower quickly graduated from college town frat parties to playing real
life clubs in the City.
W
TE: Within what seemed like only weeks, we
were playing somewhere every weekend and
making a few dollars, and going to school in the
days, and drawing up posters for gigs at night.
The first was at a blues club down a dark hallway on Fillmore in the city. That was real, but
somehow so were we… we did what we played
and sounded like, and it was not like anybody
else’s sound.
W
hat differentiated the Wildflower’s sound
from some of the other up-and-coming
groups definitely had something to do with their
heavily mystical and mind-groping lyrics. One
of the first songs the group wrote—“Baby
Dear”—featured words penned by none other
than pretty-big-poet-at-the-time Michael
McClure who happened to be Ehret’s professor
at CCAC. Pretty handy to have such a worldly
wordsmith forking over verse like “Vision blouse
branch honey lip, Down inside that glowing slip,
Baby Dear I love your boots, Lace beam space
and turquoise ear, Rainbow neon toes in there,
Down inside your leather boots” to a bunch of
twenty-year-olds.
“Michael was my literature teacher,” Ehret
describes. “He was there all the time.”
I
THE MATRIX
he Matrix had been a pizza parlor on Fillmore
near Lombard in the City’s Marina district
until Marty Balin, in August of 1965, got some
investors to put in enough bread to start up a
nightclub. Auditions were held for bands and
soon the walls throbbed to the sounds of newlyformed groups like the PH Phactor Jug Band,
Great!! Society!!, and a pre-Janis Joplin Big
Brother & the Holding Company. As the bar did
brisk business in beer and wine, the groups
played a couple sets a night on a low stage that
looked out onto a small dance floor and a mural
of the four horsemen of the apocalypse that
someone had painted on the opposite wall. The
club was billed as a venue for “folk-rock” to differentiate it from the more established coffeehouse scene over the hill in North Beach. The
booking was eclectic and sometimes included
comedians and blues acts—one of the earliest
gigs was Balin’s own group, Jefferson Airplane,
opening for Lightnin’ Hopkins.
Though not their first San Francisco gig
(they’d played another club on Fillmore, The
Sunset Strip, a couple weeks earlier), it was here
at the Matrix that the Wildflower was properly
introduced to the San Francisco scene on February 6, 1966.
TE: The Matrix was a neat little club, at least
as far as we knew. They never turned up the
lights, so it could have been a total rotten dive,
but it looked great in the dark. That said, it was
a odd room to play, kinda like playing in a railroad car, with a tiny little stage at the back far
right in the room, a long bar running down one
A POET, I KNEW IT
f San Francisco calls to mind hippies and
bridges, the only other native institution that
could make up the triumvirate would have to be
poetry. The influence of the Beats who had
settled in the hilly, ramshackle neighborhood of
North Beach, and specifically the City Lights
bookstore, crept stealthily into the local college
and teen scenes at first. By 1966 the store sponsored an appearance by Russian poet Andryy
Voznesensky at the Fillmore where City Lights
owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti read translations
of his poems and Jefferson Airplane performed
(though not at the same time!). Poets like Lenore
Kandel and Allen Ginsberg were big draws at the
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Michael McLure, John Jennings and wife
Karen backstage at the Matrix, 1966.
123
side, and errant tables scattered throughout. We
barely fit on the stage. And with our master
percussionist Teddy, at six-feet something tall
and half as wide, we squeezed the five of us as
best we could and pointed our Standell-Vox amps
at the ceiling and howled at the moon. Of course,
the sound hit the ceiling bounced over the bar,
hit the floor and came right up and slammed
into the guitars creating almost immediate chaos
and feedback... but, that’s OK... it’s rock ‘n’ roll!
Now we were stylin’ with new amps, new velour shirts, with flowers of course, and our new
hi-heeled boots and pegged polka dot pants—
San Francisco’s answer to the British invasion!
Stephen’s 12-string filling out the spaces in the
sky; John’s bass thumping through and driving
the band; Tom bangin’ the traps; Teddy on bongos and tambourine and singing blues; with
Michael’s Gibson guitar playing lead... the night
is flying. 2
SE: We would start out with “Baby Dear,”
“Jump In,” “Please Come Home,” and the rest of
the songs that you can hear now on the CD,
with some covers like “Chimes of Freedom,” or
“Feel A Whole Lot Better,” an original instrumental called “362 Hudson Street,” and end with
a jam version of a song I wrote with Michael
McClure called “Introit,” which we have no recordings of.
The Wildflower, 1966. L to R: Tom Ellis, John Jennings, Stephen Ehret, Michael Brown.
T
OVER THE BRIDGE
JJ: Actually we started out doing covers and
gradually added original songs until that was the
bulk of our material. Any live show would have
“Eight Miles High” and any number of Dylan,
Byrds or what-have-you covers in the set list. I
remember jamming like crazy to “2120 South
Michigan Ave.” But our first love was to the
original songs.
E: Late afternoon on the Bay Bridge was a
joy to behold, the sun easing down behind
the city and the reds and yellows sparkling along
the waterfront. The Golden Gate turning blazing red as the fog of the evening formed out
there past the Farallon Islands in the distance.
Alcatraz, a dark shadow on the water and the tip
of Mt Tamalpais lifted over Marin and the North
side of the Bay... all a giant beacon shouting WELCOME as we pushed on across the water.
MM: They did do one Dylan cover that I remember—“Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”
B
TE: As evening progressed, the other bands
and groupies not gigging that night would make
their way in to check out the floor action, the
unattended girls, the out-of-town straights, the
occasional real superstar, and have a beer; nod to
the band; and hit the street. We would crash
though four or five sets, jamming to make the
tunes stretch out of the little three minutes jingles
and immediately hit the bar between sets. By
the end of the night we could usually manage to
make enough dough (after paying up the bar
tab) to buy a tank of gas to get back across the
bridge—an easy ride at 2AM, and tomorrow we
will get up and do it again… and who was the
little gal with the lace-up boots, and feathers
and embroidered headband that Michael went
off with after the gig? Guess we find out tonight.
Michael Brown: Try to remember the name
of the young lady next to you as you wake up.
Go make coffee and bring it back to bed. Actually get up an hour or so later, annoy your roommates into waking up or not, make or go get
breakfast. Find a place to make some music or
hang out at a music store or the Berkeley campus or Golden Gate Park. Go to rehearsal or to a
gig or get high. Start all over again.
2. Ellis is referring to Michael Brown, who replaced Lee Chandler
somewhere around this time. See “In the City.”
124
erkeley and its next-door neighbor Oakland,
where CCAC is located, are connected to San
Francisco proper by the Bay Bridge. Only a couple
miles apart the two metropoli have evolved with
marked distinctions. It really is a tale of two
cities. You might say San Francisco has more of
a “sensual” reputation, while the East Bay’s is
more “cerebral.” In the ‘60s it was in the East
Bay that master Indian sarodist Ali Akbar Khan
had set up his school, where the protest movement was born, and where there was a pretty
high level of intellectual experimentation going
on. The City on the other hand, was more known
for its black-clad Beats, its rough and tumble
neighborhoods, and its late-night jazz scene.
SE: Things were happening in the East Bay.
Sandy Bull was experimenting with Eastern
melodies that helped change the nature of rock
solos; Terry Riley with electronic loops and
sounds that you can hear in the music of The
Who; Country Joe & the Fish were into psychedelic movements like “Section 43.” We were playing with rambling jams and feedback. There was
a great musical experimentation that came across
from the Cal and CCAC area to San Francisco
and influenced the mix that was taking shape at
the time.
MB: An over simplification would be that the
East Bay, early on, paid more attention to the
east Indian ragas that lent themselves to the
“acid rock.” The West Bay had more blues, e.g.
the Fish vs Quicksilver. I had a roommate, Mark,
who would spend literally days with Sandy Bull
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playing guitars and sitars and you could come
and go during those marathons and sit in with
them for a few hours, go sleep or eat whatever,
come back and sit in again. Then they’d run out
of steam or smack or... after about three days.
E
ventually, the Wildflower began to feel the
westward pull, probably in part because they
were tired of commuting. “From the get go, we
were a San Francisco band,” admits Tom Ellis.
“We never were an East Bay band, because we
were part of the SF sound and it surrounded us,
just as we expressed and assimilated it. So as the
SF scene exploded into the day, so did we—sometimes with amazing beauty—and other times
just as awkward and stumbling as a gold coast
drunk.” The first to move to the City was John
Jennings, who moved in with girlfriend when
her parents went on extended vacation. The others soon followed.
JJ: When I was living at my future wife’s parents house in the Avenues in SF (they were in
Europe at the time), after a late breakfast I would
walk through Golden Gate Park to the Richmond
District, to Teddy’s house where we would practice all afternoon. At night we’d get wrecked and
either go hear other bands or just hang out. Sorta
like what folks do nowadays. I remember that
when we were really poor, I’d bake chocolate
chip cookies and Spike (Michael McCausland)
and I would go to the Park and sell cookies and
poems. That was fun, avoiding the police and
all. There were quite a few stoned-on-acid days
in there as well.
I
IN THE CITY
n the City the Wildflower found themselves
surrounded by a slew of other bands. For every well-known rock group that would go on to
find fame and fortune in the music business,
there were three dozen aspiring combos—groups
like the Hedds, Friendly Strangers, Allmen Joy,
and Freedom Highway—all making the rounds
of the auditoriums, ballrooms and nightclubs.
Immediately upon arrival, the Wildflower
jumped headlong into the whirling scene. They
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29
met aspiring promoter Bill Graham—looking to augment his
Mime Troupe gravy by throwing rock concerts—and were
booked into the lineup of his
very first production at a rundown auditorium in the ghetto
called the Fillmore on February
12, 1966. Promoted as a benefit
for the Democratic Congressional Candidates’ Vietnam
Study Group, Peace Rock, as the
event was called, advertised the
Wildflower at the top of a bill
including the Mystery Trend,
Quicksilver, Our Lost Souls,
and Big Brother. More groups were added later,
including the Grateful Dead.
The show offers began to come in quickly.
Talent was in great demand as more and more
entrepreneurs took advantage of the multitude
of abandoned ballrooms and began throwing
concerts. The Wildflower appeared a couple
nights with Sopwith Camel and the Amazing
Charlatans at the old converted Firehouse on
Sacramento Street before it got torn down. There
was a Merry Prankster-related event at the Bear’s
Lair on the UC Berkeley campus on March 25
with The Wildflower and the Bethlehem Exit. A
month later the band returned to Berkeley, for
an outdoor show on campus with Country Joe
& the Fish, Malvina Reynolds, and the Gothic
Cathedral, and in May they participated with the
Charlatans, Electric Train, Don Garrett, and the
Final Solution in “an extended house party” on
Folsom Street that was supposed to be a benefit
for something or another.
The first fissure appeared around this time
when lead guitarist Lee Chandler left the group
to pursue an acting career in Los Angeles [his
most notable appearance would be in the AIP
biker flick Cycle Savages with Bruce Dern and
Casey Kasem]. His replacement was guitarist
Michael Brown, who the guys had known from
the Peninsula folk group, the Faux Pas.
Chandler’s departure actually turned out to be a
good thing, as Brown was a much more experienced lead player. With Brown on board the rest
of the Spring of ’66 was spent gigging at the
Matrix [a couple times with the Outfit featuring
a pre-Manson Family Bobby Beausoleil]; playing
out at Muir Beach with Big Brother, Quicksilver,
the Charlatans, the Carpetbaggers, and the Erector Set; and rehearsing new material.
I
BIRTH OF THE STRAIGHT
n May of 1966 the management of the Straight
Theater on Haight Street was planning some
major renovations, including installing a 5,000square foot dance floor with the intention of
putting on concerts there. The only hitch was
that the city wouldn’t give the venue a dancehall
permit. The management skirted the issue by
advertising the events as “dance classes” and
hiring local rock bands to assist modern dancers
like Caitlin Huggins and Ann Halprin with their
routines. “Caitlin led the first public ‘dance class’
at the Straight by inviting the audience/class to
warm up and then led some stretches and brief
exercises in dance improvisation,” writes Reg E
Williams, one of the theater’s founders. “She
then suggested that the class practice improvisation to the music of the Grateful Dead.” Even-
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hind the stage was this large box, covered with
milk glass, housing dangling cut glass mobiles
on rotating motors with colored lights all around
that reacted to the music we were playing… low
notes were deep indigo to high notes which were
orange and yellow… it was amazing… a light
show that was shaped by the songs being
played.” 3
tually the dance class charade was lifted and the
nightspot continued unimpeded for two more
years showcasing groups like Kaleidoscope, Mad
River, Clover, and Indian Headband.
Whether it was to raise money to fight for
permits or to rehab the building, the Straight
Theater held a fundraising concert at the Avalon
Ballroom on May 19 featuring the Grateful Dead,
the Outfit, the Wildflower, and their friend and
professor, poet Michael McClure.
SE: It was a benefit for the Straight Theater
and may have been the first Avalon gig. Anyway
we had these Standell Amps that were the biggest you could get at the time and we figured we
were going to out-do the Dead. So we set up on
stage and they looked huge. Then they showed
up and Stanley Owsley was doing their sound
and he had a rack of hi-fi amps and a Voice of the
Theater speaker for each guy. When Phil hit the
bass you hardly heard anything, but the ground
shook. So much for outdoing the Dead.
I
RED DOG SALOON
n the summer of 1966, the Wildflower landed
a summer-long residency that would change
their lives and literally nearly blow their minds.
The Red Dog Saloon sat creakily on the main
street of Virginia City, a tiny and remote ex-mining town on the eastside of the Sierra Nevada. A
group of folks from San
Fr a n c i s c o — M a r k
Unobsky, Don Works,
and Chan “Travus T
Hipp” Laughlin—started
booking bands there in
the summer of 1965 and
invited the Charlatans to
play a six week residency
followed by regular PH
Phactor
Jug
Band
shows.
The summer was
such a success (thanks
in part to the Stanley
Owsley-supplied acid)
that they decided to do
it again the following
year. This time the
groups slated to perform were the Wildflower
and Big Brother (still no Janis!) on alternating
weekends, with the Final Solution joiing in later
in the summer. The gigs were legendary with
great San Francisco groups, general lawlessness,
and even a prototype Bill Ham light show. “The
Red Dog had this color-sound translator and I’ve
never seen another,” remembers Stephen. “Be-
Ugly
Things
JJ: There seems to be some confusion as to
how this gig came about. I think that [our manager] Bill Belmont initially got us in the door. All
I know for sure is that we had to audition for
somebody out at Muir Beach. I remember Big
Brother was there too. Maybe the Santana Blues
Band too. Shortly after that, we heard that we
got the gig, alternating weekends with Big
Brother. Teddy was still playing with us that
summer and we used his van, and later Tom’s
van, to get us up there as the rest of us had no
vehicles, except Stephen who had a hopped up
Honda 305 that was in pieces in his kitchen.
T
he shows at the Red Dog happened only on
the weekends, so during the week the group
would head back to San Francisco to see their
girlfriends, take care of business, and play gigs.
A big one that summer occurred at the Oakland
Auditorium where the Wildflower got to open
for Them... well, they got to open for the Association who was opening for the Grassroots...
Anyway, it was a big show with over 5,000 people
in attendance according to Mike Shapiro, whose
band William Penn & His Pals were also on the
bill (along with the Baytovens and the Harbinger Complex). Great as it was to be an idolized,
citified rock band, after a week of recovery, visiting, and rehearsing, the guys would be itching
to get back to Virginia City.
JJ: One trip up there we were coming up the
mountains out of Lake Tahoe and the back door
of the van flew open and the two Standel amps
slid out onto the freeway. So we stopped and
put them back in and continued on. We’d leave
on Friday morning and get to Virginia City in
time for dinner, set up and play that night and
Saturday night.
The people there were great. The food was top
drawer. The drugs were unending. I had an incredibly sweet affair with one of the waitresses
(who Teddy pointed out, totally out classed me…
3. Check out the DVD Rockin’ the Red Dog for the whole story,
including some nice, ’65-‘66 Super-8 footage of PH Phactor, Final
Solution, Charlatans, and yes, the Wildflower.
125
I think he was jealous). It was really hard
By now Stephen had completed lost it... like a
to stay in tune, instrumentally. This was
very bad trip, and was now immersed in hallucibefore the advent of tuning machines
nations—more lizards and such—so we manand had to be done by ear. After copious
aged to get a call into an ambulance and sent
consumption of whatever, we all heard
him off down the hill from Virginia City to emerdifferent things and things differently.
gency in the Carson City. What a night. The
The audience was a real mixed bag.
weekend crashed to an end. We packed the gear
Some hippy/beatnik types, but mostly
the next day, not a whole lot of smiles… then
tourists from Reno out to sample some
late in the day, they brought Stephen back to
of the Wild West. We provided the wild
the Dog... food poisoning! Not even a bad drug
part. I remember Stephen getting busted
trip. The Wildflower conquers all—even the bad
by the local sheriff for strapping on a BB
pizza.”
pistol that looked real and walking
around town. The constabulary wasn’t
JJ: It was a strange, wild, and surreal experireally happy to see this long red-haired
ence and the parts that I remember, floating
freak walking round their town heeled,
around in an alien soup with pieces sometimes
if you know what I mean. After much
surfacing, seem very unbelievable until I ask
discussion they let him go but told him
Stephen and he affirms that piece and then adds
Eilleen, Stephen and Tom backstage at the
he couldn’t wear it anymore.
one of his own that makes my morsel of insanMatrix, 1966.
I remember spending our days at a
ity almost bland and banal. I can say with all
place called American Flats, an abandoned
certainty that it was a high point in my consilver ore processing plant out in the middle of campout—not too private at all—but, hey, we sumption of substances of all kinds, except althe desert. It had a great little creek running weren’t there to sleep, we were there to play our cohol.
through it so there was this small green belt in music... and party and have a good time and get
the midst of the sagebrush, creosote, and tum- high and... who knows? We set up our stuff, got
bleweeds. We took quite a bit of acid there and a meal, and headed down to the saloon. The
BACK IN TOWN
would come back to the Red Dog for the Satur- night was jumpin’; the band was cooking; the
bottles
were
breaking;
the
locals
were
fighting;
pon
their
return to San Francisco, the
day night show well primed. All in all it was a
Wildflower jumped right into a week-long
fun summer. We would hear stories about Big the sheriff was frowning; the bar maids were
Brother when we showed up on Friday night; grinning; the drummer was grooving... until residency at the Matrix in August of ‘66. They
I’m sure they told Wildflower stories to Big Stephen got sick, and then everything shifted to continued writing, rehearsing, and basically setplastic and melted.
tling in to the routine of being Haight-Ashbury
Brother on the turnaround.
Sometimes that’s OK, we are men, we know rock musicians. Musically the group’s playing
SE: But by far the most memorable and cos- what we are doing, and we can handle it. But improved by leaps and bounds and their harmomic event happened the weekend when Virginia somehow the fog just never cleared. The night nies got tighter and more complex. Their shows
City has an annual event called “Clamper’s Day” dissolved and between broken guitar strings and became increasingly psychedelic as the once
(E Clampus Vitus is a fraternal organization dedi- with Stephen no longer able to stand, the last short tunes became drawn out and “Easternized.”
cated to the study and preservation of Western set looked and sounded like the train wreck it
SE: We weren’t really into the traditional InHeritage) when the redneck locals all dress up in was. So we drifted out of the Red Dog and headed
red shirts and start drinking in the morning and off like lost barflies. We put Stephen in his cot, dian music, only its influence on rock… like
continue all day until, by the time we were to go which at six-feet plus his feet dangled out over Ravi Shankar’s long classical piece at Monterey
on, they were pretty well gone and the Red Dog the ends, then the weirdness really got going. which everyone thought was a killer jam… and
was packed—and they had guns and knives. My girlfriend and I managed to find an hour of the sound of the sitar with its undertone drone.
When we arrived they were rowdy as hell and fun and friends back at the Red Dog so we headed
JJ: We improvised a lot; more I think than
were threatening to grab us and cut our hair and late night back to the hotel across the street and
who knows what else—it was actually pretty up a very steep and long set of stairs from the most bands at the time. Blues was really big
scary. Some how we managed to get up on stage lobby which was about the size of the broom around then and there was a lot of soloing, you
and start playing and a truly magical thing hap- closet in the back hall. We started to bunk down know, guitar heroes and all. But we would do
pened… somehow the music transformed the next to Stephen, when he sat straight up, looked stuff that was a precursor to Phish shows with
situation and… they loved us… so by the end of at us, and started shouting at us to get the liz- ensemble improvising around the framework of
the set they were our friends, buying us drinks ards off the ceiling. Uh-oh… last time we checked a song. We never knew where it was going or
and being our buddies for the rest of the week- the lizards were in the badlands outside of how it would turn out. Pretty ballsy, but we
end… and the long-haired-hippy thing disap- town... So we laid him back
down—by this time he was burnpeared into cosmos.
ing up—we gave him some waTE: They liked the music, and decided to stick ter—not a big help back in those
around for the next set, and by the end of the days—and we went off to find a
night everyone was so toasted that the war was bed to crash in. We found an
called off, and we were just part of the program empty room across the hall and
(except for the long hair, beads, braids, fell into bed… then the cowboy
bellbottoms, and patchouli oil). So rolling into who rented the room showed up.
the Red Dog for the third time seemed pretty Now by this time it is 4:00 in the
cozy and familiar. Virginia City is always a bit of morning and he is toast. We peeked
a surprise when you hit the edge of town. A from behind the covers; he put
restored old mining town, all the buildings are on the light; saw us and gave a
hippies”
and
out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, di- “god-damn
rect from central casting—tall skinny hotels, the stumbled back out the door,
bank, the saloons—just hanging on the side of a missed the first step on that tall
hill and scattered small wood houses dotting stairway, and tumbled all the way
the rough landscape—few trees, just rocks and to the bottom, cursing and
sky—looks the same as it did in 1850. Now, this cussing the entire trip. We pantrip we decided to bring some of the wives and icked and ran after him, but, at
girlfriends so the cars and van were crowded and the bottom, he picked himself up
the little rooms the Red Dog got us at the hotel and stumbled back out into the
John, Tom and Stephen at the Fillmore, September 1966.
were filled with cots and laid out almost like a night.
U
126
Ugly
Things
Issue
29
“In the beginning there was a lot of
friendship between groups. I think when
the record deals started happening it got
more serious and competitive.”
around naked, but we didn’t have much interaction besides playing gigs together. I ran into him
at Safeway a while back and reintroduced myself and then again recently at Tizka Salon where
we were getting our hair cut.
MB: The genuine friendships still last, others
fade away.
The Wildflower at the Fillmore, 1966.
were young and didn’t know any better.
I
n September the group was invited back to
the Fillmore by Bill Graham first for a benefit
show for the Both/And featuring Elvin Jones,
Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and the
Dead, and then a week later to open two nights
for the Byrds. That first night with LA’s finest
they got to put their aforementioned experimentation to work.
MB: I remember opening for the Byrds at the
Fillmore and we were asked to extend our set
because they were late. The tune I remember
lasting a while was an original instrumental called
“362 Hudson Street,” named after the band
house address in Oakland. After our set we were
in the green room when the Byrds finally show
up. I asked McGuinn what happened and he
said “What? Nothing happened. We’re late? So
what.” I knew Jimmy before he became Roger,
so I expected something different. Oh well. Another night, I remember at the Fillmore, the
audience was all the way out to the beach and
the last rows were being washed away by the
waves, but that’s another story.
THE OTHERS
I
n this new Mecca for aspiring musicians there
was pretty much always someone playing
somewhere. On their off nights they guys would
go watch other groups, just as the other groups
would do for them. At first it was like one big
happy family.
JJ: I seem to remember a lot of camaraderie in
the early years. Most of us in bands came out of
the SF Peninsula music scene or the East Bay
Berkeley scene and knew each other. Peter Albin
and I went to high school and junior college
together and played together during those years.
Garcia and Pigpen came out of the Palo Alto beatnik world. And when it all came together in the
City, I remember how amazed we all were that
there were so many of us. It was a pretty friendly
scene with just a little taste of competition.
SE: We knew the Charlatans, Quicksilver,
Sopwith Camel, Big Brother, etc, from gigs at the
Red Dog Saloon. We met Signe Anderson and
the Airplane at Matrix gigs and Moby Grape at
the Ark in Sausalito where the Dead were rehearsing at the Heliport down the road.
Issue
29
MB: The music scene was very neighborly at
first. I was friends with Terry from the Sopwith
Camel, Sam and Peter from Big Brother and Barry
from the Fish. One of the things we did was jam
together. I carried a guitar almost everywhere
looking to make music. So did a lot of others.
We’d trade licks, show each other chords or scales
or songs. I remember Barry Melton showing me
his version “Georgia.” He was jazzed at the arrangement he’d put together so he taught it to
me. Terry from the Camel showed me a blues
scale that covered a multitude of songs that
weren’t just blues. Sam had a close friend who
wasn’t in a band, but should have been because
he was a wonderful guitarist, and he and Sam,
and I played together. Out of these sessions ideas
for songs would show up.
SE: I remember at one gig, George Hunter of
the Charlatans being real drunk and barfing on
the front row—the origins of punk perhaps. We
did several gigs with the Sopwith Camel. I’m
still friends with Peter Kramer [the Camel’s
singer] and we get together often and talk shop.
Very memorable, though, was the time we
were invited to play for the Dead at a party they
were having at Oolampali in Marin where they
were renting this huge estate that is now a state
park. After the complimentary dose I looked
around at this amazing Bacchanal. Pig Pen was
in a jeep with a bunch of girls and a shotgun
which he was firing over his head as he drove
through the hilly grass… there was some disturbance with George Hunter pulling a pistol
and chasing Jerry Garcia around… but as we
stood out on the patio playing, with the Dead
and the Charlatans sitting around, I remember
how self conscious I became, being stoned as I
was, and trying to remember how to play and
stay in tune with all of them watching… somehow none of that mattered and all were entertained and a good time was had, to say the least…
and on the way home Eilleen told me we were
going to have our first daughter, Flower.
JJ: In the beginning there was a lot of friendship between groups. I think when the record
deals started happening it got more serious and
competitive. I do remember hanging with the
Dead at the Ashbury Street house, and later we
did spend some time with the Youngbloods.
SE: I remember going over to Phil [Lesh]’s
house back in the day and his girlfriend walking
Ugly
Things
SE: At first there was this great musical family, but by the Summer Of Love the recording
industry had gotten its grubby fingers into the
scene and that was pretty much the end of the
“Love.” Then the dark cloud of competition was
cast upon the innocence.
I
WHATEVER IT IS
n late September 1966, the Wildflower received
some bad news. Drummer Tom Ellis decided
to continue his education at CCAC and left the
group. His position was filled by a talented young
black guy named Larry Duncan. On the DVD
documentary of the early San Francisco scene,
Rockin’ The Red Dog, there’s black and white
Super-8 footage of the group rehearsing at the
Straight Theater around this time. In it, a very
cool-looking and spectacled Duncan plays jazzstyle on a pearlescent kit with what looks like a
flower made out of marijuana leaves painted on
his kick drum.4 Ehret can be seen playing his
Rickenbacker twelve-string wearing a widestriped turtleneck sweater a la Jerry Garcia. A
bearded Teddy shakes his tambourine in a shortsleeved flowered shirt and beads while Michael
and John rock out on hollow bodies. Though
the footage was filmed without sound, the film’s
directors synched it up nicely with the studio
version of “Baby Dear.”
SE: The movie of us rehearsing at the Straight
was filmed by Bill Belmont, I believe. There’s a
quick shot of [Straight Theater owner] Reggie
[E. Williams] blowing harp with us. 5
T
hough the group was able to get back in
musical shape pretty quickly with their new
drummer, the worst part about the personnel
shakeup was that it showed instability, something not very becoming of an entertainment
act.
SE: [Grateful Dead managers] Rock Scully and
4. “It’s actually the Pennsylvania hex sign for Love,” explains
Ehret—a six pointed rosette of blue and green petals with red
hearts balanced between them. Beginning in the late 1800s, Pennsylvania German farmers painted such symbols on their barns
for good luck. This one “symbolizes lasting love for you and love
for your fellowman.”
5. It seems the footage was from two separate rehearsals as
Schneider suddenly appears in a plain-colored button-down and
at one point Ehret switches to bass. The footage may have actually come from a film called A San Francisco Hard Day’s Night by
Ernie Fosselius, who, before becoming infamous for his Star Wars
spoof Hardware Wars, played with Mother Earth and the Final
Solution.
127
with a large restaurant booth. When Sara got
more into Tibetan Buddhism she would house
Karmapa and other high visiting Lamas and later
had it painted with ten Tibetan colors.
I
The Wildflower at the Whatever It Is festival, San Francisco State, September 30, 1966.
Danny Rifkin were going to manage us and we
were going to tour with the Dead, opening for
them until Tom decided to go back to school and
we had to regroup, adding Larry Duncan on
drums. Back then personnel changes meant the
end for the most part so they dropped us.
I
f the band was discouraged by this, they didn’t
show it. All phasers were set on smile as they
climbed the stage at San Francisco State College
for the first day of the Whatever It Is festival on
September 30. Organized by Whole Earth Catalogue-founder Stewart Brand and sponsored by
the school’s Experimental College, the three-day
“spontaneous” event featured performances by
the SF Mime Troupe, the Grateful Dead, the Only
Alternative & His Other Possibilities (featuring a
recently-widowed Mimi Fariña), the Final Solution, Universal Parking Lot, San Andreas Fault,
and the Committee, a group of political satirists
founded by Howard Hesseman and others.
“The Congress of Wonders performed their
John Lennon readings in one gallery, the Dead
and a band called the Universal Parking Lot played
in another where there was an exhibit of electronic art from the Museum of Modern Art,”
writes Charles Perry in his book Haight Ashbury
(1984). “Bill Ham did a light show in the women’s
gym; in the men’s gym there was a novelty called
a Sensory Awareness Seminar, conducted by a
member of the psychiatric research group in Big
Sur calling itself the Esalen Foundation. Ron
Boise had assembled probably the largest public
display ever of his Thunder Machines.”
JJ: I recall Stewart Brand being there and tossing around a giant Earth ball during the music.
Also Ron Boise had a kinetic sculpture there
that made noise... seemed like it was in the center of the hall and had people swarming over it.
It was a poor man’s Trips Festival, but the vibe
was good and I think we had a good time.
E
ven then-fugitive Ken Kesey showed up,
parking his psychedelic bus blatantly in the
middle of campus. After watching the Dead perform he marched up to the campus radio station
to conduct an “Acid Test” that was broadcast
over the entire campus. Tapes of this event exist, but alas, no Wildflower music is on them.
128
S
ENTER ESTRIBOU
ometime in the Fall of 1966 the group fell in
a Haight Street character by the name of Gene
Estribou who was a friend of their manager Bill
Belmont.6 Young, charming, and independently
wealthy, Estribou was a dabbler in all sorts of
creative ventures. He produced local bands, ran
a biofeedback company, collected art, played guitar, partied with Andy Williams, and traveled
between homes in Hawaii, Vancouver, and his
endlessly under-construction dream Big Sur
dream house. But music was Estribou’s primo
concern. He equipped his home studio with a 4track recorder and started his own vanity label
called Scorpio Records.7
An accomplished guitarist himself, Estribou
released his own split LP in ’65 with banjo player
and future-Serpent Power member Jean-Paul
Pickens. Intensifications, as it was titled, was
very much in the vein of the stuff Takoma was
putting out at the time (Robbie Basho in particular). 8
Of course nobody would probably remember
Estribou if it wasn’t for the only other Scorpio
release, a 45 that happens to be the first Grateful
Dead record. “Stealin’” b/w “Don’t Ease Me In”
was pressed from sessions the fledgling band
recorded in 1965 at Estribou’s home studio.
“Gene had been recording the Dead who were
living there in the early stages,” tells Chip
Weitzen, who palled around and played music
with Estribou, the Minstrel Cycles (with East
Bay folkie Paul Arnoldi), and later, the Felicity
Facility. “Then they were signed by Warners and
Gene felt snubbed but shrugged it off.”
Chip Weitzen: Gene’s mansion was somewhere around six stories high, across from a
park on the hill in the Haight. It had been owned
by a Spreckels sugar magnate. When Gene and
[his wife] Sara bought it they converted the
upstairs ballroom to a recording studio. The basement housed a large wine cellar, next floor up a
full wood and metal shop where Gene made
guitars, and a large stash of kona koa wood and
a lab where Owsley had been making acid—across
the street were usually parked some Feds. Next
floor up was a rec. room with a large pool table.
Never saw anyone play pool on it maybe because of the 100 lb ivory elephant tusk lying in
the middle. The studio featured a custom speaker
on one side—some ten feet in diameter. But the
kitchen was the real hangout—very industrial
Ugly
Things
COMING IN TO LOS ANGELEES
t was at Estribou’s pad that the band was
introduced to Bobby Shad, a well-known blues
and jazz producer and the owner of Mainstream
Records. Shad was in town scoping talent and
hoping to cash in on this new happening West
Coast scene. He put out the word and held a
huge cattle call at Golden State Recorders, while
conducting some more intimate auditions at
Estribou’s place. Ehret remembers seeing Big
Brother & the Holding Company, the Dead, and
the Harbinger Complex all laying down tracks
there. According to Alec Palao, Estribou recorded
dozens of sessions with local groups there, including the Process Church-affiliated Black
Swan. In September of 1966 Shad invited the
Wildflower down to Los Angeles to record some
tracks.
SE: As the SF sound became more media famous, the record companies saw that there were
bands to sign and money to be made. No one
except the Airplane had a record deal. Bobby Shad
of Mainstream Records, recovering from his payola convictions, blew into town and set up auditions for just about every band he could lay his
hands on. He used Gene Estribou’s place for the
auditions and it was pretty funny to see all the
musicians we knew lining up for their time in
the studio.
Anyway, he liked what he heard from us,
signed us up for a year, and flew us down to LA
to record four songs with the promise of a full
album down the road, if everything worked out.
I believe we recorded at Western Studios, some
big studio on Sunset, anyway, and he produced
us. Apparently he tried to get us in the studio
for a full album while we were on an East Coast
tour later that summer. The connection was
never made and neither was the album. Our oneyear contract with Mainstream ended without
us hearing anymore from him… until he released A Pot of Flowers, and the single of “Baby
Dear” and “Wind Dream,” which he neglected to
promote.
O
n A Pot of Flowers “Baby Dear” and “Wind
Dream” appear along with two other Wildflower numbers, “Coffee Cup” and “Jump In.”
“Baby Dear” was Shad’s choice for a hit and it
graces the A-side of the group’s only single. The
song sounds a little bit like Love’s “You I’ll Be
Following,” plugging along with great tremeloey guitar and Jennings’ hooky bass line. As usual
the vocals are what set the Wildflower apart.
Though it’s hard to describe exactly what makes
6. Belmont also helped manage Country Joe, was involved in
Grateful Dead business, and was working for the Rolling Stones
as equipment manager during Altamont. He still works in the
jazz department of Fantasy Records.
7. Not to be confused with the OTHER Bay Area Scorpio imprint
that put out records by the Golliwogs/early-Creedence Clearwater
Revival and the pre-Blue Cheer, Group “B.”
8. Intensifications was actually a joint release with MEA (Mastering Enlightenments Arts), a Marin County-based label owned by
Bill Loughborough and Henry Jacobs and best known for releasing a series of Alan Watts records in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
The album was reissued by Locust on CD.
Issue
29
them so unique, it’s most likely because there
are elements in them of youthful Hanna Barbera,
Beau Brummelly cartoon daydreams mixed in
with Sunday school-style choruses sung in
surfer accents, or something like that.
SE: [Bob Dylan’s manager] Albert Grossman
[later] became interested in one of our songs
that was becoming popular at our East Coast
gigs, “Baby Dear,” but because Bobby Shad had
the publishing and wanted a big piece of the
action, he dropped it.
W
ind Dream” is the prettiest one of the batch,
and Shad’s choice for the single’s flip.
Maybe he was hoping for another “Hello, Hello”?
Though it is very drama class in its sentiment
and must have absolutely killed it with girls,
“Wind Dream” is far from sappy. It’s 12-string
heavy and trrrrrippppy. What’s he missing? His
girl or his mind?
MM: I think if Stephen’s “Wind Dream” had
been pushed at that time it might have been a
big hit. That’s a great love song. If I may say so,
nobody was writing songs like ours back then
and nobody sounded like the Wildflower in the
SF scene.
T
hen there’s “Jump In,” with its kinetic stopand-start energy. This is tuff California garage folk at its finest. Dig the great spy-theme
bass runs and bright-as-day, chiming production. And those vocals! “Coffee Cup” starts off
with two mid-tempo chords and Teddy meandering along on his bongos, filling in the background almost like Tommy Hall’s jug did. Brown’s
snaky guitar line and pensive vibe give the song
an eerie, spiritual feel—a haunting and delicate
catechism wafting in through the fog. With it’s
cryptically pantheistic message beginning with
“The mountain’s calling whispering” and ending with “Believing is the essence,” “Coffee Cup”
is sorta the 2001-A Space Odyessey of mid-‘60s
folk rock.
MM: “Coffee Cup” is really a neat piece of writing. Tommy captures something, communicates
something that is almost impossible to do. This
is the anthem of idealism we really believed in,
no matter what our faults, and I think it holds
up and I don’t think it’s corny. It really escapes
that trap.
SE: I think Tom explains it pretty well in the
lyrics to “Coffee Cup.”
JJ: We kinda looked at Tibetan Buddhism in a
very superficial way. Stephen got turned on to
the Lobsang Rampa books and we all read them.
I got into some culty Japanese Buddhist thing
for a very short while. I think pantheism says it
well. We were pretty pagan back then.
T
hough they must have been stoked at how
the recordings turned out, the guys didn’t
really hit the town to celebrate. The band was in
Los Angeles for such a short time that they didn’t
even play out live or catch any local groups.
SE: It was a fast trip and we didn’t get out
much. We stayed up in the hills, at Michael
Sortin’s (a friend of Michael Brown) house up
in the hills and Chris Hillman lived downstairs.
I remember working on the harmonies and hav-
Issue
29
Ehret expands on the
situation
simply.
“Marilyn Colberg was our
fan club president.”
December saw the loss
of bongo-playing Teddy
Schneider, who jumped
ship and was not replaced, leaving the Wildflower as a four piece. It
was this lineup that
plugged along into 1967
with a weeklong run at
the Ark in Sausalito with
the Freudian Slips, Morning Glory, and Old Gray
Zipper; participated in the
This Is It event in Oakland with the Immediate
Family, Living Children,
and a [pre-Steppenwolf]
The Wildflower with new drummer Larry Duncan (left).
Sparrow; and returned to
their old stomping
ing Chris listen and critique. We basically just grounds in Berkeley for a few nights at the Finnrehearsed and then went down to record.
ish Brotherhood Hall near campus at Chestnut
JJ: I remember driving down Sunset Boule- and University. For three nights in January the
vard and not being impressed. It was way differ- Wildflower appeared there with Country Joe &
ent than the Bay Area—much bigger, more su- the Fish and John Fahey.
perficial.
SE: I remember them carrying John Fahey on
stage ‘cause he was really drunk but he sat down
and played good.
LOVE PAGEANTS AND
O
TEENAGE FAIRS
ctober 6, 1966 was big day in San Francisco.
An official act by the California Legislature
outlawed the sale and possession of LSD. While
lawmakers celebrated, most kids were probably
mourning at the Love Pageant held that day in
the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. On hand to
cheer them up were the Wildflower, Big Brother,
the Dead and the Electric Chamber Orkustra
(Beausoleil’s post-Outfit combo). According to
Ehret, the band was interviewed by a local news
station during the event, but no one can remember which one.9
Other gigs that month included a weekend
run at the Matrix sandwiched between engagements by Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother, as
well as short jaunts to play for students at UC
Davis, Stanford University, and Sequoia High
School in Redwood City. At an October gig at the
Steppenwolf—an old folk venue on San Pablo
Avenue in Berkeley that advertised “Beer, wine,
people, candles, madness, conversation and
more…”—the Wildflower did their thing alongside the Drongos, Blue House Basement, and
the Second Coming
Around this time lead-Merry Prankster Ken
Kesey got popped for outstanding pot-related
warrants in San Francisco. His bus was pulled
over on the Bayshore Freeway and the cops
chased him down an embankment and tackled
him. In his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1967)
Tom Wolfe goes to interview Kesey at the San
Mateo County sjail where he was being held.
Wolfe describes the scene in the waiting room as
being similar to the stage door scene at the Music Box Theatre. Friends and hangers-on were
waiting around to see what would happen.
“There was also a little roundfaced brunette
named Marilyn,” wrote Wolfe. “[She] told me
she used to be a teenie grouper hanging out with
a rock ‘n’ roll group called The Wild Flowers.”
Ugly
Things
I
n between bands, the promoters screened films
by Robert Nelson, specifically his Confessions
Of A Black Mother-Succuba (1965) and the controversial Oh Dem Watermelons (1965), which
was made for the SF Mime Troupe’s satire “A
Minstrel Show, or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel.” Nelson was also known for filming performances by the Grateful Dead and the
Wildflower’s exemplar, poet Michael McClure.
I
n February the Wildflower settled into a week
at the Matrix with visiting New Yorkers the
Blues Project and then returned again in March,
this time for five nights supporting the Doors,
not yet huge as it was a few weeks before their
single “Light My Fire” hit the charts. 10
SE: I remember them as the band without a
bass player and a guy in leather pants. Everyone
was like what? Not for long!
I
nterestingly this was not the band’s first brush
with Morrison and company. A couple weeks
before, according to historian Corry Arnold, the
Doors were booked into a two-week stand with
the Peanut Butter Conspiracy at a topless joint
on Sacramento Street called (uncreatively) the
Whisky A-Go-Go. After a couple nights of sparse
crowds, the disappointed Doors bailed out and
were replaced by the mor popular Wildflower.
Crowds were not an issue at the 1967 Oak-
9. Incidentally also attending the event was Merry Prankster
Cathyrn “Beauty Witch” Casamo, who was along on the Pranksters’ infamous bus trip through the Southwest until her clothesshedding episode at writer Larry McMurty’s house in Houston
earned her a new nickname—Stark Naked. Ehret and Casamo
weren’t introduced that day, but their paths crossed again a decade later and the two spent most of the ‘80s as a blissful couple
until Casamo passed away at an untimely age. “She was the original flower child,” recalls Ehret fondly.
10. One of these shows was recently issued on CD by Rhino. Wonder if they recorded the Wildflower too?
129
State [and also at the UC Berkeley Extension
Center] to standing-room-only classes. I went
to a class at his insistences because Ken Kesey
was going to be showing some of his fifty-hour
film. The Fluxfest was his first attempt at directing. I was helping him with this effort. I
tried to set up some circus animals—elephants,
etc— to wander around and smell like elephants.
It didn’t happen but I ended up making fog on a
fog machine. I think he created pure flux—music by the Wildflower, lots of nudity on stage,
lots of flux including lots of power outages.
JB: Anna Halprin’s Dancers were in flesh-colored body stockings...
The Wildflower at the Teenage Fair, Oakland, February 1967.
L to R: Jennings, Ehret, Duncan, Brown.
land Teenage Fair later that month. Though the
idea had originated in Los Angeles in the early
‘60s, the phenomena of the Teenage Fair quickly
spread to the rest of the country. Booths were
set up to display all sorts of things teenagers
drooled over, from custom cars and surfboards
to mod clothes and musical instruments. To a
constant barrage of the latest sounds blaring from
multiple stages, teens were encouraged to squander as much of their allowances as possible before curfew.
“I got catalogs from Hagstrom, Sunn, Haynes,
Fender and Vox,” recalls Paul Honeycutt, then a
fourteen-year-old music fan from Hayward.
“There were head shop items like buttons and
rubber stamps, posters, incense, oils, trip toys
and the like. We hung out and checked out the
girls and the bands. We also got a flyer for an
album called Freak Out by The Mothers of Invention.”
The Fair showcased local up-and-coming
groups as well as the big names from The City.
Honeycutt and his friends had gone to the fair
to see Hayward band SPECTOR who’d earned a
slot on the big stage after winning some local
battle of the bands, but he was most impressed
by the Wildflower’s set.
PH: The Wildflower were the band that appealed to me. Especially their guitarist/singer. He
had long red hair (I had curly red hair and wished
my hair was straight) and played a Rickenbacker
360-12 through a Vox Royal Guardsman, my
then dream amp and guitar rig. This guy was
everything I wanted to be. I guess they’d be considered a jangle band these days, and I think
they played some Byrds covers (“Bells of
Rhymney,” maybe?) Other things I remember
was that their drummer was black. We thought
that was cool. We had to be back to get a ride
home with my Dad, so we didn’t get to stay to
hear the San Francisco bands scheduled to play
later. I think both the Dead and Airplane and
maybe Moby Grape played over the course of
the weekend, but we missed ‘em. I don’t think I
ever heard another note of the Wildflower’s mu-
130
sic or ever saw them again but there was a line in
one of their songs that my friend Tim liked a lot.
At some point in a song one of them said, “It’s
just another trip. . .” Tim used to say that sometimes later in life when we were tripping and
we’d crack up at our little in joke. I still think
about those magic days of youth when the music
was all that mattered.
O
IN FLUX
n March 31, 1967 the Wildflower performed
at an extravaganza called the Fluxfest held
at the Longshoreman’s Hall. The Fluxfest was
the brainchild of one Jeff Berner—an associate
of dancer Anna Halprin and a member of both
the SF Mime Troupe and Fluxus International—
and artist Larry Baldwin, also of Fluxus. The
event was seen as a sort of sequel to the previous year’s Trips Festival, with “various international conceptual artists and psychedelic happenings.” To a live soundtrack provided by the
Wildflower, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and
the Flux Orchestra, the audience grooved on
films, projections, and performances by the
Mime Troupe. The posters for the event (designed by Rick Griffin’s wife Ida) described it as
“A Strange Evening of Experimental Events.”
WB: We began with a series of activities in the
spirit of other Fluxfest “happenings.” A new car
was covered with 50 lbs. of jam, and a woman
began dancing on it. Thousands of marshmallows were passed out, and people threw them,
creating a visual popcorn popping. The San Francisco Mime Troupe did their piece, “Bodies,” in
the nude. A few other similar events took place.
Then a group began reading constitutions of
various countries. However, the sound was bad,
and people became very impatient. The drummer for Quicksilver began playing a rhythm to
keep things from exploding, and that led into a
more or less conventional rock concert.
SE: They had a bowl of free acid punch in the
rotunda at Longshoreman’s Hall. I got pretty high
on it. Michael says there was also acid ice cream.
O
LIVERPOOL USA
n April 8 the group was invited along with
the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver into the
studios of KPIX-TV in San Francisco to perform
live on a new television program.
SE: This was a TV show, The Maze, subtitled
Liverpool USA, that we did with the Quick and
the Dead. We did “Please Come Home” live in
the studio. The bands lip synced to live-in-studio cuts (The Dead did “Cream Puff War, QMS
“Pride of Man”), then we each did a version of
“Walkin’ Blues” and they inter-cut among each
of our versions. Tapes of the audio are around
Wahhab (Larry) Baldwin: I chose Wildflower
simply as a backup band after Quicksilver Messenger Service. I had never heard them before
but needed someone, and I think they came to
me by word of mouth.
Jeff Berner: This was the very first Europeanstyle “happening” on the West Coast. There were
2,000 people in the audience. It was a huge success. There was a big article about it in the SF
Chronicle in advance of the event.
Chip Weitzen: Jeff was a character—very academic in a surreal way. He taught a class called
“Astronauts of Inner Space”—his favorite
theme—as part of the experimental collage of SF
Ugly
Things
Issue
29
but Alec Palao and I have been trying to find the
video for years with no luck, and we’ve tried
everything. It’s much sought after.10
T
he show kicks off with the Wildflower ab
solutely tearing through a revved-up version of their song “Please Come Home.” Over a
menacing barrage of thump drums, a simple,
four-note fuzz guitar pattern evolves into a wild
lead section as the group ponders in harmony,
“Where is all this summer sunshine coming
from?” Absolutely crucial listening this. After
the dust settles, critic Ralph Gleason interviews
Jerry Garcia (with band mates Phil Lesh and Bob
Weir giggling in the background). The “Walkin’
Blues” segment is particularly interesting. The
Dead have a real dirty groove with Pig Pen singing and blowing harp, while Quicksilver let Gary
Duncan to the helm to vent over some chickenscratch soloing. The Wildflower’s take has
Michael Brown on lead vocals channeling
Canned Heat’s Alan Wilson and wraps up with
more of that distorted lead-work. It should be
noted that both the Dead and Quicksilver had
been playing “Walkin’ Blues” as part of their sets
for at least a year prior to this. For The Wildflower it was a new occurrence and they hold
their own like champs. “We had never played it
before that time,” recalls Ehret. “But jeez, it’s a
12-bar blues. . . how hard is that?”
A
GETTING STRAIGHT
fter a year of work, the Straight Theater was
finally ready for its christening in late June
of 1967. The opening of the new venue actually
lasted three nights, with appearances by Quicksilver, Mount Rushmore, Mother Earth, Salvation Army Banned, the Charlatans, Blue Cheer,
and Freedom Highway. Even Jimi Hendrix
dropped by to check it out.
On the opening’s last night, July 23, The Wildflower played along with the Dead, Big Brother,
and Phoenix. According to Reg E Williams, the
show was special for a couple reasons. One, it
was the last Dead show before Mickey Hart
joined, so only one drummer. Two, the night
was made famous by Neal Cassady rapping in
front of the Grateful Dead during the live sound
10. To get an idea of what the show might have sorta looked like,
check YouTube for Big Brother and the Holding Co. performing
three songs on a 1966 show called “Come Up the Years,” that lasted
just three episodes on the Bay Area station KQED.
Issue
29
check. And third, “this night was the first theatrical use of a laser beam in a show in front of the
public. The laser made by the Stanford Death
Ray faculty was housed in a WW2 Ammo can
and projected a ruby ray the size of a pencil eraser
when it hit the stage. I preset the red spot superimposing it on Phil’s bass amp on-light upstage
and during Neal’s rap started to jiggle it around
‘til the audience notices then panning it to Neal’s
‘Bare Greek Torso’ place the glowing Ruby ray
like a jewel in his belly button. Noticing the roar
of laughter you can hear him say to the
psychedelized crowd ‘I knew I should have worn
more paisley.’” On live tapes you can hear Jerry
saying, “Stay tuned for the Wildflower” at the
end of the Dead’s set
SE: I remember playing with the Dead, I think
it was opening night at the Straight, and they
just played this long space jam while Neal Cassady
did a stream of consciousness rap on the mic
(one of the first rap songs, perhaps?) for a whole
set… and I remember Richie Havens sitting in
the middle of the floor (not onstage) with an
acoustic guitar and the whole audience in a circle
around him… and Janis throwing her Southern
Comfort bottle at James Gurley and yelling at
him for “playing the last song in the wrong
key”… and being nervous as hell before we went
on and then jamming like there was no tomorrow once we got going.
TE: Back last year when we were recording
the 40 Years in the Blink of an Eye, Stephen and
I stopped one evening and were watching the
Stones’ video of their tour with the “Big Bang”
stage, and there was a portion that was filmed in
Buenos Aires, where the crowd was singing and
dancing to the music in a total downpour and
the heat of the dance and the movement created
a rising cloud of steam that engulfed the soccer
stadium they were in—and my mind flashed
back to a night in San Francisco when the flower
children hit upon the same space and lifted the
dance from a concert to an out of body experience. It was sometime in ‘67 at the Straight
Theater, and when we arrived to setup and play
for the evening the place was already teeming
with people... and the chairs of the old theater
had been stripped away leaving a huge dance
floor... but, in the middle of the floor a platform
had been erected, and upon that was what looked
to me a strange tower of wood and cloth and
lights and metal poles and flags and wires and
chimes and banners of which no two points
formed a right angle... organic and messy, but
beautiful in its chaos.
The tower rose above the floor about 25 feet
and people and dogs and other strange creatures
Ugly
Things
were climbing in and about it... and maybe somewhere inside was a sound man or two, but that
was only the center of the strangeness, as the
crowd around it was swirling in a clockwise cauldron of movement... dancing, running, crawling, sliding in a vortex of mini-tornados all somehow moving around the room together... Please
note... I was a coherent (straight) observer, for
we had just happened on the room and were
more involved and interested in our equipment
and our set up than our mental health! The
band finally got set up and we played and played
and the swirl in the hall became part of the band
and the lights and the heat of the night merged
into the best part of what the San Francisco
scene was about in the early days... the music
and the band and the dance were all one thing...
not a concert, but an interplay of spirits, connected by light, music, dance and emotion.
F
RECORDING SESH
or most of the infamous Summer of Love in
1967 the Wildflower wasn’t even there.
They’d hit the road on a solo East Coast Tour to
Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York, Boston, and Cleveland. Before they left however,
they participated in a large music festival in Mill
Valley and then headed into Gene Estribou’s studio to record with their new drummer.
The Festival of Growing Things was a twoday free-for-all at the Mt Tamalpais Outdoor
Amphitheatre in Marin County that featured the
cream of the Bay Area crop at the time. The first
day, July 1, saw the Wildflower performing alongside Quicksilver Messenger Service, Blue Cheer,
Sandy Bull, Congress of Wonders, the Charlatans, Freedom Highway, Melvin Q Watchpocket,
Ace of Cups, Jerry Yester’s Lamp of Childhood,
Hugh Masakela, and Mount Rushmore. The next
day featured many of the same acts along with
Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country
Joe & the Fish, the Steve Miller Blues Band, and
Phoenix. The event was the put on by a local
character named Ambrose Hollingsworth, a
wheelchair-bound occultist who at one point
managed Quicksilver and the Ace of Cups and
wrote astrology for the underground paper The
Oracle. All attendees were apparently given a free
packet of seeds.
Later at Estribou’s, the sessions resulted in a
half dozen or so songs put down on tape, most
of which, unfortunately, have since disappeared.
SE: I believe we recorded “Please Come Home,”
“Of Planets, Mirrors and Man,” “What Once
Was,” and a lot that I don’t remember. We have
two cuts and are still trying to get a hold of any
131
up. We had our thin little mod clothes from
Town Squire. What’s wrong with that picture?
This was significant because I:
a) caught the worst cold in my life.
b) realized I hated touring.
c) got my first train ride.
d) found out that long train trips are cool only
if you have a lot of cash or packed a huge lunch.
e) developed an intense dislike for restaurant
food.
“We toured ‘back East’ during the Summer
of Love and therefore missed it. But it was
OK. I heard it was overrated anyway.”
of the other cuts with out much success. I heard
a story from Alec Palao that the tapes fell off the
truck or something.
SE: I remember playing with the Youngbloods
in a giant soccer arena in Edmonton, Canada,
not being able to hear anything except myself
and watching the other guys’ hands to make
sure we were playing together… nobody had
monitors in those days.
W
hat exists is a semi-acoustic re
cording of “Of Planets,” an epic harmony
madrigal like nothing any other San Francisco
band was doing, except maybe Harper’s Bizarre
if they worked the Ren Faire circuit instead of
the dancehalls. Ehret’s simple yet evocatively
timeless picking pattern combined with
McCausland’s Delphian lyrics (“Signatures on
walls of great proportion, Promises of jade like
Caesar’s bed, Often hides the sound of love’s
distortion, Beliefs that lifeless lies control each
man”) are the perfect recipe for incense smoke
observing. “What Once Was” is a more straightforward, disconsolate, mid-tempo number with
complex harmonies (feel that soaring chorus!)
and Byrdsy twelve-string accents—a solid
Jennings and Ehret collaboration that shows the
group was determined and focused despite their
recent lineup changes.
Then, before the tapes even stopped spinning,
Ehret, Brown, Jennings, and Duncan packed up
what gear they could carry aboard a passenger
plane and headed out into the great unknown.
J
ON TOUR
J: We toured “back East” during the Summer
of Love and therefore missed it. But it was
OK. I heard it was overrated anyway.
SE: In DC we played with Natty Bumpo. In
Boston we played with the Bagatelle. If I remember correctly in NY we played with the MC5. We
were very well received everywhere and the local
bands were very friendly. It seemed like the SF
scene was a magical thing to everyone.
JJ: It was strange because everyone had these
preconceptions of what it was like in SF and
what an SF band should be like, as if we were
some superhuman party animals with limitless
capacity for drug consumption, all the answers
to the cosmic questions, and infinite tolerance
for their neediness to be cool in our eyes. Is that
a little harsh? Well, I remember coming back
from that tour very confused as to who I was
because of all the time spent with people who
wanted me to be what they thought I should be.
SE: We played in Washington DC the week
after Jimi Hendrix and they had his broken Strat
on the wall. We had the best PA and the other
bands asked if they could use it too. I remember
our road manager bribing the baggage guy 20
bucks (a lot of money in those days) at the Boston airport to put our equipment on the plane to
Cleveland because we couldn’t afford to pay the
fee and getting away with it… something that
could never happen today… and the plane seeming to struggle to lift off. Playing at La Cave in
Cleveland the week after Linda Ronstadt and the
132
Stone Poneys… and the owner taking us up to
his place and getting us stoned on DMT.
A
fter a weeklong run at the Trauma in Phila
delphia with the Mandrake Memorial, the
Wildflower were called to New York City to meet
with impresario Albert Grossman who’d been
hearing good things about the group’s East Coast
shows. “The audiences had been going really
crazy for ‘Baby Dear,’” remembers Ehret.
“Grossman wanted in on it but the stuff with
[Bobby] Shad was too complicated. We were under a year contract with Mainstream.” Next stop
was Boston. As they were getting ready to play
at the Boston Tea Party with Willie Alexander’s
band the Bagatelle, the newish drummer Larry
Duncan flipped out and disappeared.
SE: As we were setting up he laid his drums
out neatly across the stage and then he was
gone. We heard he got arrested and put in a
mental institution but at the time we had no
idea where he went.
MB: They put him in a state institution somewhere upstate.
SE: We called our manager and he called
Tommy [Ellis] who had just graduated from
CCAC. He flew out from California. We played
the first set without a drummer and then
Tommy came right in and started playing after
having been gone for a year.
S
omewhere along the way Youngbloods lead
guitarist Jerry Corbitt struck upon the idea
that he wanted to get the Wildflower a record
deal. So immediately upon their return to California, the group went into Coast Recorders with
Corbitt at the helm.
SE: Jerry was trying to get a record deal, primarily with Vanguard, with him producing us.
He worked with us for a while and was setting
up and directing our rehearsals. Jerry was living
in Inverness [in rural Marin County] as were
the rest of the Youngbloods. I was also living
out there at the time and spent time hanging
out with Jerry (mostly) and Jesse [Colin Young]
and Dave Fason, their road manager. I’m not sure
who paid for the recording. I believe Jerry had an
arrangement with Coast Recorders and he covered it. We recorded two songs, “How Fast,” and
we did another recording of “Baby Dear.”
I
f the last session at Estribou’s resulted in
reserved and pensive tunes, the Coast session
brought out a completely different side of The
Wildflower. Unfortunately all that remains is an
acetate of a song called “How Fast.” But what a
recording it is. On it the band wears their musical preferences on their sleeves. From its Airplane-style, staccato intro under a distorted Re-
CANADA AND THE YOUNGBLOODS
B
ack in the City the group began hanging out
more and more with their new friends the
Youngbloods, performing with the recently
transplanted New Yorkers and Magic Fern at the
California Hall. A few more shows at the Straight
followed with Paul Arnoldi, Marlowe, the Second Coming, and Charlie Musselwhite. Then it
was back on the road, this time to Canada in
support of the Youngbloods. The day after Christmas 1967 the new-old Wildflower lineup played
the Retinal Circus event in Vancouver with the
United Empire Loyalists and then again on the
28th in Edmonton, Alberta with the
Youngbloods, Pretty Broos, and Graeme & the
Wafers. The audiences absolutely loved them.
JJ: It was in the middle of winter and of course
being from San Francisco we were significantly
under-dressed for the circumstance. All the locals were wearing fur-lined parkas with the hoods
Ugly
Things
Retinal Circus, Vancouver.
Issue
29
volver guitar line, to its aggressive
Neil Young-inspired raga lead,
Stephen Stills twang, and overall
Moby Grapeishness, “How Fast” is
basically what you wished more
records sounded like back then. Had
this collaboration continued, teenage heads worldwide would’ve been
singing the praises of one of the
best San Francisco albums ever.
“Of Planets, Mirrors, and Man,” “Please Come
Home,” and “Coffee Cup,” along with unheardunless-you were-there numbers like “Ancient
Blue” and the aforementioned “On Even Red”
(here with a rich neo-‘60s arrangement). There’s
a complete and glowing review of the CD in the
last issue, but let’s just say that if the Wildflower can sound this good in 2008, just imagine how mind-blowing they must’ve been back
in the heyday.
What remains the most striking about the
Wildflower throughout all this is the writing.
Sure the playing is top-notch, innovative as hell,
and all that, but the craft of the songwriting is
pretty, uh... beyond. It’s impressive too, as the
group, at least by 1967, performed just about
solely songs they had written, as opposed to
groups like Quicksilver, Big Brother, and the Dead
who incorporated a lot of covers in their live
sets. Aside from their unique sound and attention to harmonic detail, this is what set the Wildflower apart from their peers. Perhaps it was a
way to keep things in the family.
JJ: I remember being blown away
by Buffalo Springfield when they
played at the Avalon. They had just
released their first album and they
were the greatest live band I had
heard up to that point. But then I
was pretty high on acid so that
might have had something to with
it.
SE: My favorite band was Moby
Grape. Too bad they got busted
back then because they should have
made it big time.
The Wildflower, 1968.
O
END TIMES
n February 21, 1968 the group participated
in a big Family Dog show at the Avalon Ballroom with the Blues Project, Siegal Schwall, Lee
Michaels, the Youngbloods, and the Sons of
Champlin. Sometime around this they also returned to the Straight Theater to perform with
Mother Earth and Blue Cheer.
SE: I remember playing at the Western Front
with Blue Cheer. Tom had brought his girlfriend
and her little daughter. When Blue Cheer hit
their first note she peed her pants, they were so
loud. I remember the drummer nailing down
his drums and cymbal stands and them blowing
up amps. Then there was a gig we did in with
them LA out somewhere amidst the desert and
oil fields that I don’t remember. Michael told me
we went outside when they started playing because they were so loud and Tom remembers
how trashed the audience left the place after the
gig was over.
T
he Wildflower did their last run at the Ma
trix in early November of 1968. Club listings
show Jerry Garcia and friends playing earlier that
week, and Harvey Mandel, and Johnny Winter
later. Gone were the days of the homegrown
Mystery Trends and Final Solutions. In were
the surname supergroups and superstars. Things
were definitely changing in San Francisco and
the era of the good old-fashioned folk rock group
was clearly on the wane.
The Wildflower foundered and finally breathed
its last when Michael Brown decided acting was
more his bag and joined the cast of Hair, then
franchising out from New York to other cities.
Soon thereafter, John Jennings got busted for
possession of marijuana. By quitting the band,
getting a straight job, and going back to school
he was able to convince the judge to let him off
with just probation.
JJ: Terry Wilson, who played drums with the
Charlatans after Mike Ferguson left, was my
housemate at our storefront out at Ocean Beach.
We hung out quite a bit and eventually got busted
Issue
29
for pot together, which unfortunately ended my
career with Wildflower.
I
n the hazy aftermath, Ehret began work on a
recording studio at the legendary Project One
at 10th and Howard in SF. The process was documented in Alton Everest’s book: How to Build a
Small Budget Recording Studio From Scratch.
When the studio was completed in 1970, a new
version of the Wildflower began to sprout there.
A returning Brown brought in Roger Cruz, another veteran of the San Francisco Hair cast, to
replace Jennings on bass. Ellis came back in on
drums and the new band recorded several “unplugged” two-track recordings in 1971 under
Ehret’s aegis.
Songs like “Across the Aging Sea” and “Galilee” show a stripped down and more rural, mellow approach, definitely influenced by the
Youngbloods and the “cooling off” period going
down at the time. A couple of the other numbers—“Poorboy” and “Over by the Courthouse”
can be imagined adapted into Wildflower (the
old Wildflower anyway) numbers with a little
polishing. The best of the lot is definitely “On
Even Red,” a catchy tune in a new direction
sounding here like a late Byrds, Springfield, or
Corvettes demo. The only live appearance by this
short-lived lineup happened April 24, 1971 at
the Family Dog on the Great Highway with a
Country Joe-less Fish, Cat Mother, and El Topo
soundtrackers Shades of Joy.
I
MM: If the Wildflower had done covers, I
wouldn’t have had anything to do.
M
ichael Brown has a slightly different view
of it. “Our music was more interesting,”
he declares. “More challenging, more complex,
more pertinent, more lyrical, more... Well, you
get the message, it was ours.”
SE: I remember having a conversation with
Jerry Garcia about this very thing—to cover or
not to cover—and I was explaining how we were
creating our own sound-story and had come to
the place where we had enough original material
to perform without covers and he said, strangely
enough, “If you’re going to do covers, you have
to do them better than the original and if you
can do them better than the original, you can
write your own song.” Anyway, we wrote our
own song. •
THANKS TO: Stephen Ehret, Tom Ellis, John
Jennings,
Michael
Brown,
Michael
McCausland, Peter Albin, Chip Weitzen, Jeff
Berner, Wahhab Baldwin, Susan Neri, Alec
Palao, Reg E. Williams, Jackie Greene, Phil
Lesh, Mike Shapiro, Ross Hannan, and Corry
Arnold.
INTO THE NOW
n 2008 the core of the Wildflower—John
Jennings, Michael Brown, Tom Ellis, and
Stephen Ehret—reformed with the addition of
Felix Bannon on lead guitar and Robert South
on keyboards. They went into the studio to once
and for all make the album they never got to
make back then. The result was 40 Years in the
Blink of an Eye, made up entirely of songs the
band had written and performed between 1965
and 1969. It’s an amazing set. Within its digital
grooves we’re treated to re-recorded versions of
Ugly
Things
The Wildflower’s CD, 40 years in the Blink
of an Eye, can be ordered by visiting http://
www.thewildflower-sf.com/
An official CD reissue of With Love: A Pot
of Flowers is forthcoming from Big Beat
Records with new tell-all liner notes by Alec
Palao.
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