By Groovy Duke Lewis
They laughed when the Los Angeles hip community announced a gala Hollywood movie premiere of HOW I WON THE WAR to benefit the Free Medical Clinic for sick and psychoed hippie kids.
Only the major studios and old-line million-dollar charities had ever held a star-studded Movie Opening Happening in this town, so nobody helped or paid much attention to it.
United Artists, the world’s richest film distributing corporation laid out no bread for kleig lights, bleacher stands, parking stands, parking attendants, ushers or numbered seat tickets as is customary. No TV cameramen and only six crowd control cops showed up.
They missed the wildest premiere in history. Five thousand teen-agers wheeled or hitched in from uptown, downtown and around town, from Glendale, Grassy Knolls and Ghetto Town to plaster their eyeballs on the parade of pop stars who arrived at the theater in two-horse carriages, one-horse wagons, panel trucks, moving vans, vintage rigs and ricky-ticky puddle jumpers—anything for a laugh—as well as the commonplace Aston Martins, Alfa Romeos, Rolls Royces, Mercedez Benz, Ferraris, Maseratis, Cads, Corvettes and custom jobs.
The star-gazers blew their minds, smashed the street barricades, and congealed into a solid impenetrable mass of humanity through which the Bee Gees, Turtles, Monkees, Spanky’s Gang, Sunshine Company, Byrds, Grass Roots, Jeff Airplane, Holding Company, Buff Springfield and Seeds had to scythe a path.
Personally we thought it was rather rotten the way the fans treated the glamour guests. They ripped Mark Lindsay’s silken Louis XIV suit and pulled his pony tail without pity. His date, Rona Barrett of Hollywood gossip fame, got mashed along with Mark.
John Phillips, Lou Adler and big beautiful Cass formed a flying wedge and ran interference for Mama Michelle, 8 ½ months pregnant, who took such punishment from the pushing, shoving, clawing, grasping groupies that her baby came early. Mama and daughter, Gilliam China Phillips, are doing well anyhow, no thanx to those frantic fans.
Fifteen minutes after the film began, a feisty fireman stopped the show, ordered house lights on and aisle-standers out. Exit Davy Jones, Sky Saxon, Brian Wilson, Tim Buckley, Paul Simon, Sajid Khan and more for “violating fire ordinances.” As everyone knows, brick and concrete theaters burn down every night of the week.
Good will come from all that chaos anyhow. The multi-movie-makers were so impressed with the excitement generated that they offered the Free Clinic, Diggers Creative Society and other aid-groups within the “love community” premieres of three more major films, this time with adequate financing. What else is new?
There’s no time to have fun or think of anything but hard work if you want to be a rock-’n’-roll star, Paul Revere declared, an attitude that explains the turnover of 27 Raiders to date. Some can take it, some can’t. Playing is working in this profession.
The last and worst crisis was when Fang, Smitty, Drake and Jim quit the team in mid-tour, remember?, and they had to fly in replacements from all over.
“I was scared to death and couldn’t sleep for three months,” Paul admitted. “That’s when I learned who our friends were. It’s amazing how many ‘friends’ will turn their backs on you when they think you’re in trouble.”
Last year the Raiders performed 200 concerts and 38 TV shows, took time for 38 picture sessions, and had only three days off. In August, Paul and Mark Lindsay planned a week off after concerts in Hawaii—“but Ann Moses wouldn’t let us,” they told the packed L.A. press conference. “She kept our noses to her grindstone.”
Moaned another tune star, “Yeah, here comes Annie Moses in her tiger-skin mini, cracking her cowhide whip, making us cower hour after hour with a mike at our mouths telling a tape what’s up with our group for a Tiger Beat scoop.”
Annie was just one of us ink-stained write wretches until her 21st birthday, February 3rd, when Publisher Chuck Laufer elevated her to editor of this esteemed journal.
Ask me something else… The gold records artists win for million sellers, are they for real? Yes and no is the answer. Yes, they are genuine gold. Yes, they play. No, they aren’t gold dupes of the winning wax.
When the Association lads spun their last two goldies on a stereo phono, they discovered one was a BB King oldie of 1933, the other was a Beethoven goodie, writ in 1785.
Three all-gal groups are sweating out new singles, hoping a million customers will buy. The Cake, bigger in Europe than here, were invited to London for TV and club dates. The Clingers, four siblings (sisters) aged 15 to 21, play their own instruments like raunchy rock-rollers and sing like angels. They are sweet and wholesome types; we know, they brought their mother and grandmother over to meet us when we met at the Stars of Tomorrow Ball. Terry Melcher produced their firstie, Come Love, for the Equinox label here and the Beatle Apple label over yonder. Mystery of Love by the Chirping Chickies is hard-core rubber band music. How it ever got out of the studio door is the real mystery.
Meditation is replacing drug medication among a host of multi-hit songmen, according to what we hear and see in inner circles of the pop set. The acid fad is on the fade, they say, thanks to Maharishi Mehesh Yogi, our groovy guru and Ravi Shankar, soulful sitarist, who make no bones about denouncing dirty drugs. As a result, of course, they are being attacked and ridiculed by dope pushers and users and ignorant cynics who don’t know where their heads are at. No Hindu fakir could flim-flam shrewd, sharp smart people such as the Beatles, Stones, Mia Farrow, Shirley MacLaine, Janis Joplin, Efram Zimbalist, Jr., Faye Dunaway, Donovan, Cass and Keith. What we mean is these aren’t the kind of folk who would get took by a gook. Dylan has yet to be heard from.
Now the Beach Boys have discovered the midget mystic of the Himalayan foothills. If he can take the kinks from their thinks he’s a miracle worker because the Beach Boys have been the most mixed-up squad in all musicdom. Trouble-laden Brian Wilson spaced out. Red-bearded Mike Love was self-centered until he met the Maharishi in Europe and spent two hours listening.
“The Maharishi’s ideas are SO simple and so right I can’t begin to explain how impressed I was,” Mike mulled. “We have invited him to tour with us, sharing our bread, and we hope to study with him in India.” Mike was the only BB to make it to India.
Drugs are a bad dream, the boys say.
Peter Fonda also has started meditating and practicing the Hare Krishna chant.
Pete Townshend, the Terrible Turk of the Who, spoke up: “A lot of people in pop have taken acid thinking it would improve their music, expand their minds and give them new insights. So they ate, or shot a lot of garbage, and all of them softened up, lost much of their drive and basic ambition.”
From now on, expect fewer hidden double-meaning references to dope and junk in pop lyrics. From here to hair—
Dylan, Donovan and Dolenz wouldn’t tell how they get their hair that way. We asked politely but they must have thought we were putting them on or being sarcastic or something as they gave us dirty looks and no reply.
The hair-dos worn by Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding of Experience, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce a la Cream, Animals John Weider and Danny McCullough and oodles of others look like wire-haired terriers with noses stuck in electric outlets or like stuffing coming out of a hole in a mattress.
They do something. Jimi Hendrix explained he had to wear a hat at the Anaheim concert because he just flew in from San Fran and didn’t have time to fix his hair. We read somewhere that they iron it, curl it and tease it, but Carol Hartman, stylist extraordinaire, says only boys with naturally curly hair can wear it in a high-rise tangle. “All they do is rat it,” she confided.
Short hair like brown shoes doesn’t make it in the music business though many would prefer to cut. Traveling troubadors are constantly hassled on small town streets.
“English people are much more tolerant,” according to John Sebastion, Lovin’est Spoonful. “Like I never had one rap about my hair over there and you can’t walk down any street in America without feeling the aggressions or hearing wisecracks.”
Gary “General” Puckett, lead guitar and vocalizer of the Union Gap tells how it is.
“Mod looks and dress are accepted in the big cities and the better parts of smaller cities. The hostility is something else in lower middle class areas and small mid-western towns.
“Folks out there associate long hair, beards, beads and mod clothes with drug addicts, draft dodgers and war protesters. Those with sons and relatives in Vietnam stab us with hate-filled eyes and the young guys try to pick fights. Young girls understand that we are professional musicians and like our looks.”
Boys with long hair must be sissies or pansies, according to most suited necktied straights. That attitude is dumb, Mrs. Marya Mannes, 61, noted social critic, told the National Council of Women. “Hair is both manly and womanly. A shock of long hair on a boy is far more virile and decorative than the crew cut style. If it’s sometimes hard to tell boys from girls in their boots, sweaters, pants and hair… well, to some of us they spell a wonderful freedom and comfort and an honest sense of the body.”
The chimes of change ring a different tune today. We recall way back in 1954, yeah, 14 years ago, when Elvis Presley, in greasy levis and sideburns, made his first TV network appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. When the Presley pelvis began to perc, Old Ed dropped his aplomb, suspended his respiration and went into shock, wow. After being revived with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Old Ed immijitly ordered the cameramen not to shoot the Memphis Kid below the Adam’s apple lest a jillion outraged viewers write CBS and the FCC demanding that Ed no longer be allowed to pollute the purity of the American air.
When Davy Jones lost out with Sally Field—or vice versa—the parting may have been such sweet sorrow but neither of them stayed home to mope. Sally’s latest hearthrob is scrumptious Steve Stills, Buffalo Springfielder with the dimple.
Derek Taylor, Beatles’ press officer on three U.S. tours and ex-columnist for Tiger Beat, moved back to England where he’ll be executive director of the Apple and other booming Beatle Big Businesses.
Eric Burdon, love that bloke. Wednesday night he and les Animals played to a concert audience of 18,000 who paid up to $5.50 for a hard folding chair. Next night Eric and sidekick fiddler-guitar man John Weider hopped on the tiny Ash Grove stage and joined the Bluesberry Jam in a spontaneous jam session. The fee: one free Coke. Johnny writes the music and Eric the lyrics for most of the Animals’ original material.
The Seeds are turning sheiks, says sexy Sky Saxon. They’ll wear flowing Bedoin robes a la Rudolph Valentino and emerge out of a desert tent pitched on the stage.
Frisky Freddie, the 55-year-old pappy of John Lennon, is trying to slip a wedding band on the finger of pudgy Pauline Jones, 19-year-old daughter of a Liverpool mother who has put a hex on their itch to wed.
[Magazine provided by Michael.]
