27

by Howard Sounes

  His mind poisoned with jealousy, Brian attacked Anita at the Es Saadi Hotel in Marrakesh. Keith Richards heard them fighting. Brian tried to get Anita to participate in an orgy with two Moroccan whores. When she refused, he threw room-service food at her and she fled to the sanctuary of Keith’s room. Together they planned an escape.

  Keith arranged for Brian to take a trip to the Square of the Dead to record local musicians. While he was thus occupied, Tom Keylock drove Keith and Anita towards Tangier. When Brian discovered he had been cuckolded by Keith, and that Anita had deserted him, he was crushed. Not only had Mick and Keith taken over his band, Keith had stolen his girlfriend, perhaps the one woman he had loved. That he had mistreated Anita didn’t lessen the humiliation.

  After returning from Morocco, Brian invited a French playboy friend named Prince Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, known as Prince Stash, to stay with him at his London apartment. Brian whined about losing Anita, whom he tried but failed to win back, and consoled himself by taking inordinate amounts of drugs in what had become, at least for the music industry, an era of hedonism and experimentation. As Prince Stash says, ‘One lived dangerously and fully and madly, and that’s the way it was.’ It was also a time when Scotland Yard was targeting celebrity drug-users. Following the bust at Keith Richards’s house, Brian was on a police list of stars to be raided. Sure enough, on 10 May 1967, detectives called at his London flat, and searched it, charging Brian and Stash with possession of cocaine and cannabis; Brian was also charged with possession of Methedrine.

  ‘The drug bust that he and I went through was the beginning of the end,’ says Prince Stash, who claims that the police planted the evidence. ‘Brian went through a catastrophic change during the aftermath of that bust.’ While a trial was pending Brian was advised not to contact Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who were facing separate charges over the raid on Richards’s home, and thereby found himself more isolated than ever. ‘He would ask me, “What are the Stones doing?” as if it was not his own band,’ says Prince Stash. Brian started to use Mandrax to calm his nerves, with deleterious consequences for his physical and mental health. Prince Stash again: ‘Brian was bending to the point that he would soon break, and he had a real kind of nervous breakdown.’ Stones employee Ron Schneider says Brian was so freaked out that he had to hold his hand to comfort him as he tried to sleep. ‘He wasn’t the same after [the bust], that’s when he started going into the real depressions.’

  3

  While Brian’s life was falling apart, Jimi Hendrix’s was in the ascendant. Just before his first album, Are You Experienced?, was released he and Kathy Etchingham gave a party at their London flat so that their friends could hear the music on acetate disc before the general public. The album was truly ground-breaking and extraordinary, full of what have become classic tracks, including ‘Foxy Lady’ and ‘Manic Depression’ (as well as ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Hey Joe’ on the version sold in the United States). Brian Jones and Prince Stash were among those lucky few who attended the acetate party. Prince Stash recalls a shared sense of ‘excitement filled with wonder’ as they listened for the first time to amazing new music.

  A few days later Brian accompanied Jimi and his band to the United States. They landed in New York where the musicians spent a few days clubbing and seeing friends. One of the acts Jimi caught at Steve Paul’s Scene, a fashionable basement club on West 46th Street, was the Doors. The band was in town promoting their début album, which gathered together Jim Morrison’s and Robby Krieger’s strongest songs, tunes honed in the clubs of LA, and recorded in only six days by Paul Rothchild. The result is the best album the Doors ever made, though the opening cut, ‘Break on Through’, initially failed to make an impression on the charts. Then Elektra released an edited version of ‘Light My Fire’, which became an AM radio hit, while FM stations began playing the longer, trippier album version as well. At the time Hendrix dropped into the Scene, ‘Light My Fire’ was on its way to number one, and The Doors album would follow it to the top of the charts.

  The inner world of 1960s rock was intimate and many of the central characters knew one another. While they were in New York, Brian Jones introduced Jimi Hendrix to a friend named Deering Howe, a hip young millionaire, whose fortune came from the International Harvester company. Brian had stayed with Howe on a previous visit to New York. Howe recalls Brian entertaining a girl in his room when Anita Pallenberg showed up, broke down the bedroom door and brained Brian with a Coke bottle. Blood streamed down his face. ‘It was insanity,’ sighs Howe, whose social circle also included Jim Morrison. Now that Anita had gone, Howe found Brian in a terrible shape: ‘Sadly, he was pretty much out of it with the drugs and alcohol. On a day-to-day basis, Brian didn’t make much sense.’

  While they were in New York, Brian and the Experience went out for a pleasure trip in Deering Howe’s boat. ‘We used to get whooped up and take the boat up and down the Hudson river. When we turned around we’d do a head count to make sure we had as many people as we started out with.’ Hendrix and Howe became unlikely friends. ‘[Our friendship] developed over one thing, which was mutual respect and a love of music,’ says Howe, noting that it would be hard to find two more different people. ‘Here I was, a young twenty-something white millionaire and he was a young black guy … whose mother was basically a hooker, and [he] had never had two cents to rub together his whole life. [But] we always had some kind of common ground. I was able to teach Jimi some things when he started to make some money, about how to handle it, and how to act, and how to go to a restaurant and order a bottle of wine – basic stuff that to me was second nature, but Jimi wouldn’t have had a clue.’

  Saying goodbye to Deering Howe for the time being, Brian and Jimi flew on to California for the Monterey International Pop Festival.

  Monterey Pop was a relatively small event, held over the weekend of 16–18 June 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds south of San Francisco, which accommodated 8,500 people. The biggest names in rock did not attend. There were no Beatles, no Stones, no Bob Dylan, though Brian Jones made a guest appearance, while Paul McCartney and Andrew Loog Oldham had a hand in the organisation. Nevertheless, Monterey Pop was a considerable success, a bijou event that inspired the larger, though often less successful, rock festivals that followed.

  Although the biggest acts in pop were absent from Monterey, many significant artists performed, their sets preserved for posterity on film by D. A. Pennebaker. His movie is part of the reason the festival is remembered. What is often overlooked is how many of the performers at Monterey died young – including Brian Cole of the Association, Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, Keith Moon of the Who, and Otis Redding, plus four members of the 27 Club.

  Taking the 27s in order of appearance at Monterey, Canned Heat performed at the festival on Saturday afternoon. This band had been formed in California by two friends, Al Wilson and Bob Hite, the latter a larger-than-life character known as the Bear. Al Wilson was the antithesis of the Bear: a slight, introverted young man, whose poor eyesight earned him the nickname Blind Owl. The two very different men were united by their love of the blues. Both sang with Canned Heat, Al Wilson additionally playing harmonica and lead guitar. Wilson did not look like a rock star. Indeed, he appeared out of place onstage at Monterey, with his glasses, short hair, sensible clothes and impassive demeanour. But he was a superb musician and singer, his high tenor voice immortalised in the band’s hits ‘On the Road Again’ and ‘Goin’ Up the Country’.

  Canned Heat enjoyed considerable artistic and commercial success over the next couple of years, crowned by an appearance at Woodstock in 1969. But Al Wilson was a troubled young man. Like many 27s he was estranged from his family; he lacked confidence and he suffered with depression. He twice attempted suicide, according to the band’s drummer, Fito de la Parra, who further claims in his memoir, Living the Blues, that ‘Alan often talked about death.’ This is characteristic of the 27s. Wilson knew he had problems. He consulted a psychiatris
t and took anti-depressants. He even quit the band briefly, wondering if that was the cause of his problems, returning when he realised that it was the band he really loved. One of his eccentric habits was sleeping outdoors when staying with friends, as he did latterly at Bob Hite’s house in Los Angeles. Wilson’s body was found in Hite’s yard on 3 September 1970, a day after he was due to fly to Germany with Canned Heat. His hands were crossed over his chest and there was a bottle of Seconal by his side. Cause of death was officially given as an accidental overdose of barbiturates, but Fito de la Parra believes Wilson committed suicide, at age 27.

  Big Brother followed Canned Heat on stage at Monterey on Saturday, 17 June 1967, playing again on Sunday for the film cameras. Janis Joplin gave her all to these two performances, seemingly reaching the brink of nervous breakdown on ‘Ball and Chain’ during which she whispered, pleaded and wailed her love for a man, her face a picture of suffering. Mama Cass watched open-mouthed. ‘Wow!’ she exclaimed as the audience rose to give Janis an ovation. Janis grinned with joy and skipped offstage a star.

  Among those watching was John Byrne Cooke (son of the journalist Alistair Cooke), who was D. A. Pennebaker’s sound man at Monterey. Having heard both performances of ‘Ball and Chain’, on Saturday and again on Sunday, Byrne Cooke couldn’t decide which was best. ‘You listen to one and you say, “My God, that’s the crowning performance of ‘Ball and Chain’.” And then you listen to the other one and you say, “Well, that one’s it.” They are the only group that got to perform twice, and it was in order that they would be in the movie, and she knew, and the band knew, it was just as important to knock everybody out on the Sunday-evening performance.’ Byrne Cooke was so impressed by what he heard that he became the road manager for Big Brother, working closely with Janis until she died. ‘People really noticed Janis [after that]. Janis was known in San Francisco … but after that it was the world.’

  Several other Bay Area bands performed at Monterey that weekend, including the Grateful Dead on Sunday night. Their keyboard player, Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, was like Janis Joplin (with whom he was friendly) in that he was a sensitive, somewhat unsightly character with a drink problem. He was also scruffy and odorous, hence the nickname. Beneath the beard and biker jacket, though, Pigpen was a gentle soul with a melancholy typical of alcoholics.

  Pigpen was a founding member of the Grateful Dead. He got together with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir in 1964 to form a jug band that developed into a rock ’n’ roll group associated with Ken Kesey’s acid tests. Under the influence of LSD, the Dead took to playing long improvisational sets that became the epitome of psychedelic rock. Pigpen wasn’t into drugs as much as the others. He was a boozer. He started drinking when he was twelve and by his mid-twenties he had cirrhosis of the liver, ulcers and other health problems.

  Alcoholism is found almost as commonly as drug addiction in the history of the 27 Club, and many would say that one is as bad as the other. These days, alcoholism is blamed on all sorts of things, sometimes ascribed to genetics, most fashionably called a ‘disease’, as if anybody might develop the condition through no fault of their own. But life shows us that alcoholism is the result of a bad habit taken to excess, and that people who drink to excess, and abuse narcotics, typically do so because they are unhappy. People get drunk to forget themselves, ‘to send myself away’, as Samuel Johnson said. And they keep drinking despite the warnings because they can’t stand themselves sober.

  After a lifetime of boozing to send himself away, Pigpen was admitted to hospital with a perforated ulcer in 1971. Afterwards he performed intermittently with the Grateful Dead. Towards the end of his short life he eased back on the drinking but, as with many 27s, there was a sense that he had tired of life. In his last months he wrote a song about ‘no tomorrow’ and broke up with his girlfriend, explaining, ‘I don’t want you around when I die.’ Pigpen was on his own at his apartment in Corte Madera, overlooking San Francisco Bay, when the end came on 8 March 1973. He died of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage with cirrhosis an underlying factor. He had been dead for up to two days when his landlady found him.

  If none of those artists had performed at Monterey, the festival would still be remembered for the incendiary performance by the Jimi Hendrix Experience on Sunday night. Beforehand, Jimi argued with Pete Townshend of the Who over which band should play first, neither wanting to follow the other. The Who won a coin toss, Jimi warning them that he would pull out all the stops. Townshend says Hendrix was ‘out of his head on acid’.

  Brian Jones introduced Jimi to the festival audience. Always an extravagant dresser, Brian appeared onstage at Monterey in a gold cape trimmed with pink fur, looking like a dissipated drag queen. He described his friend warmly as ‘the most exciting guitar player I’ve ever heard’.

  Wild as Brian looked, he was outdone by Jimi Hendrix himself. Nobody at Monterey looked as different as he did that weekend in June 1967. That Jimi was a black rock star made him immediately distinctive in an event dominated by white artists, but his stage clothes were also truly extraordinary. He wore an orange shirt, skintight scarlet pants, a jacket decorated with eyes (a garment he removed to reveal an equally elaborate waistcoat), a patterned bandanna and a pink boa. Although Pete Townshend says Jimi was high, he appeared relaxed and in control onstage, the seasoned pro, chewing gum and chatting to the audience as he warmed up. But his set was not at all laid back. It surged with power, his dextrous fingers creating a massive guitar sound, as huge as a Gothic cathedral and as delicately detailed, as Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding kept time.

  Jimi performed all his tricks at Monterey, playing his guitar with his teeth during ‘Hey Joe’. He prefixed ‘Wild Thing’ by promising he was going to ‘sacrifice something I love’ at the end, then played an intro during which he made his Fender screech like a bird and bellow like an elephant. Midway, he picked out the tune of ‘Strangers in the Night’ one-handed. Then he went into his closing act: grinding his guitar against his amplifier; straddling the instrument; dousing it with lighter fuel and setting it on fire; finally smashing it and throwing the pieces to the audience, who looked on with shock as if he had gone mad. In fact he had planned and rehearsed the act, having set fire to a guitar onstage previously in London. Still, this performance was in front of film cameras. Along with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix was the break-out star of Monterey.

  4

  The Doors were disappointed not to be invited to Monterey, snubbed because of a falling-out with the organisers. With ‘Light My Fire’ and their début album at number one, the band was, however, on top of the world.

  Along with the quality of their music, Jim Morrison’s emergence as a pop idol played a part in the Doors’ breakthrough. The publicity department of Elektra Records made the most of the fact that Jim was a handsome young man, making a doe-eyed photograph of the singer the focus of the album cover and putting him on a billboard above Sunset Boulevard – the first time a rock band had been promoted in this way. A series of cheesecake publicity photos of Jim, by Joel Brodsky and others, were distributed to the press and teen magazines. In the most famous Brodsky shot Jim posed without his shirt, his arms spread like Christ’s on the cross. This picture has been reproduced endlessly over the years, on posters, T-shirts, book jackets, magazine and album covers, becoming truly iconic. With his long curly hair and lithe body, Jim was at his most photogenic, and the picture helped make him a star – at a price.

  ‘He hated that picture,’ says Danny Fields, the Doors’ publicist. Fields says Jim never looked quite as good in life as he did in the Brodsky photograph. He was heavier-set normally, later distinctly overweight, but fans expected him to look as he did in the Brodsky picture. Fields believes Jim came to resent this, taking the view that ‘“I don’t look like that, I never did, I never will …” Angry about it …You can’t say that to a fan who says, “Sign this picture of yourself.” He felt that way, but can’t say it.’ In a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone, by which time he was heavy
and bearded, Jim remarked, ‘A photograph can make any person look like a saint, an angel, a fool … And a lot of it is idolatry.’ He may have imagined initially that the shirtless photos presented him as a modern-day Dionysus. Some fans saw the pictures that way. Looked at from another angle, he had allowed himself to become a teen idol, which was demeaning for an intellectual and a poet.

  Jim’s family found out about his new celebrity when Andy Morrison brought The Doors album home. Having told his son that his musical ambitions were ridiculous, Admiral Morrison had a change of heart and telephoned Jim to congratulate him. Jim responded coolly. The admiral said it was a conversation during which ‘nothing of consequence was discussed’. In fact, father and son never communicated again. Clara Morrison was not so easily deterred. She called Elektra Records asking to speak to Jim. Her call caused surprise in the office because Jim had told everybody that his parents were dead.

  ‘[So] I get a call from his mother at the Elektra office,’ recalls former label executive Steve Harris. ‘They were playing in New York, and she said, “I need to talk to Jim, it’s important to me.” I said, “Who’s calling?” “His mother.” I didn’t want to say, “You’re supposed to be dead.”’ Persuaded that the caller was genuine, Harris gave Mrs Morrison the number of the hotel where Jim was staying. The next day members of the band told Harris that Jim was so upset by hearing from his mother that he’d got rotten drunk after her call. An edict went out that any further calls were not to be put through.

  Clara Morrison remained determined to make contact with her boy. When the Doors performed at the Hilton in Washington DC on 25 November 1967, she went to the show with her second son, Andy, and his date, and introduced herself backstage to the band’s manager, Asher Dann, who asked her to wait while he told Jim she was there. He assured Jim that there was time to meet his mother after the show, if he wanted. Jim had no intention of meeting her. He asked to be driven to the airport as soon as he came offstage. Dann went with him, without telling Clara Morrison that Jim wouldn’t be meeting her. ‘I guess she got the message [when] I didn’t come back,’ he says. ‘It’s a sad story, but I guess that was part of his make-up, one of those demons inside his head …’ Looking back, Dann concludes that Jim hated his parents. ‘Probably hated them. You know, “The End” related to his parents.’