The Road to Woodstock

by Michael Lang

  I soon discovered that my friend Kenny, who had dropped out of school, was into pot. We’d go over to his house and get high. His parents were never around. One day I came home from Kenny’s and my mother confronted me: While cleaning my closet, she’d discovered my stash, a couple of ounces. I didn’t want to lose the pot, so I had to make my case quickly: I whipped out the Encyclopaedia Britannica, looked up Cannabis sativa, and stuck the scholarly article under her nose. I knew the description was pretty benign—I’d checked it out soon after I started smoking. In a matter-of-fact description, the encyclopedia stated very clearly that marijuana was nonaddictive. “I know what I’m doing,” I told my mother. “It’s a myth that pot leads to hard drugs. Smoking is fun and it helps me see things in a new way. And you know I don’t drink any alcohol.”

  This conversation defused the situation enough so that when my father came home, we sat around the kitchen table and discussed it further. My parents turned out to be pretty reasonable. They weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea but accepted that it wasn’t harmful. After all, they’d lived through Prohibition—and my father had even briefly worked for bootleggers. In 1958–59, there was some antidrug propaganda at school like “Beware, marijuana is the first step down that road to drug addiction…” But the big antidrug campaigns hadn’t started yet; authorities were still blaming comic books and rock and roll for juvenile delinquency.

  When I was sixteen, I discovered LSD-25—the original pharmaceutical formula developed by Sandoz in Basel, Switzerland. In 1961, LSD was still pretty far off the radar. Timothy Leary hadn’t yet started his “turn on, tune in, drop out” campaign, and the drug wouldn’t become illegal for another five years. I really didn’t know what to expect. I tripped for the first time at Kenny’s house. He pulled out a little vial of a clear blue liquid. I can’t remember how he got it or who gave him the instructions on how to take it. With a medicine dropper, I squirted a tiny amount onto a sugar cube, then popped it into my mouth, let it dissolve, and waited.

  Everything became superclear, superreal. Every sense was heightened, and some senses went beyond being heightened. I’ll never forget that feeling of everything coming into sharp focus. I loved listening to music on acid. You entered that world, whether it was jazz, classical, or Indian music, or, later on, psychedelic music like Hendrix or the Mothers of Invention—whatever the music was, it sort of ate you up. You became the music.

  LSD opened my mind to a new way of thinking, and I started reading books like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, the writings of Kahlil Gibran, The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (the book that would give Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek’s band their name). Suddenly, I was on a journey. Dropping acid meant putting yourself out on the edge, beyond your comfort zone and what you were used to. It seemed you gave up control of your mind to your spirit. From the first time I took acid, I felt I was opening a door between my subconscious and my conscious, between myself and the cosmos. I could look around at my whole person. I was connected to everything. When I was tripping, I was very comfortable being in that altered state. Sometimes people I was with would get a bit freaked out on acid, but I was always at ease with the sensations and could help bring them back to a good place. It was a learning experience—a revelation, never paranoia. I never had a bad trip.

  The second or third time I dropped acid, my friends and I decided to ride the subway into Manhattan. Sitting by the train door, I watched the guy across from me turn into a rabbit. He began twitching his nose, then grew whiskers and ears. It didn’t freak me out; I just took it all in. Arriving at Times Square about 4 A.M., we strolled through empty Manhattan canyons. I was so absorbed, the next thing I knew I looked around and was alone. My friends had vanished. After walking for what seemed like miles, I found myself in a deep forest. Sitting on a bench and communing with nature for hours and when I looked up the sun had risen. I noticed the Empire State Building looming overhead, jarring me back into the real world. It turned out I’d wandered into a small park by the Little Church Around the Corner, just off Fifth Avenue.

  The summer after eleventh grade, I discovered Greenwich Village. I’d been there a few times with my family, going to The Threepenny Opera at a theater on Christopher Street, and just walking around. But in 1961, I met Kenny and his new girlfriend Kathy at a little place called the Village Corner and I was instantly taken with the neighborhood vibe, its culture, its people. With Kenny and Kathy was Pauline, a beautiful black woman in her mid-twenties. Kathy, a gorgeous redhead, shared an apartment with her at 500 West Broadway. Pauline and I hit it off. I ended up spending most of the summer with her, crashing at their apartment.

  Pauline and Kathy were “working girls.” Pauline didn’t turn tricks, but operated as the madam. She did the booking, making appointments out of the West Broadway apartment. Pauline would drop the girls at various locations for their “dates.” I really didn’t think that much about what she did, it was just, this is her life and what she does to earn a living. I’d had a couple of other girlfriends, but being with Pauline was a very worldly experience. At night, she dressed elegantly, as the girls would then, in high heels and a tight-fitting cocktail dress, kind of high-class call-girl mode, quite elegant, never trashy. They had an upscale clientele of well-to-do businessmen, and their services were expensive, several hundred dollars. In those days, that was a lot of money.

  The girls lived in a small square back building in the border area between the Village and what’s now called SoHo, then still industrial, with warehouses just starting to be converted into artists’ lofts. Pauline’s apartment was quite bohemian: mattresses on the floor, candles burning, music always playing, dark scarves on the windows, scarves on lamps. We didn’t hang out at the apartment very much except to sleep there. In the afternoons, Pauline, usually in a leotard and skirt and wearing a wig, would show me around the Village. At night, we’d start the evening at the Village Corner and then make the rounds, stopping in at the Village Gate or the Five Spot to hear some jazz. It was always fascinating to me how four or five musicians would lock into wherever they were going, improvising, with no map. Sometimes we’d end up in Harlem, checking out jazz and R & B clubs.

  The whole world Pauline lived in fascinated me. The counterculture was developing out of what had been the Beat era, becoming the folk scene. It was inspiring being among photographers and painters, as well as fringe people and outsiders, pursuing their interests rather than marching in time with the status quo. People were starting little businesses that catered to the locals. In the East Village, on St. Mark’s Place, A Different Drummer sold vintage clothes. People began to dress in a new way. I let my hair grow. The Village opened my eyes to a very appealing lifestyle, one completely different from what I knew in Bensonhurst.

  After about two months, Pauline said she thought I was falling in love with her and that our thing wasn’t meant to last. Pegging me for the innocent I was, she didn’t want me to get too attached. It hurt, but she let me down with a lot of kindness. I never saw Pauline again, but the summer we spent together changed me. She opened doors that have never closed.

  During my senior year of high school, thanks to Mr. Bonham, my student advisor, I was given the opportunity to start college early. New York University accepted me to begin in January, as long as I finished high school at night. As 1962 started, I was heading back to the Village.

  My parents were delighted about this series of events: College was always the objective for them, and in those days, NYU wasn’t very expensive, and I could commute from Brooklyn. That summer I got a job at a funky boutique on Bleecker Street called the Village Cobbler. We sold oddball earrings, leather goods, crafts, and all kinds of other trappings. I liked being in the middle of the Village’s unfolding folk scene. The music had really taken off, with a whole new generation of singer-songwriters testing the waters in Village clubs. Bob Dylan’s first album had come out on Columbia, but he still sometimes performed around the neighborhood. I’d go to the coffeehouses an
d clubs that dotted Bleecker and MacDougal streets—the Café Wha?, the Bitter End, Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight—and check out artists like Bob Gibson, Phil Ochs, Jack Elliott, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk. Washington Square Park was filled with pickers and bongo players, artists of all kinds and dealers galore. You could score grass around the clock.

  In a tiny coffeehouse on MacDougal Street called Rienzi’s, I would sit by the window and watch crazy, colorful characters walk by—not hippies yet, but some early freaks. I’d gotten a Super 8 camera and decided to make a documentary of Village street life. I started filming what was to be called A View from Rienzi’s but never finished it.

  Before turning eighteen in December, I got my notice to register for the draft. In 1962, Vietnam was still an undeclared war, but the situation there was escalating. In my opinion, the U.S. had no reason to get involved in a conflict that had been going on in Southeast Asia for forty years. I had nothing against the Vietnamese. I saw a psychiatrist for three weeks in the hopes of getting a medical note recommending a deferment. The doctor could see I had no respect for authority and that I would never fire on another human being simply because I was ordered to do so. He wrote a letter of assessment saying I was not a good candidate for the military. I thought everything was set for me to get a pass, but instead I received a notice to show up for my physical at Borough Hall, in Brooklyn.

  Going through the whole process and undergoing tests and assorted examinations, I kept waiting for them to pull me out of line and say, “You’re not what we’re looking for.” But that didn’t happen. Finally, despite the uniformed officers trying to usher us along, I ducked out of formation. I ran downstairs to look for the psych’s office. I walked in and blurted out, “Listen, I don’t know if you looked at my paperwork, but you really don’t want me in the army.” I sat down with the shrink and we talked it through. I told him I was against the war on moral grounds, that I didn’t believe in killing. This was still so early in the Vietnam conflict that the U.S. military wasn’t desperate for troops. They would be in four or five years, when getting drafted was nearly inescapable. After a long discussion, the doctor gave me a deferment.

  That was the last I heard from the selective service. I’d avoided being forced to fight in a war I didn’t believe in. I had no idea that by the end of the decade, there would be millions of like-minded kids at Woodstock taking the same stand for peace.

  two

  THE GROVE

  As rain pelts the roofless stage, the crowd is turning ugly, with tempers rising as high as Miami’s humidity. A few jerks start lobbing Coke bottles and rocks, and angry demands for music ring out. I can’t put any of the electric acts onstage, though a madman British vocalist announces that his band, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, would like to perform and hopefully experience electrocution. “It would be beautiful!” he insists. I’m thinking the sight of Arthur frying would not be beautiful.

  What we need is a powerful acoustic act.

  Just as the rain subsides and the crew starts clearing water from the stage—a pair of flatbed trailers—I spot John Lee Hooker, cool as ever, smoking a cigarette, sitting backstage waiting for his slot. He’s my man.

  Twenty minutes later, the fifty-year-old blues veteran has them eating out of his hand. He’s probably performed under worse conditions. Porkpie hat pulled low, shades still on, he growls his signature “Boogie Chillun” and pounds out the beat on his guitar. He follows that with an improvised talking blues about playing in the rain. The audience is mesmerized. I’m struck by the power of music to reach into people and change them. At the end of the set, a girl climbs onstage and lays a bouquet of flowers at John Lee’s feet.

  In the spring of 1964, I transferred to the University of Tampa, which turned out to be a town full of astronauts and not much else. I lasted only six months. It was just too straight, too uptight. I moved back to New York and returned to NYU, but continued to make trips to Florida. A friend from Bensonhurst, Bob West, and I would drive south to Miami. Traveling through the South with New York plates could be scary back then. Freedom Riders journeying from the North to help register black voters and fight for civil rights often ran into trouble. My sister was among the activists: When Iris got her law degree, she and her attorney husband, Paul Brest, spent nearly two years in Mississippi, working for the Legal Defense Fund to help enable school desegregation.

  Down South, most Northerners—especially longhairs—were looked upon with suspicion. On one trip, when Bob and I were driving a Corvette to Florida, we stopped in South Carolina at a luncheonette. Our hair was pretty long at that point. We sat down at the counter, and while ordering coffee, we noticed a sign on the milk machine that read: THE EYES OF THE KU KLUX KLAN ARE UPON YOU. Not really thinking about where we were, we cracked up, which caught the attention of some of the customers. The place heated up quickly, and like in a movie, we ran to our car, a bunch of local boys at our heels. They jumped in a pickup and gave chase, but our Vette easily outran them.

  During one of those trips, Bob and I ended up in Coconut Grove, a lazy tropical community just south of Miami. Close to the University of Miami campus, it had an artsy, laid-back vibe, the kind of place where dogs lie down and sleep in the middle of the road. Coconut Grove was a great revelation to me—it seemed like the perfect place to live.

  In late 1965, during my fall semester at NYU, I realized I was done with school. I decided to move to Miami and open a head shop. Having seen my parents take on new businesses, whether they knew that particular line or not, I thought, Why not? I could learn on my feet, like they had. “School is not happening for me,” I told them. “I want to get out into the world.” As usual, they were wary but supportive. I left NYU that semester and spent the spring developing ideas, making contacts, and figuring out just what the head shop was going to be. I sold a little pot to get by, and I had a bank account with four or five thousand dollars in it, mostly made up of my bar mitzvah money and earnings from odd jobs. That gave me enough to buy merchandise, rent a space, and set up a shop.

  During my last semester at NYU, I’d reconnected with Ellen Lemisch; we’d originally met as kids at her father’s optometrist shop. Ellen and her identical twin lived in a huge Upper West Side apartment. They rented out rooms, and the place became a crossroads of ideas, with interesting people constantly coming and going. A kind of countercultural salon, there the energy was nonstop. Ellen and I fell in love, and she decided to move to Florida with me. She knew lots of artisans and craftsmen who were creating little stash boxes and all sorts of beautiful things for heads. We started collecting them for the shop.

  In the East Village, Jeff Glick, a very hip entrepreneur, had opened the Headshop. Located on East Ninth Street, it was the first of its kind, selling rolling papers, pipes, and other things for heads. Jeff stocked his store with Peter Max’s early posters and other psychedelic art. Peter’s art was famous as a pop phenomenon. A very generous guy, Jeff showed me the ropes of the business and also introduced me to Peter. When I told Peter my plans, he invited me to his Upper West Side apartment to pick out posters for my own store. I guess he was expecting a big order and rolled out dozens of posters. But, with my minuscule budget, I chose only six. It didn’t faze him, thankfully, and we immediately became close friends—a friendship that’s lasted to this day.

  Ellen and I got a roomy drive-away car, packed everything up, and took off for Miami. In the fall of ’66, after searching in vain for a space in Coconut Grove, we found a vacant store in South Miami near the University of Miami. The Head Shop South opened on Sunset Boulevard with rock and roll in the streets. I booked a local band to play and the place was mobbed. The kids in South Florida still looked pretty straight—not a lot of longhairs like in New York and San Francisco—but they were eager to check us out. Unfortunately, so were the chief of police and Wackenhut agents—a notorious private security force that operated like the DEA. On opening day, they showed up, looked around, and the next day shut us down for operating w
ithout a license. It was a very conservative right-wing community and we were not exactly their cup of tea.

  I took my case to court. During the packed hearing, filled with hostile citizens and a few freaks, a professor from the University of Miami got up to speak in support of my rights. He got carried away and consequently completely buried me. My application for a license was turned down flat. Before I had a chance to appeal, the police chief—originally from the Bronx—called, and we had a very direct off-the-record conversation. “Look,” he said, “this is not New York. This is the conservative South, and they’ll never let you open in a place like this.”

  I took his advice and looked again in the Grove to see if a location had opened up. Ellen and I moved into a motel on Bayshore Drive and eventually rented an old wooden bungalow on Twenty-seventh Avenue from a saxophone player named Twig. The Grove was a fascinating mix of tycoons living on gorgeous estates in South Grove and outsiders—artists, craftsmen, musicians, fishermen, smugglers, and a sprinkling of hippies. Folk music could be heard at the Gaslight, opened by Sam Hood, son of the owner of New York’s Gaslight. The reclusive genius Fred Neil, a native Floridian, had returned to the Grove after living in New York and making a stir in the Village. He was a magnet to singer-songwriters like David Crosby, who often traveled to the Grove to play the Gaslight and hang out with Fred.

  Situated on Biscayne Bay, the Grove was as relaxed as South Miami was uptight. In the heart of the Grove, I found a large whitewashed cottage with a porch surrounded by windows where we could display posters. Among my neighbors were Adam Turtle’s woodworking shop, the Ludicios Leather Shop, the studios of sculptors Lester Sperling, Michael “Michelangelo” Alocca, David Dowes, and Grail Douglas and painter Tony Scornavacca. The Grove was also home to Dr. John Lilly’s Dolphin Research Center, set up in an old bank building in the center of town. Lilly’s early research on communicating with dolphins included giving them LSD. He eventually began tripping with them in a saltwater tank built into the main vault of the building.