Live at the Fillmore East and West

by John Glatt

  Ultimately, the Airplane went ahead with the Central Park show, arriving at the Naumberg Bandshell by limo. And inexplicably during her performance Grace berated the audience for being there instead of protesting in New Haven.

  During their four shows at the Fillmore East that week, the Jefferson Airplane—with new drummer Joey Covington—seemed reenergized. Just before they went on every night, a photo of Grace and Abbie Hoffman outside the White House was projected onto the light show screen. Its caption read: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  Backstage at the Airplane shows, cocaine was rampant. And the band was very generous with its high-grade marching powder.

  “I will say the Airplane had the best coke I’ve ever had,” said Dan Opatoshu of the stage crew, “so I was happy to partake. But I wasn’t that happy with the set. Again, it’s a personal thing and some people love the grumpy Airplane shows [best].”16

  Robert Christgau covered the late Thursday show for the Village Voice. The performance would become legendary.

  “Grace was wearing one of her bitch costumes,” he wrote, “short black skirt, see-through top, black squares covering her breasts, black hair teased and splayed in a crown around her head—and looked like a cross between Jean Shrimpton and the Wicked Witch of the North. She was high on coke, apparently—and as she explained later, menstruating.”17

  After the first couple of songs, Grace launched a verbal attack on the audience.

  “How can you live like men,” she demanded to know, “if you’re stacked like rats in a cage?”

  Then she told them how she could not wait to go back to California. And after observing that “New York chicks don’t fart” and that Paul [Kantner] never smiles because he’s German, the band struck up the first notes of “Somebody to Love.”

  Then in the middle of the song, a coked-up Grace started taunting the audience again.

  “You paid $3.50 to come in here and you probably don’t have it, man, but we do,” she told them. “We can ride in cars that are all closed up and nobody sees us . . . [We] can smoke all this dope and nobody gives you any shit. But they give you shit because you don’t have a Cadillac. We do. You know the people you’re rising up against? They’re right up here on this stage. They’re also in the White House but they’re also right here. Because you had to pay to get in here. It wasn’t free. You’re paying our asses so I can stand up and have a shrimp salad and all that shit—and I’m a jerk because I love it. I love that shrimp shit.”

  Grace’s take on being a modern Marie Antoinette would go down in Jefferson Airplane folklore as the “shrimp shit rap.”

  “She was doing coke that night, right,” said Robert Christgau in 2012. “It never helps as far as your regression level is concerned. To me it doesn’t seem hard to understand at all. It happens in May 1970 at the moment when the Airplane in particular, and a lot of the bands, were at their most explicitly political.

  “There was political change going on and it involved conflict not persuasion. But it wasn’t all just going to flower into something else. That became extreme clear [after] Kent State.”18

  Back in the hotel after the show, Grace went to Paul Kantner’s room. Then, as they were about to make love, she announced that she wanted to have his child.

  “And I said, ‘Okay,’ ” said Kantner, “ ‘that’s flattering in some way. This could be interesting.’ ” 19

  Several days later, Bill Graham complained about Grace’s recent behavior to his Fillmore West staff at one of their regular meetings.

  “And he was particularly upset,” said Chris Brooks. “Grace was as high as a kite and had said something very rude onstage. She had apologized to the audience for her behavior by saying, ‘Excuse me for my behavior but I’m on the rag.’ And the people in the audience whooped it up. You know, ‘ho, ho, ho.’ Bill found it particularly offensive as we all did.”20

  But Bill Graham would never dare confront Grace about her offensive behavior, as Jefferson Airplane were still his biggest draw.

  At the beginning of April, Santana flew to London to play the Royal Albert Hall. Although the Woodstock movie and soundtrack were a huge hit in America, they were still three months away from release in Europe. When they returned to San Francisco, Santana went straight into the studio to start recording their second album, Abraxus.

  There was a lot of pressure on the band to match the huge success of their first album, and they would more than rise to the occasion. When Gregg Rolie suggested covering Fleetwood Mac’s “Black Magic Woman” on the new album, the others were against it. But the organist insisted and it would eventually become their biggest hit single, peaking at number 4 on the Billboard chart.

  The other huge hit on Abraxus would be Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va,” which Bill Graham had first suggested they record months earlier. Again, some of the band did not want to, but this time Carlos fought hard.

  “So the band go, ‘That’s not rock ’n’ roll,’ ” said Carlos. “And so I say, ‘Well I don’t care. These songs are going to be on the record. And if you don’t [like it] get another guitar player.’ ”21

  Tito Puente, meanwhile, did not want a rock band to tinker around with his music and protested to Bill Graham. But after it became a huge hit, he changed his tune.22

  One of the lynchpins of Abraxus is José “Chepito” Areas, whose Latin musical influences were integral to the Santana sound. Areas, an expert in Latin music from his years of playing in the Mission, believes Carlos Santana never properly acknowledged his contribution to the Santana sound.

  “I created the Latin rock,” he said. “I taught Gregg Rolie and Carlos, but I didn’t get [any] credit. Then we did “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va,” and boom—all over the world.”23

  While they were recording Abraxas, a fifteen-year-old guitar prodigy named Neal Schon was hanging out at the studio. Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve had first seen him play with his band Old Davis at a Palo Alto club called the Poppycock.

  “We’d been hearing about Neal so we went to hear him play,” said Michael Shrieve. “And he was amazing in that English rock ’n’ roll blues style of Eric Clapton. He was really a prodigy.”24

  After jamming with him for hours, Shrieve and Rolie were so impressed that that they invited him to the Abraxus sessions.

  For the next few weeks, Schon was a constant presence in the studio, even playing on Rolie’s “Mother’s Daughter” track.25

  Although Rolie wanted the more rock-orientated Schon to join Santana, he knew it would be bad politics to ask Carlos to add another guitar and lessen his role in the band. So he waited until Carlos could play with him and see how good he was.

  “Carlos had to bring it up,” said Rolie, “and he did after playing with him. He asked me, ‘what do you think about having another guitar player in the band?’ ”26

  Abraxus begins with Michael Carabello’s “Singing Winds, Crying Beasts,” an aural personification of cocaine, which the band were now freely indulging in.

  Road manager Herbie Herbert was in Wally Heider’s studio during the recording, and he and producer Fred Catero wondered how Santana kept going without apparently needing any rest.

  “It’d be six, seven in the morning,” said Herbert, “and the band would be, ‘Let’s cut this!’ We’re dead on our feet. It’s fucking daylight outside. Where’s this crazy energy coming from?”

  Finally, Herbert asked Carabello what was going on.

  “Michael says, ‘Oh! We’re doing blow,’ ” recalled Herbert. “ ‘You guys ought to try a bump.’ ”

  The band then came into the control room and laid out a few lines of blow for them to try.

  “Me and Fred didn’t feel a thing at first until we got the buzz,” said Herbert. “Then [we] looked at each other, ‘Holy fuck, I’m lit up like a Christmas tree.’ We were whack.”27

 
The huge amounts of cocaine and other drugs that Santana were now ingesting, along with all the acclaim they were receiving, were starting to affect the whole band. For the first time in their lives, they had real money and the power that it brought.

  After Woodstock, Bill Graham had warned Carlos about the dangers of instant superstardom, urging him to keep his feet firmly on the ground.

  “Bill Graham had told us . . . it’s going to fuck you up,” Carlos recalled. “Your egos are gonna get so big you’re gonna need a shoehorn to come into a room. We said, ‘No. No,’ and sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.”28

  On Friday, May 22, Janis Joplin unveiled her new band, now being billed as Main Squeeze, at a Hells Angels benefit in San Rafael, Marin County. Albert Grossman flew in for the show, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were the opening act. Janis joined them onstage for a couple of songs.

  The show was awash with alcohol, and the local Southern Comfort distributer had donated several cases of Janis’s favorite drink. During Big Brother’s set, a drunken couple stripped naked and began making love as the audience applauded. Grossman stood silently at the back of the ballroom, looking uncomfortable.

  When Janis took the stage, all hell broke loose after a Hells Angel tried to take a swig from her bottle of Southern Comfort. When she refused to give it to him, he hit her in the face.

  “She wound up getting punched by some Hells Angel,” said Mike Wilhelm, who also played with Loose Gravel. “She was drunk and out of hand. She was running around being a really obnoxious drunk, and he slapped her around. Then she burst into tears and went back into the dressing room.”29

  A couple of days later, Bobby Neuwirth was at a band rehearsal when he suddenly shouted out, “Is everybody ready for a full-tilt Boogie?”

  Janis Joplin immediately latched on to the expression “Full Tilt Boogie,” christening her new band with it on the spot.

  At the end of May, Janis and the Full Tilt Boogie Band opened in Gainesville, Florida, before moving on to Jacksonville, Miami, Columbus, and Indianapolis.

  The mini-tour had been badly handled by local promoters and some of the shows were only half full, with several being canceled. All this pressure was getting to Janis, who was drinking herself into a stupor.

  She was also worried that Albert Grossman planned to drop her, even sending him a cable pleading with him not to do so.

  “I know I’m not The Band or Dylan,” it read, “but care about me too.”

  Grossman, who had no intention of dropping Janis, was so alarmed he insisted she seek further medical treatment for her drinking, which she did.

  During the tour, she became obsessed with Nancy Milford’s new biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic alcoholic wife Zelda, whom Janis had always related to.

  “Well I’ve been an F. Scott Fitzerald freak for years,” she would explain. “I read that he sort of destroyed her. I don’t believe it’s true. We destroy ourselves.”30

  Soon after inviting Paul Kantner to father her baby, Grace Slick became pregnant. She decided to abstain from LSD until after her baby was born.

  “If a drug makes me feel bad,” she said, “then it would make my baby feel bad. I didn’t take any acid because it didn’t feel right for me.”31

  But during her pregnancy, Grace barely slowed down with regard to her performances. She and the band played the Bath Festival in England, followed by the Kralingen festival in Rotterdam. Then, the Jefferson Airplane took a short hiatus from each other.

  Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady flew to Jamaica to try to record a Hot Tuna live album, while Grace and Paul Kantner moved into a four-bedroom beach house together in Bolinas, Marin County, to prepare for their new arrival.

  They settled down in as domestic a lifestyle as either had enjoyed in a long time, writing songs for what would become the first Jefferson Starship album, Blows Against the Empire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Festival Express

  June to July, 1970

  At the beginning of June, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played a week of shows at the Fillmore East. On the day tickets went on sale a month earlier, there were lines four-deep around the block—hours before the box office opened. Many people had camped outside all night.

  When house photographer Amalie Rothschild arrived that unusually hot May morning, she was amazed to see the crowds lining up for tickets.

  “It was a revelation,” she recalled, “and I thought I’ve got to be up high [and take a photograph].”1

  So the resourceful young photographer started knocking on doors in an apartment block across the street, talking her way onto the roof. From her vantage point there, she photographed the hundreds of fans swarming around the Fillmore East.

  Prior to the first show a month later, right before Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young arrived for the soundcheck, Bill Graham called a staff meeting. Referring to the band as “the American Beatles,” he ordered his staff to give CSN&Y everything they wanted.

  Soon afterward, the band’s crew arrived in a fleet of trucks, carrying tons of sound and lighting equipment. Once again, they insisted on using their own gear rather than the Fillmore East’s superior equipment. They also announced that they wouldn’t be needing the theater’s new Joe’s Light Show, requesting a black curtain instead.

  “There was a lot of ego going on,” explained Allan Arkush. “These guys were acting like they owned the world.”2

  Arkush also sensed how arrogant the supergroup had become since they had first played the Fillmore East the previous August after Woodstock.

  “They saw themselves as stars,” he said, “and had a different attitude.”3

  The final straw came when the band’s road manager demanded a Persian rug for them to play on. After finding one that had been used by Ravi Shankar, the road manager declared it too dirty.

  Furious, stagehand John Ford Noonan, who hated CSN&Y’s attitude, decided to make a point. He grabbed an industrial vacuum cleaner and got down on his hands and knees, vacuuming every inch of the rug as if his life depended on it.

  “We’re going to do this for the Crosby, Stills, Nash! We’re going to do this for the Crosby, Stills, Nash!” he kept repeating.

  Finally, when he had finished, he walked up to band, who had been watching him, telling them, “You know, even if you guys were good, this would be too much work.”

  At that point, Bill Graham announced he had a phone call and rushed back to his office so he wouldn’t have to face the angry band members.

  “Basically,” said Dan Opatoshu, “it was the clash of two entities with huge egos. The Fillmore staff versus the supergroup of all time.”4

  A few minutes later, as the soundcheck began, everything changed. Neil Young played his moving new song “Ohio,” his emotional response to the Kent State Massacre. One by one the Fillmore East staff came over to thank him for writing the song, which perfectly summed up everybody’s feelings about Richard Nixon and the senseless violence seemingly everywhere.

  All the Fillmore East shows were being recorded for a live album, and they were some of the best shows CSN&Y would ever play. On the second night—Tuesday—Bob Dylan was quietly smuggled in through a side entrance to watch the group.

  “We used to sneak Dylan in so he could sit upstairs in one of the light booths and watch shows that he wanted,” recalled Bonnie Garner. “This was back when we didn’t have cell phones, so Al Aronowitz [who was a close friend of Dylan] would call the office and say that Dylan wanted to see the show tonight. Someone would be at the back door waiting for him and then sneak him upstairs.”5

  The first half of the show was played acoustically, with each member of the band playing two songs solo before taking an intermission and coming back electric.

  “We would do little solo sets,” said Graham Nash. “I’d do two, David would do two, Stephen would do two
and Neil would do two. And this night, because Dylan was there, Stephen did five songs. And that pissed me off righteously, because I knew why he was doing it. We all could have done that. We all wanted to impress Dylan, but he did it. We were so infuriated.”

  During intermission, the other band members rounded on Stills, angry about his blatant grandstanding to impress Dylan.

  “He’s holding a Budweiser can in his hand,” said Nash, “and he’s slowly gripping it and crushing the can. [He] crushed it flat, so that it was frothing all over the carpet . . . with this maniacal energy. And then we went out and played the greatest set we ever played. Go figure.”6

  On the final night of the run, after several encores, the audience was still screaming for more.

  “Bill Graham came and knocked on the door,” said Nash, “and he said, ‘They’re not leaving. Can you come back and do some more?’ And we go, ‘Look, we’ve just done three hours. Come on, give us a break.’

  “So, I think it was Crosby who said, ‘We want money.’ And Bill Graham starts to feed hundred dollar [bills] under the door. And when he got to eight, Neil said, ‘Okay, We’ll do one more song.’ ”

  That same day—Sunday, June 7—Bill Graham also presented The Who’s final two performances of Tommy at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. It was Graham’s most prestigious show to date, and he saw it as the beginning of a new phase of his career.

  “Rock music may have reached its all-time peak,” wrote Albert Goldman in Life magazine. “A great leap across the gaps of generation, class and culture, the performance installed rock as a maturely rounded art in the shrine of the great European classics.”7

  Almost eight thousand people jammed into the stately opera hall in Lincoln Center, paying up to a record $7.50 to see a matinee or evening performance of Tommy, billed as the last time The Who would ever play it. The Met had never seen anything like it.