Lucky for us, Owsley was there with an endless supply of it. Some of his acid is still probably around today, hidden in people’s freezers or basements like fine wine that they’re holding onto for a special occasion. That’s how much he made. But Owsley was more than just our supplier—as I mentioned earlier, he was also our financier and our patron. He invested in the Grateful Dead. We didn’t have any money in our pockets when we were in L.A. We weren’t playing many gigs and the ones we did play, didn’t really pay. But we had the backing of the “L.S.D. Millionaire.” Owsley paid the rent, bankrolled our wardrobes, and bought our food.
To feed us, Owsley would buy huge sections of cow, like the entire rump and topside. Literally. Raw and uncut. He’d plop the fucker right in the refrigerator. We had to cut off our own versions of steaks when we wanted to eat, using knives that were duller than a PTA meeting. But Owsley believed—religiously, scientifically, whatever—in a strict meat-eater diet. Carnivorous to the core. He never ate vegetables or cereal or pasta or yogurt or fruit or cheese. He never ate salads. No greens. No carbohydrates. He only ate meat. And since he had all the money, he controlled our diets. He felt very strongly about his dietary beliefs, which is fine, but he also forced them on us. So there was half of a dead cow in the fridge and a knife that got duller every time and our patience wore thinner with every meal. Brenda had to fight with him just to get oatmeal for Stacy.
But food wasn’t the primary reason for living there; playing music was. Owsley supplied all the equipment and somehow we were placed inside his dream of building the perfect sound system for a live band. Unfortunately, his idea of perfect turned out to be pretty far from Eden. Eight years later—in 1974—it led us to the now-legendary Wall of Sound setup. That was the pinnacle of the great Owsley sound experiment. Of course, it turns out that having a wall of speakers—including 4,000 pounds of speakers above the drummer—was not the best idea.
But, at the Pink House, the wall of speakers and amplifiers that Owsley set up in the living room was awesome. We could rehearse whenever we wanted. And when we did, we were loud. Really loud. Predictably, the neighbors weren’t too happy.
Well, one day, the old lady who lived in a two-story house to the right of us opened all of her windows and put a different sound device in each of them—a radio in one, a telephone in one, a television in one, a hair dryer in another, a blender in this one, whatever she could figure would make a sound. She turned them all on, facing our house, full blast, to bug us. She was trying to get back at us for playing music so loud all the time and probably just being loud in general. But, unfortunately for her, it didn’t work. We loved it. We were all high on acid going, “Fuck, that’s bitchin’!”
We probably should’ve been more concerned about the house on the other side of us. It wasn’t until the end of our stay that we learned it was an outlaw gambling operation. That’s all right. We kept to ourselves and laid low anyway. Especially in that neighborhood—fucking Watts.
While we were there, the Pink House was the center of the Dead’s universe. My whole family was there, living in one room—Brenda and I had Stacy’s crib in our bedroom. Phil brought along his girlfriend, Florence Louise (who later changed her name to Rosie McGee and wrote her own book about all of this). Owsley had Melissa. Jerry’s family came down with him initially, but the relationship fell apart before we even moved into the house. So his wife and daughter, Sara and Heather, split back north. It was a three-ring circus with constant motion and people coming in and out.
It wasn’t boring living there. I remember that Weir dated a Playboy Bunny once and took her home and that was exciting. She was in the house for a few days. And Danny Rifkin—who would soon start co-managing us with a guy named Rock Scully for many, many years—first stumbled into our world as a visitor at the Pink House. Danny came there with Harry Shearer, who became a famous actor. Harry was in that funny rock ’n’ roll satire, Spinal Tap, as the bassist Derek Smalls, with the aluminum foil cock or whatever. He co-wrote that script and then, as you probably know, he went on to do many of the voices on The Simpsons. So, in a way, you could say Ned Flanders swung by the Pink House.
It’s pretty cool to note that Harry’s career first really took off with Saturday Night Live—there’s a certain synchronicity to that and you’ll soon see why. What’s more, Harry came to SNL via a recommendation from Al Franken (a future Deadhead). He replaced John Belushi (a future friend). There were all sorts of crazy connections like this, everywhere, throughout our career.
Owsley was kind of the lone wolf at the Pink House, because he was always in the attic, making the sacrament or whatever he was doing up there. He had all the raw stuff and the pill press or the capping machine or whatever he used—I never paid much attention to that shit and I never saw it. But this was in the first half of 1966. LSD was still legal. We weren’t worried about it.
I’m going to start referring to Owsley as Bear sometimes, because that’s what we started calling him, at his insistence. It was a nickname he brought with him from childhood. Well, anyway, Bear was one of those guys who was sure he had all the answers. He was sure he knew what was best for everybody, all the time. We’re still not so sure of that. We eventually had to part ways because it all just got to be too much.
Bear was as stubborn as red wine on white carpet. It became a burden at shows because, as our soundman, everything had to be perfect before we could start. Not our idea of perfect, but his. And he was constantly experimenting with new ideas for better sound, which were all fine experiments, but all too often they delayed our start time. Significantly.
It was mathematically correct that if you yelled at Bear once, he slowed down twice. If something was wrong with the sound, he’d sit there and really talk to these machines. It didn’t matter to him if he was responsible for the gig starting two hours late. All that mattered was that, when it did start, he got the sound he wanted.
As pigheaded and difficult as he could be, he did have a number of visionary ideas that at least demanded consideration. He had an incredible theory about the weather that involved the polar ice caps melting. At the time, we all went, “That’s nonsense. It’ll never happen.” But it’s happening, all right. In 1966, Bear was talking about stuff that is actually going on today.
Another one of his “crazy” theories was about an incredible storm. The eye of it, he said, will start over Greenland and spread over both northern continents because of global warming. I don’t think it’s entirely correct science, but his speculation about the polar caps is coming true, so there’s that. Bear postulated that eventually there will just be one giant cyclone that will never stop. It will be so large that it will regenerate itself and regenerate itself, like a comic book villain. He laid out his theory to Kesey once, in this long-winded rap, and you can watch some of it on YouTube if you want to look it up and get a feel for him. He was real serious about a lot of stuff. He always had the mad scientist’s mind. He analyzed stuff.
Bear also manufactured some of the first designer drugs. He made at least one batch of STP, which was basically a speed-based psychedelic. I got to try it once—or, rather, he got to try it on me. As an experiment. He gave me a tremendous dose. I was up for seventy-two hours and laughed for most of it. I saw giant bubbles wherever I looked. It was far-out, but it was too harsh a ride for most people. People didn’t like it, so Bear stopped making it. LSD was the hit. That was the one.
And, like everything, we took it as far as we could go. One time, up in the attic, some of the guys went so far as to shoot up with LSD. Inject it. You can’t do it to yourself because you can’t look at your arm with the needle in it; that’s a heavy thing to see while hallucinating on acid. It comes on that fast. You’re high. There’s no come-on. You’re just there. It’s instantaneous.
As for throwing Acid Tests while we were in L.A., the one that stands out the most is the Watts Acid Test. It actually took place a few miles south of Watts, in a warehouse in Compton. It was on February 12, s
o the band had been in L.A. for less than a week and we hadn’t moved into the Pink House quite yet. The police were likely still edgy from the race riots. Hippies, to them, fell in the same category as minorities. They didn’t seem to like us. So, there was a big police presence outside the Watts Acid Test and that didn’t go over well with anyone.
After the Test, we made plans to meet up at some woman’s house. It was already morning by this time—Sunday morning. I had my station wagon with me but was too high to drive. I piled in the back and lay down on top of equipment while Phil drove. We got there before the Pranksters, and when their bus pulled up, Neal Cassady got outside and directed the bus right over a stop sign. He must have drunk as much Kool Aid as I did.
We watched him because just watching him, in his everyday life, was like watching an action film—comic, adventurous, frantic, with many frames per second. Embarrassed by his uncharacteristic mishap, Neal went over and held up the stop sign, trying to get it to stay upright again, as if to erase his mistake. When he walked away, it started to fall. So he immediately put his hand out and stopped it from falling all the way. He started leaning on it to hold it up, and in the meantime these two old ladies, dressed in their Sunday best, came walking down the sidewalk. Neal didn’t want them to see that the stop sign had been run over, so he made it look like he was just leaning on it casually. No problem. Just being casual. As the ladies walked by, they looked at the bus, Furthur, and you could hear them cackling about it. Neal tipped his hat to them, “Morning, ladies,” as they walked to church. As soon as they had their backs to him—plop! Down went the stop sign. It was perfect Buster Keaton timing. Neal was a true showman and we were his audience. He was always good for a laugh. Many of them, in fact.
One final L.A. story and then we can get back to San Francisco—there was another acid test in L.A. that nobody knows about because it wasn’t advertised, the band didn’t play, and there were only a few people involved. One of whom completely failed the test.
At the Pink House one day, out of the clear fucking blue, a friend of mine from high school, Rollie Grogan, shows up. He had just completed basic training for the marines at Camp Pendleton and he was on his break or whatever, right before he was going to be shipped off to Vietnam. He brought a buddy from basic training with him, a fellow marine. They were looking for something to do. A contingent from the Pink House had already made plans to go down to Venice Beach for the day and take acid. Have some fun on the boardwalk, whatever. I invited them to come along but I asked Rollie if he thought his friend could handle it. After all, they were getting ready to go fight a war. That’s heavy stuff, even on a clean head.
But they signed on and sure enough, Rollie’s friend had an intense trip. He went overboard and the next thing I knew, he ran up and down the boardwalk yelling a weird mix of orders and nonsense to people. “Mother! Fire! Brimstone! Hell!” He’d do an about-face and then go up to another civilian and do the same thing, snapping to attention and spewing a whole set of military commands that he had just been brainwashed with during basic training. They must have shown him some really scary movies. Dystopian, apocalyptic shit. I started to get nervous. Paranoid. The police were bound to show up. Rollie and I decided, “Well, fuck. We’re outta here.” We needed a place to hide.
There were really small waves coming in off the Pacific that day, so we lay down in the ocean with our feet out to the water and with our heads on the sand so that nobody could see us when the cops showed up. We were sure they were coming and, sure enough, they did.
We met a friend of Bear’s earlier that day named Jean Millay, who was very hip and just the coolest gal. Her house became one of the focal points for all of us during that trip because she lived right there in Venice Beach and welcomed us over. Rifkin brought Rollie’s friend there to talk the guy down.
Inevitably, the police came knocking on her front door. Keep in mind that this was half a year before acid was made illegal. The cops just thought they were responding to complaints about a drunk. Jean held them off. “Oh, we’ve got him calmed down. He just needs to sleep it off.” Just as she said that, he let out this horrible rave: “The world’s going to end today! Fire and brimstone! Get your guns!” All this insane stuff.
Somehow Jean was able to get the cops to leave and we handled the guy from there. As acid wears off, you come down and can change gears or switch scenes if you need to. I don’t know what happened to Rollie’s friend after that because we all went and did different things. I ended up at some guy’s apartment, playing music for a while—hand drums and stuff—and then went off into the night.
This was pretty much the same time period when Jim Morrison would hang out at Venice Beach, cruising the boardwalk while high on acid or mescaline or whatever. It was the perfect place for the Doors. But it wasn’t our scene. So, three months after arriving in L.A., we loaded our gear and headed back north, San Francisco bound.
* * *
We had sent the girls—Brenda, Florence, and Melissa—up to the Bay Area before our own departure, with the mission of finding a new band house. They got an A+ on that assignment, all right. Bonus points, gold stars, all of it. They found a hidden mansion in Marin County and signed the rental agreement. This would be the first time the Dead landed in Marin. We ended up headquartered in that county for most of our career. Marin borders San Francisco on the north and the place they found, Rancho Olompali, was at the northern tip, halfway between Novato and Petaluma, about half an hour’s drive from the big city. Right off Highway 101. We moved in, beginning on May 1, 1966.
Olompali is now a state park and the place is historic, not just because of the legendary six weeks the Grateful Dead lived there. Although, that too. The property is big enough to hold an entire village. In fact, at one point, it did. Olompali was originally an Indian village—the Coast Miwoks inhabited the site long before we did. Long before any of us were born. Like, before Jesus Christ was born. By the 1200s or 1300s it became the biggest village in the entire region. The Indians controlled the land until sometime well into the twentieth century. None of this was lost on us when we moved into the twenty-six-room mansion. We could feel the presence of Indian spirits. Really. Not all of them were so friendly.
Brenda wasn’t so happy at Olompali; the rest of us had nothing but high times, day and night. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t so happy. She was trying to raise Stacy while the rest of us were drinking Bear’s punch and having wild, naked times around the pool. Really outrageous stuff.
I played the family card, so Brenda, Stacy, and I ended up with the nicest bedroom at Olompali. It was all wood paneling and overlooked the pool, which was out about fifty yards from the house. In between, there was this big grass area and a stone court below that. There was lots of land. I used to go out and mow the lawn. I loved that, for some weird reason. I’d do patterns and designs—crop circles.
The grounds were like a kingdom and the house, a castle. There were secret passages—you could go from my room, through Pigpen’s room, down into the living room and come out below, where there was an Indian relic. There were Indian burial grounds all around Olompali. The mounds are still there to this day; people know better than to mess with them.
The house took the foundation from the original adobe compound, but it was renovated into a big, beautiful, Victorian-style estate. In the hallway, there was a large piece of glass with wood paneling around it that you could look into and see the old adobe bricks—a window into the ancient part of the house. Through the looking glass.
We’d get high on acid and see spirits and things come out of there; they just flooded the whole house with all this weird energy. Jerry, Bear, and Phil all saw horrible stuff coming out from the old bricks. They saw fire and saw that the house was eventually going to burn down, which I think ended up happening. The bricks from the original Indian house may have actually survived.
Olompali was a far-out time. We had all this land, a swimming pool, temperate weather—and no neighbors. We threw
a couple wild get-togethers that people still talk about today, although, for us, it was like one continuous six-week party. Bear was with us so we had acid and a PA system. We played, other people played, we all got naked and went swimming or else tripped out on the Indian vibe.
Of all the places the Grateful Dead stayed as a group—and there are a few notable ones to come—Olompali was my favorite. None of our band houses lasted forever and that’s just the temporal nature of things. The world turns. We spin. We were young adults, which meant that scenes changed with every season; anything that wasn’t fresh was already stale. But Olompali was the one place that I wish we had been able to stay at forever. When I conjure up some of those memories, and I get the images to flash behind my eyes, I begin to understand that those six weeks have become frozen in time. Permanent. But they sure were fleeting at the time.
At one of our parties there, almost all the San Francisco rock bands showed up, just to hang. We were all friends and we were all just starting out. This was right before Janis Joplin joined Big Brother and just months before Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane. But both of those ladies—and both of those bands—hung out with us that day.
The end of the driveway intersected directly with Highway 101 South, and people passing by could see there was something going on because cars were parked alongside the road. Everyone was welcome and there was a certain natural attraction for certain types of people. It was almost like a big, impromptu afternoon Acid Test.
The band the Charlatans were there in force. They were really memorable, visually, because they wore their stage outfits all the time, even when they weren’t playing. So they weren’t really stage outfits, then. That’s just how they dressed. Victorian garb refashioned into a Nevada City gambler vibe. One of the guys in the band, George Hunter, chased Jerry around with a loaded 30/30. It was a misunderstanding over some girl. It’s always about a girl or money, isn’t it? Or drugs. Garcia ran and, eventually, the situation was diffused.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 6