The Ash Grove: Mick Jagger Gets the Blues

In his Ashgrove recording, guitarist Dave Alvin laments the loss of a favorite Los Angeles club, a venue that should be on the National Register of Historic Places. It would have to be in an urn, however—the Ash Grove burned not once, but three times.

Ed Pearl (an uncle of Spirit's Randy California) founded the 250-seat Ash Grove in 1958. "I started with the perfect show," says Pearl. "Brownie McGhee, Guy Carawan… McGhee was the Southern folk-bluesman who, at the time, hadn't quite yet formed his famous alliance with harmonica partner Sonny Terry; Carawan is best known for adapting We Shall Overcome with Pete Seeger.”

Going forward, stage acts would include Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Arlo Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Jerry Garcia, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Son House, Mose Allison, Hoyt Axton, Eric Burdon, the Byrds, Canned Heat, Commander Cody, Albert Collins, Larry Coryell, James Cotton, Jose Feliciano, Firesign Theater, Robben Ford, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Ahmad Jamal, Dr. John, Albert King, Charles Mingus, Pharoah Sanders, Spirit, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, "Big Mama" Thornton, the Chambers Brothers, Flying Burrito Brothers, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal. Many other acts also appeared at the Ash Grove over the years.

On his way out of the Ash Grove one night, Mick Jagger,
a frequent visitor to the club, shook Pearl's hand in gratitude.
He simply wanted to thank Pearl for all the entertainment
– and no doubt musical education – the club had given him.

Robert Hilburn, LA Times music critic, 1973

Everybody hung out at the Ash Grove. It was there that Jim (Roger) McGuinn met David Crosby before forming the Byrds, and a chance encounter of Linda Ronstadt's led to the formation of the Stone Ponys.

Listen to Dave Alvin's tribute, Ashgrove, in its entirety

"I always had two or three cheap recorders going…," [Pearl] explains. "I'd just turn them on because I wanted to listen… Ry, Taj, and the rest of us liked to listen to the old guys." Some 3,000 hours of recorded live performances at the Ash Grove have survived. Many of these recordings may be streamed live or purchased from Wolfgang's Vault.

Currently in production, Ash Grove Burning is a documentary by Sundance award-winning filmmaker Aiyana Elliott. Hers is perhaps not

a recognized name in music circles until one learns she is the daughter of Grammy-Award winner, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a regular Ash Grove performer. Being very patient while it loads, you may view the movie trailer online

at Ash Grove Film.

Andy Summers Reveals Police Memorial

There was much more substance to the Police than Sting, the superstar artist. Without guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland to help arrange the music, Sting's Roxanne may possibly have been recorded by someone else as a bossa nova track and the fledgling group might never have become stadium rockers.

Reading from his critically-acclaimed memoir, One Train Later, here Summers tells how the Police collectively developed their Outlandos d'Amour megahit and, in so doing, also defined the group's distinctive sound:

Andy Summers reads from One Train Later

From One Train Later one learns that Summers is a few years older than those who became his eventual bandmates, and that he was no stranger to London's early rock scene. A fixture on the circuit, he jammed with recent arrival, Jimi Hendrix, and sold Eric Clapton his '59 Gibson Les Paul guitar after EC's matching model was stolen.

Eric records Fresh Cream with my Les Paul [and] the terms Les Paul and Clapton become synonymous...before it was regarded as a weird failure...But possibly because of our little interchange, it becomes a Stradivarius of rock guitars.

Together with keyboard player and vocalist Zoot Money, Summers founded Dantalian's Chariot, soon a local headliner. In '67 they found themselves on London concert bills with the likes of Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. (Also achieving notoriety in Paris, Dantalian's Chariot disbanded after a series of foibles in Northern Scotland that resulted in a hospital stay for Summers.)

Soon Money and Summers found it more lucrative to play sidemen to Eric Burdon in the New Animals. Life was good until Burdon decided to go in a different direction during a U.S. tour. After floundering awhile, Summers joined the Soft Machine but was dismissed just before they were to tour the states as a supporting act to Hendrix's Experience. A serendipitous, career-saving stint with Neil Sedaka (who was big in the U.K.) followed, and when the Rolling Stones went looking for a replacement for departing guitarist Mick Taylor, Summers was on their short list.

Other accounts like these take the reader half-way through the book. The remainder details the history of the Police, culminating in their historic Shea Stadium appearance. Many more fastinating anecdotes await you, including a wild chance encounter with John Belushi while vacationing in Bali!

Captured shortly after the release of his memoir, below is Summers being interviewed on the BBC's Later... With Jools Holland. This segment includes some brief footage of the Police as they approach the pinnacle of their career:

What's not well-known is how accomplished a guitarist Summers is and the numerous styles he can readily play, including jazz and classical music. Since the Police, he has recorded numerous albums as a leader or in collaboration with others, including (old friend) Robert Fripp, Ginger Baker, Brian Auger, Herbie Hancock and Brazilian jazz pianist, arranger, vocalist and songwriter, Elaine Elias. Listen to two tracks from Summers' World Gone Strange:

World Gone Strange

Oudu Kanjaira

Other post-Police recordings by Andy Summers may be heard in their entirety at his MySpace page. A more recent compilation, including a pairing with Deborah Harry, may be sampled here. And guitar players/collectors may be interested in learning more about Fender's Andy Summers Tribute Telecaster®, used by Summers to provide the Police with their unique guitar sound.

On the Road w/ Cassady, Kesey & Merry Pranksters

FOR-ward, into the past...

In writing about the exploits of the Merry Pranksters in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I well remember Tom Wolfe describing the phantasmogorical, psychoacoustic redwood grove behind Ken Kesey's La Honda, CA, hideaway. Could this be the same stand about which Joni Mitchell prophesied, "Took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum?" Of sorts, yes, but more on that in a few moments.First, some digression....

...fly Trans Love Airways to San Francisco
U.S.A., then maybe you'll understand
this song; it will be worth it...

Let's take a little trip (take a little trip, take a little trip)... or maybe it was a BIG sidetrip. It was a trip, of that much I'm certain. Not to be outdone by Mssrs. Kesey and Neal Cassady, and also having been inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, in the summer of '73 Guitar Steve and I outfitted my van with a high-powered stereo and an orange crate full of homemade cassette tapes (the ones that blew your hair back).

Donning white jump suits so as not to be too conspicuous at such establishments as the Iowa 80 Truck Stop en route (w-o-w...LOOK at those colors!), we hoisted the mainsail and steered her west from Detroit via Trans-Love Airways.

Eventually arriving in La Honda (where no left turn is unstoned), I was confused and downright dumbfounded when the MPs (see above) (or below) weren't out in force to greet us. Wouldn't you be? But then, Guitar Steve had failed to open the proper hailing frequencies, so I'm not at all sure what I had expected. Protocol is everything.

What happened here in the 1960’s spread into something like a religion, as Tom Wolfe claimed. In the imagination of those who remember the ’60s, or who revere the ’60s, the house still feels like a redwood ‘Shroud of Turin’ through which something momentous passed leaving a ghostly image.

Terry Adams

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Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney's authorized biography, cites Kesey as a primary influence for the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film.

---

It being about 10 am and both of us being parched, it was only appropriate that we repair to Apple Jack's Inn for a wee dram and a bit 'o nosh. Looking for a sign—any sign—that Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had indeed once inhaled these parts, I finally found it etched into the wood paneling:

If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh_t!

Clearly this was a sign—one as prophetic as any (see Joni Mitchell, above). Knowing good advice when I trip across it, I've long endeavored to follow this bit of wisdom. After all, you're reading this, right?

From a stateside perspective, one can get a fairly good overview of The Psychedelic Era, as it's come to be known, at the '60s site, kindly provided by the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (was Tom Jefferson on the bus?). This is for all of us overly-eager participants of that era, of course, who don't remember it.

If you remember the '60s, you weren't there!

Want more? (Oh, yes, yes, YES!) Well, you're in luck. Although you'll have to jump in the Dymaxion and motor up Route 66 to Cleveland (You ca-a-a-n't get there from here!), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum wants to take you higher...or at least it did. Click here for a (virtual) journey to the center of your mind, where Joni's trees—or Ken's—may be rediscovered.

Postscript: Researching all of this stuff a few moons ago, I acquired a double VHS set featuring original 8 mm footage of Kesey-sanctioned bus trips (the first one with Cassady speed-rapping at the wheel). One evening I happened to watch the credits roll by and, as I did, one name leapt out at me. I say leapt, because there just aren't many leprechauns by the name of Kirk O'Green. As it happens, Skypilot O'Green and I graduated in the same high school class; he remembers me selling him an LP. Anyway, after graduation O'Green sought out the Pranksters at their new Oregon home, toured with them while seeking Merlin in Scotland, and in the end happened to be in charge of the film transfer project. Like I say, folks...it ain't anywhere near six degrees of separation...

Soft Machine Upstage Jimi Hendrix

Room Full of Mirrors (Slight Return)

This is an e-mail I sent to author Charles Cross in 2006 while reading his Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix:

"This is an interesting book. I picked it up to learn more about Jimi's relationship with Miles Davis, of which there are differing accounts of what actually transpired. In Miles' own autobiography, he never mentions the three-way deal with Jimi and Tony Williams, but only tells how they were due to get together on a project immediately after the Isle of Wight. Of course, I believe Miles may have conveniently omitted the business of wanting $50K from Mike Jeffrey before moving ahead with the Miles-Jimi-Tony project mentioned in your book.

"The Jimi at Cobo Arena (Detroit) concert, sponsored by radio station 'Paul Is Dead' WKNR, apparently took place in November of '68. I had seen the Experience at Detroit's Masonic Auditorium, with Soft Machine (also managed by Jeffrey), nine months prior. Jimi was having one of his off nights, was in a foul mood, and there was no encore, as I recall. I was extremely disappointed in his performance that evening.

"On the other hand, Soft Machine absolutely blew me away, between their music and fabulous light show. In letting "Uncle Russ" Gibb know how much I enjoyed that group during one of my regular calls to him while he was on the air, he invited me down to Keener in Dearborn [MI] to pick up an advance copy of their debut album on a 7" tape reel. This I did, with that story being chronicled at the above-referenced URL [and as an earlier blog entry].

"I haven't yet read the final chapters and the story of Monika Danneman. If you subscribe to Eric Burdon's theory laid out in his memoir, she was a psycho who dosed Jimi with extremely powerful German painkillers in an effort to keep him in her nest. Burdon also had issues with Mike Jeffrey regarding his mob ties, both in the U.S. and U.K."

[Interestingly, I recently learned that Andy Summers, guitarist with the Police, had been both a one-time member of Eric Burdon's New Animals and Soft Machine. Alas, he had been sent packing from Soft Machine before their Hendrix support tour got underway, so I've never had the opportunity to hear him play live.]

Flashback: The Summer of Love

Waxing Nostalgic -or- Johnny Comes Lately

I recently journeyed to San Francisco to interview for a position at eWeek, published by Ziff-Davis Media. eWeek...sister publication to PC Magazine and formerly titled PC Week—which used to quote me when I was a PC reseller during those heady days of Windows 3.0. And sister publication to Windows Sources, for which I had a one-time cover story credit and was the Windows tips editor for a few months.

Now to be here..in San Francisco...interviewing at the Ziff-Davis. It definitely felt like I was coming full circle, regardless of the outcome.

Years ago San Francisco was only something I read about in Rolling Stone, or maybe even Life magazine, should one George Harrison decide to drop in on the Summer of Love. And long before I came to appreciate Tony Bennett leaving his heart there (one of three palatable songs on The Blue Room jukebox, the others being The Kingston Trio's Scotch & Soda and Dolly Parton's Jolene), it was Scott McKenzie imploring us to "be sure to wear flowers in your hair" and Eric Burdon alluring us with "old angels young angels feel alright, on a warm San Franciscan night."

Jimi Hendrix, baby believe me, set the world on fire, yeah!

Early for my appointment and it being the noon hour, I took a quick survey of the block and immediately sensed something was missing: honking taxis. That's right—the city had all the vibrancy of the Big Apple, including its own well-appointed Frederick Law Olmsted park, but no demonic honking taxis.

His majesty, Prince Jones, smiled as he moved among the crowd...

The crowd. Not a crowd, per se, but lots of people. Interesting-looking people, all with stories to tell and songs to sing—regardless of their ethnicity, dress, age, gender, or physique. And here's my epiphany: every last one of 'em looked just like R. Crumb's depictions. Or is it "despictions?" Although we may feel a sense of shame about them in flipping the pages of a Zap! Comix, here there is nothing about which to be ashamed—they're just common ordinary people. Right outta dem pages of Zap!, fer cryin' out loud! Why, there's Jumpin' Jimmy Jiz...over there's a sewer snoid... No, man... dey's people, just like you............

Continued...
Giving numerous restaurants the cursory evaluation, I ultimately settled upon The Toaster Oven Sandwich Shop for a bit o' nosh. It looked low-key, no hassle, probably a tasty sandie and—if all goes well—maybe even a table outside. Entering the queue, and feeling somewhat the outsider in my Mr. Bidnessman Suit, I was immediately swept away by the music:

"I can walk down the street and there's no one there,
though the pavement's a one huge crowd...
I can drive down the road; my eyes don't see,
Though my mind wants to cry out loud.
Though my mind wants to cry out loud."

It was I Feel Free from Cream's debut Fresh Cream release. Suddenly it was 19-freakin'-67 all over again ("Sherman, set the Wayback Machine...") and I was at the Grande Ballroom—where my life changed forever—the Grande being but Detroit's knock-off of Bill Graham's original Fillmore Auditorium. And here I was.

Standing in line, I wanted to strip open my Oxford shirt to reveal—what? That "I'm one of you?'" Or maybe slip on my bandana headband and play Frisbee in the park? Certainly a job interview was not where my head was at, though the prospect of Ziff-Davis was enticing...

I'm gonna wave my freak flag high, high!

...and when my mind is wandering there I will go... Next up was the Guess Who's Laughing, followed by a familiar Santana song for which I forgot to write down the title. Maybe it was too familiar, as Santana can sometimes be (Oye como va...mi ritmo...bueno pa gosar...mulata). Dunno what kind of sandie I got; some sorta meat sub with sweet peppers and a street view. I opted out of dining al fresco, though, settling for a window view of the passersby and:

Shoefly, dragonfly, get back to your mother.
Pick up a flat rock, skip it across green river.
We...lllllll!

Then I think there was a forgettable Stevie Wonder song, followed by the inimitable Al Green—Love & Happiness—with its defining opening guitar riff.

Funny, but if you sit in one place long enough, the people walking by start to become repetitive....like you're on a Lionel train set passing the same plastic diner with the same townsfolk stenciled on the windows. But it was way too sunny to be...The Twilight Zone, and the music was way too cool:

That spoon, that spoon, that spoonful.
That spoon, that spoon, that spoonful.

I was straining to identify the next one. What was that? Ah, yes... Woo hoo, witchy woman, she got the moon in her eye, followed immediately by Neil Young's Harvest Moon.

Too many people, too many songs, too little time, and ultimately 1968 had to once again become 2007.