Читать книгу Living the Blues - Adolfo de la - Страница 7

Los Sinners at Raul Astor's T.V. show right

before our first U.S. Adventure.

In the mid '60s, the other guys in Los Sinners and I began to dream the impossible dream: playing in the United States.

After a gig one night, we were sitting around in a cheap bar, the kind where they have sawdust on the floor, talking about it. In fact, it was all we ever talked about.

The bass player from another band, who was with us that evening, looked at us like we were crazy. "You'd never get a job there. Not even in the worst places. The Americans invented rock n' roll, idiotas. It's their music, about their country. There are so many great bands there already. You'd be carrying water to the sea," he sneered.

"Hey, man, there are Chicanos doing it," I pointed out, thinking of Ritchie Valens, Trini Lopez, Cannibal and the Headhunters, and ? and the Mysterians. "If Chicanos--people who looked like us--can be rock stars in America, why not Mexicans?"

"They are Americans, pendejo. They are born there. They grew up listening to that music. They live that life; they go to American high schools. They play football a whole different way. Their girlfriends run around in little short skirts. They have American cars and go to drive-ins and eat hamburgers. Those Chicanos are more American than they are Mexican," he replied.

"The British do it. They didn't grow up on the Mississippi and surf at Malibu and all that," I insisted.

"They have their own sound. And they are like the Americans' smart cousins, part of the family. It's easy for them because the Americans like them. They don't like us. They would just call you a beaner or a greaser. What do you think? You're some kind of gods or something?

That was the big insult.

Dioses. The gods. That's what other rocanroleros in Mexico City called those of us who dreamed of going to the States. They thought of us as arrogant, as if we were planning to climb Mount Olympus to knock back a few drinks with Zeus and get a date with Venus, as if we could ever be in the same class as the divine ones.

But Los Sinners weren't about to abandon that dream. We thought we sounded just as good as some American bands. We looked good. We could sing in English, at least some of us. We even had Jon Novi, an American, as the musical leader of the band. We called him El Cachalote (the whale) because of his size; he was a short-haired, big-nosed guy with glasses, who was well educated and very knowledgeable about music, but dressed like an accountant from South Dakota.

There was also El Monstruo (the monster), the nickname we cruelly hung on lead guitarist Federico Arana because of his acne-pocked face. He was older than the rest of us and a biology teacher by day. He later became a prominent writer on the history of Mexican rock n' roll.

Our lead singer Renato was good-looking and dark-skinned with green eyes and the girls just idolized him. Girls also flocked to Baltasar, the other singer, although he was so short we nicknamed him El Enano (the dwarf).

The other members, Tony de la Barreda and Ramon Rodriguez, were like me, middle-class kids from European-Mexican backgrounds who were heavily into motorcycles. We didn't think Los Sinners would be a good name in America because it sounded so American (which, of course, was the whole point in Mexico). Realizing we couldn't disguise our Mexican origins, we decided we needed a name that said "Mexico" to the gringos. We settled on Los Tequilas.

The Not So Wild Ones; Los Sinners and friends arrive

at Renato's wedding

We worked very hard to prepare for our version of the British rock invasion. We polished the act on several TV programs and even appeared in a couple of Mexican movies. We recorded four tracks of original songs written by Jon and arranged by everybody, paying for and producing the records ourselves in order to have complete control.

Most of the songs were in the British style because most of the guys were hung up on being like the Dave Clark Five, The Beatles or Herman's Hermits. To keep me happy, they included a couple of rhythm and blues songs, because I was always arguing for material that was deeper, more emotional, and more closely tied to the black roots of American rock music. I was determined to play some day in the birthplace of the music I loved.

And, I kept thinking of Sonja, who had gone back to Redlands to finish school. We wrote to each other, sometimes as many as three letters a week. On paper, our romance was flourishing.

By August 1965, the band was in sight of our American goal. Literally in sight. We were playing in a honky-tonk called the Aloha Club in Tijuana, close enough to the United States to see it.

Accustomed to prestige and respect in the small world of Mexico City rock music, we had to fight for a place in the border town where our popularity in the capital was simply dismissed as irrelevant. We had to work harder than we had ever dreamed, and for far tougher audiences than we had ever faced.

TJ was boot camp for Mexican rock musicians. This was where we paid our dues. Whorehouses and honky-tonks ran all night. At the famous Blue Fox, the strippers stripped all the way and just about had sex with drunken sailors right there on the tables. There were great bands and good musicians all over the place and you had to kick ass with audiences full of American sailors and Marines or catch the next bus home. Those tough guys from the San Diego and Long Beach bases were no Mexico City college crowd. They weren't impressed by cheesy covers of American records. They knew the good stuff when they heard it or headed for another bar if they didn't, and the bar owner always noticed if the musicians couldn't hold the crowd.

We got $12 each for playing 12 sets a night from 5 P.M. to 5 A.M., six nights a week, alternating with one other band. We had a couple of stiff drinks as the sun came up, slept 'til 3 in the afternoon in a hotel where mutant cockroaches could eat right through the metal tube to get at the toothpaste, then had a cup of coffee and went back on stage.

Few musicians could survive this grind, but from this crucible came the small group of Mexicans who leaped over the border like me, Santana, and jazz bassist Abraham Laboreal.

The bright spot was that Sonja was close enough to come down on a bus from Redlands on some weekends. Even though she spent many hours with me in bed, she would still go home every Sunday a virgin.

After two months in TJ, we were ready to make our big move. Tony's father was a Mexican Air Force officer who had been part of the Mexican squadron that fought alongside the Americans against the Japanese in World War II. So one day, Tony crossed the border to see one of his father's old American war buddies, a California oilfield worker named Fritz.

Tony came back with a phenomenal gift. Fritz had loaned him a car, a beautiful white Chevy Impala convertible with a red interior.

We piled it up with our instruments and told the American border guards we were going to a picnic in San Diego that afternoon. As we blasted up Interstate 5 to Hollywood, we cranked up the radio and sang Fats Domino's "Ain't That A Shame," leaving San Diego in our rearview mirror.

We went straight to the Sunset Strip, the land of our dreams with the famous clubs: The Trip, The Sea Witch, The Whiskey A Go Go, and Gazzari's. The musical and cultural revolution of the ë60s was shifting into high gear. We could feel it. We could see it in the hippies on the Strip, a revolutionary energy. And we were there, walking on the golden streets of Mount Olympus; we were going to be part of it.

We managed to wangle an appointment at the William Morris Agency, one of the best in show business. Jon Novi did the talking, while the rest of us stood behind him, contributing our few words of English like "hello," "yes" and "good-bye."

We were shown into a plush office and asked to play our records for a handsome, buttoned-down, corporate-looking agent named Skip Taylor.

"You guys are great. You remind me of Ramsey Lewis." Our hearts soared.

"But I don't know where I can put you," he continued. "The places I work with will never hire you, a group of underage foreigners with no working papers. Not a chance."

Our English was good enough to understand "not a chance."

"But there's a guy you ought to see named Howard Wolf."

I thought that was the last I'd see of Skip Taylor, but a few months later he became the manager of a brand new band called Canned Heat. (The same would be true of Howard Wolf years later).

Our lives were destined to be closely linked for decades, although it would be three years after I joined Canned Heat that Skip and I remembered that we actually met before the band existed, when a troupe of naive but ambitious Mexican teenagers popped up in his William Morris office.

Before we had a chance to contact Wolf, we got a break. Jon Novi went to see a friend of his father's and came back to our motel with a big smile on his face. "My father's friend has a job for us. Let's get our stuff in the car. We've got a job tonight in Beverly Hills."

We could hardly believe it. Beverly Hills. Palm trees. Movie stars. We were really impressed and a little insecure.

Don't sweat it," Jon said. "The Americans liked us at the Aloha in TJ; they'll like us in Beverly Hills too."

I suppose it would be a better story if we wound up in the only low-class dive in Beverly Hills, but we didn't. We got out of the Impala at the Daisy, an expensive private club in what looked like some millionaire's mansion. I'm still not sure how it happened, but we landed our first gig in the United States at the pinnacle of chic.

As we came out for our first set, I did a double take of the audience. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were there. Later on, we saw Charlton Heston. It seemed like every woman in the club was gorgeous and dressed in a style, I guess could be called, rich hippie, all silk and swirls and golden chains.

I mumbled to Jon: "Right man. Just like the Aloha. Lots of whores and Marines here tonight." We all laughed. We were wound up tight, but good tight, as we started to play. We figured we looked sharp as hell in our red silk tuxedos.

They loved us. They applauded like crazy. I was pounding away on The Beach Boys' classic "Fun, Fun Fun" and thinking, "We did it. We are fucking here! They were wrong back home. You can join them in the land of the dioses. We are good enough. Hell, they absolutely love us."

All we had to do was keep quiet about our lack of working papers and our age. None of us were 18 years old, far too young to be allowed in the club, much less work there.

The exposure at the Daisy not only brought us fans but invitations to play other clubs, good ones like PJ's, of Trini Lopez fame, and the Lazy X, where Ike and Tina Turner and Bobby Bland were also playing.

When some of the club owners found out about our age and our lack of working papers, they gave us only half what they would have paid an American band, figuring we couldn't complain. They were right. We couldn't. But we didn't care. It was America, it was magic. It was home to every rocker in the world. We were on our way.

It was not unusual for people to come up and tell us: "You guys sound just like the records." We played Beach Boys, Beatles and Righteous Brothers songs. It was pretty amazing--this Mexican band all dressed up in their corny red silk tuxedos, straight out of the border honky-tonks, sounding like American and English stars.

At the Troubador one night, a bald guy in his 60s, chomping a cigar, stopped us as we were getting ready to leave. In a thick Italian accent, he said his name was Lou Ransella. He seemed to know a lot about us.

"I don't care if you guys don't have work permits. And I don't care if you're minors. You're a great group and I'm going to get you jobs. Don't worry about anything. Just don't get in trouble. Don't say anything to anybody. Otherwise they'll put you in a wagon and send you back and you don't want that. You're going to make it."

We returned the borrowed Impala and Lou bought us a used Ford Falcon wagon. He said we could repay him from the work he got us at a redneck country-rock club, The Farmhouse, in Cathedral City, a small desert town near Palm Springs.

Looking at a map, I realized I'd be playing only 40 miles from the University of Redlands, barely a half hour's drive from Sonja. We were living the American dream: applause, a steady job, a girlfriend I loved and a decent car for only $300.

During our gig at The Farmhouse, Tony fell madly in love with the club's "go-go girl" Karen, "The Sensational Queen of Watusi." She was a gorgeous, statuesque blonde who shook her body to our music for hours every night; driving us and the audience into a frenzy.

At the same time, my relationship with Sonja was heating up. I was falling in love with her and she with me. Actual sex wasn't in the picture yet, but we did everything else that young people did in those times.

I was too young and happy to think that this was too good to last. For two months now, we were living an idyllic existence and we even stopped looking over our shoulders for the Border Patrol. In addition to our steady job at The Farmhouse, Lou Ransella lined up gigs for us in Hollywood and even Nevada, which we were really looking forward to.

The bad luck began when our $300 Falcon blew up on our way to see the new hit movie "Help" with The Beatles. We ended up taking a bus to Indio, a few miles south, near the border. As we stepped down from the bus at the Indio station, two Border Patrol officers were checking the papers of passengers who looked Mexican. I have blue eyes and fair skin so I just kept walking and they didn't stop me. Novi, of course, was an American. No problem. But our singer El Chava was from Tijuana and looked it. They immediately grabbed him and started giving him the third degree.

Watching this unfold killed me. God damn it. We had it all and now it's over.

Novi whispered to me: "I'm going to tell them the truth about everything."

"What the hell for?" I whispered back. "Don't tell them anything."

He was really pissing me off. I was against him copping out because I was convinced they would let us go if we simply stuck with our story: we were a bunch of Chicano kids, Beatles fans, who came down from Palm Springs to see "Help."

But Jon, a straight arrow with strict parents, spilled his guts.

It was my first taste of the American Border Patrol and they were total assholes. To them we weren't harmless kid musicians; we were just one more bunch of damn wetbacks.

They gave us 24 hours to get south of the border, which was just enough time to get our instruments and pick up our pay at The Farmhouse. The owner was nice about it, but sorry to see us leave because we had begun attracting regular fans.

Heartbroken, I called Sonja at college. "We got caught, darling, and I have to leave the country right away. I don't know if I can ever come back. They said I might never be allowed to return."

"Fito, wait for me; I'll be right there. Please try to stay until I can get there."

Waiting in the bus depot in Calexico to return to Mexico, we were so depressed we were in a state of shock. Sonja and I just cried in each other's arms.

And here comes the Border Patrol again.

"Take those drums apart."

"Why? We're leaving. We're going home. We're getting out of your country. You got what you wanted. What harm are the drums?"

"There could be drugs in them. So take them apart. Now," he barked.

"Why would I take drugs INTO Mexico?" I asked, "That would be stupid."

"I said take them apart. Now!"

We didn't even use drugs in those days and we looked more like American college kids than dope runners.

It took me close to an hour; my last hour in the States, to disassemble the drums down to the point where he could be sure there wasn't 50 kilos of heroin stashed away somewhere, while everyone else in the station gawked at us. I burned with shame having to do that in front of my straitlaced American girlfriend. Then I had to put the drums back together.

We almost missed the bus. As we ran through the station, I kissed Sonja all the way. My main fear was not being able to come back. I liked the United States, aside from being humiliated by its cops. I wanted to get back to the home of American music. I had met interesting people who were good to us and I had learned a lot about the culture that had fascinated me since those old Benny Goodman movies.

Above all, I wanted to see the woman I loved again. First Kathy now Sonja. I kept meeting these American angels and losing them.

Four months, two weeks, four days and seven hours after our friends had given us a big farewell party in central Mexico City, we tumbled out of a second-class Estrella de Oro bus in a station in the same neighborhood. We were grimy and bleary-eyed after a 52-hour run from the border, toting our guitars and drums and the last few bucks we had saved from the invasion of El Norte, the foray that was going to make us stars.

Trudging through a cold December rain, we headed right for a coffee house where we could find out what was happening and maybe line up some gigs.

We ran into Mauricio, a musician I never liked. "The gods return," he said, laughing disdainfully.

We sat around staring at the coffees and lemonade.

"Yeah," one of the guys said wearily. "Los Dioses."

I saw it differently.

"Fuck that guy. He's wrong. We went to El Norte and we played for them and they liked us. The Americans aren't gods. They're people like us and they accepted us. If it was up to the people who heard us play, we'd still be there. Okay, we got kicked out because we had bad luck, but we didn't fail. We showed we could play their music just as well as they do."

That was true. But America had seen the last of Los Tequilas. And soon Los Tequilas would see the last of me.

Changing our name back to Los Sinners, we immediately got a gig at the Plein Soleil, the biggest, hippest coffee house in the city. But our disagreements over music became terminal. The other guys wanted to be Herman's Hermits, which to me was the worst of the worst. I hated that shit, but I had to play it with these people because I was only the drummer and singers are more important.

They said it was ridiculous for us to play like Negroes, but it was even more ridiculous for them to try to be pretty English boys. It seemed to me we would be closer to the Negro than to the English, because Mexicans had suffered more, been subjugated, and were not as white. I kept pushing the band into rhythm and blues material. Years later in his book, Blue Suede Huaraches, The History of Mexican Rock 'n' Roll, Federico Arana ("El Monstruo") gave me credit for helping change the group into a "heavier" band.

With the members of Los Sinners calling me a deserter and a traitor, I joined Javier Batiz, who was playing the kind of music I liked, also at the Plein Soleil.

One night during a break, this American guy comes up and tells me he's a drummer with a hot new blues band in Los Angeles named Canned Heat. It was the first time I'd heard of them. His name was Frank Cook.

"Hey, you guys are really great. I never expected a Mexican band to play R&B so well. Mind if I sit in?"

Of course I didn't mind. Allowing visitors to sit in with your band is a common gesture of friendship and respect among musicians. I let Frank jam with Javier and the band on a Jimmy Reed song called "Big Boss Man." He was obviously unfamiliar with the tune and didn't do well. Javier--the dean of the Tijuana Graduate School of Rock Music--demanded top quality in his backup and angrily told me to get back on the drums.

Later that night, Frank asked me to help him find some weed, which I did, even though I didn't smoke it then. To be hospitable I showed him and his wife Myrna to a few clubs around town. I told him how much I loved playing in the States and hoped to return. He gave me his number and told me that if I ever got back to Los Angeles, he would help me. I treasured that number. He was my only real professional musician contact in the U.S.

In spite of my untimely deportation from the States and the distance between us, my relationship with Sonja continued to flourish. On December 20, 1966, the straitlaced Sonja and I married in Mexico City, but the omens for family harmony were not good. Sonja's mother hated Catholics, Mexicans and musicians--in that order. After our honeymoon in Acapulco, Sonja returned to the U.S. to finish her degree and wait for me to join her in California.

Around the same time, Tony married Karen, the Sensational Queen of Watusi and also decided to come to the States with me.

While our U.S. residency papers were being processed, we joined a black group from San Francisco playing in Mexico City. They had a singer named Wally Cox, who sang like James Brown and a saxophone player Snookie Flowers, who later became part of Janis Joplin's Kosmic Blues Band. Their drummer was excellent, but he was either drugged out or crazy so they canned him and hired me.

I was back learning rhythm and blues from people who knew the music. We performed in two of Mexico City's best-known nightclubs, Terraza Casino and Los Globos. Also featured was the legendary Cuban singer Celia Cruz with the original Sonora Matancera. I would lose myself watching them perform. I was barely 20 and felt privileged to be alternating with such superb musicians.

In February 1967, 14 months after being thrown out of the States, I set off with Tony by train for the border to join our new wives in America. Our families were in tears, waving good-bye.

"I know you are never coming back," said my dear grandmother Pilar.

She was right. Oh, I went back often enough, but as an outsider returning for visits, and eventually as an American citizen, a foreigner. That was the last time I experienced the all-embracing warmth of my family's unconditional love as an insider. There in that train station, I yanked out my own roots. From then on, I was going to have to deal with life on my own. I looked forward to the adventures. I didn't know then what a high price I'd pay for them.

When the train arrived in the border town of Mexicali, Sonja was on the platform, looking radiant in a white blouse and pink shorts. As we toted our bags out of the station, she led me up to an old blue Plymouth Valiant.

"How do you like our wedding present from my mom?"

"A car? That's great. And I have my drum kit and $500."

"And we have each other. Welcome to America, Fito."

I got a big long kiss. It was a sweet re-entry to the land of the gods, with all gratitude to my American wife.

Because we didn't have any money, Sonja had to continue to live in the dorm at school, so she asked her best friend's lover, a black philosophy teacher, if I could crash at his house until she graduated.

I bought a drum instruction manual, and while Sonja worked in the college cafeteria, I would spend the day practicing my paradilles, flams, rata ma cues and other exercises. I still wasn't what you would call a formally trained drummer. I just played the way I felt, but about as close to the instruction book as I could interpret it.

Every evening Sonja would come to my little room. With a big grin, she would show me the food she brought me from the college cafeteria. We lived mostly on milk, tiny boxes of Cheerios and love.

One weekend we called Frank Cook and arranged to see him at his condo in Marina Del Rey. He started telling me again what a great band he was in, this Canned Heat, the best in the world. I got interested and wanted to see the Topanga Corral where the group was playing, because it had become such a famous spot in the fast-growing hippie scene, which was so closely tied to the music world. It was more than 100 miles of freeway from our place in Redlands to the mouth of Topanga Canyon, and then another 15 minutes on a twisting two-lane road up into the mountains, the lights of the San Fernando Valley twinkling in our rear view mirror, before we found the Corral in a dark hollow.

I was not impressed. It was a filthy, ramshackle wooden barn lost in the sagebrush hills. The floor was covered with sawdust and the place was full of hippies, most of whom looked like clouds of dirty hair held up by skinny, blue denim bellbottoms. I didn't know that this was becoming a center for the whole L.A. hippie music scene, a hangout for the psychedelic elite, the funky frontier. But I had played the Daisy, and PJs, so I damn well knew what American chic looked like. Hell, I had been in the house band at the Farmhouse, which was desert rustic, but it had more class than this.

It looked like Cook's band was going to be as far short of his brags as he was. I didn't expect much from the evening. I was as wrong as I could be. From the first notes of "Got My Mojo Working," I knew that these guys were a whole new world. They had a great bass player--it was Larry Taylor's first night with them--and the combination of musicians that night was dynamic, with a real feel for the blues.

I sat there with Sonja, entranced, envious, trying to keep my hands from drumming obnoxiously on the table. I kept waiting for Frank to ask me to sit in. I had given him a shot with Javier's band in Mexico City. When we do that, the expected thing is to return the courtesy when the other musician shows up in your joint. He knew I knew the songs--this band was playing blues numbers he had heard me play with Javier.

After the set, we joined Frank and his wife at their table. I waited a while, but there was no invitation, just small talk. This was one of the greatest bands I had ever heard and I really wanted to jam with them. Finally, I just came right out and asked. With Sonja prompting me through my still broken English: "Hey, man, you mind if I sit in for a number?"

"No, we don't do that in this country. We couldn't let somebody sit in or jam on a job because it could create problems with the owner," Frank said.

I sat there trying to keep a smile on my face while I felt like I had been slapped. They don't let musicians sit in for a jam in the United States? Hell, this is where that practice was invented. It goes back to the roots of jazz. Did he think we were so stupid in Mexico that we didn't know that? Did he think I had never played in the United States, never talked to American musicians? Was this racism? Or was he just afraid I'd show him up? Maybe take his job? I don't know and I probably never will. But I suppose we're even, Frank and me.

Because later I did take his job.

Not that night, and not because of anything that happened that night. And my knowing Frank had nothing to do with it.

It would have happened even if I hadn't gone to the Corral that evening.

Javier Batiz & "The Finks"

On TV with Javier and his sister "La Baby"

My first R&B gig with American Black Musicians

After the religious ceremony, with my family

By now, Sonja had graduated from college and gotten a job as a teacher, so we rented a house on Woodman Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. Tony was living with The Sensational Queen of Watusi in North Hollywood and we scrounged gigs in beer joints and pool halls with pickup bands of drifter musicians.

These guys were always from someplace else, Denver or Tucson or wherever, new to L.A., hoping to make it in the glamorous city where movie stars live. We were all from out of town. Tony and I just came from farther than most. I knew they weren't as experienced or professional as we were, but I told myself it was a new life, a new country and it made sense to start at the bottom again to pay my dues.

There was always the pull of going home. I could be in TJ in two hours, where life was a daily combat zone, but where I had a good reputation in a tough world. Or I could go back to Mexico City where I could be in movies, appear on TV and make records. A whole generation of Mexicans knew my name; I was a home-town star. But I was determined to make it in the U.S., not just playing for beer and change; I wanted to be a respected musician in the land of rhythm and blues, the cradle of rock n' roll.

It was what my friends and I talked about late into the night over cigarettes and beer, while rain puddled the dark, empty streets outside the all-night cafes in Mexico

City. Except for Tony, the others who started out with me were gone now, lapping up teenage adulation or toughing it out in the border honky-tonks. But I was in love with an American girl. And I was going to show her I could take care of her in her own country.

The civil ceremony with my father, Sonja's Mother, family members

Our wedding day with my dear Grandmother Pilar's picture in the background

One night in a Long Beach beer joint, I got some encouragement. After a drum solo backing a rhythm and blues group called The Rivingtons, the lead guitar player turned to me and asked: "What the hell is a guy like you doing in a place like this?"

I didn't know enough English yet to recognize the question as an American cliché, something you say to the nicest girl in the whorehouse when you want to cheer her up. But I still think that guitarist meant it as a compliment.

Tony and I decided to team up with two guys from Tennessee named Larry Barnes and his buddy Jerry, along with Dewey, a saxophone player from Dallas. The band was called Larry Barnes and the Creations. Somehow the combination of white southerners and Mexicans came out sounding like a black band. We landed a six-night-a-week gig as the house band at the Tom Cat Club, a big, funky joint at 198th and Hawthorne in Torrance, south of L.A., which generally hired black musicians, even though the audience was mostly Anglo and Latino. Each Thursday was "Celebrity Night," which gave us the opportunity to back some of the greatest rhythm and blues artists of the times: The Coasters, Etta James, Jimmy Reed, Troy Walker, the Platters, the Rivingtons and the Shirelles, to name a few.

No more pretty boy bands. No more arguing for less pop and deeper soul. No more singers who want me to be one of Herman's goddamn Hermits. I'm home. I'm in America, playing rhythm and blues with the real article. I'm in the country legally and I'm in the musician's union. By Christmas of 1967, I had a new Pontiac Firebird and I'm in love with my wife. Life is cool. My American dream is coming true.

Like most immigrants' American dreams, they came with a price, a lot of work. I was in three bands at once. Although the Creations were my main gig, I also played in an excellent group called Bluesberry Jam, featuring a black singer named Al Walton and Ted Green, a virtuoso guitar player who went on to become a very famous teacher and jazz guitarist.

One sunny California day, Sonja mentioned that a friend of hers from Phoenix had called. She knew some musicians from Tucson who were new in town and needed a drummer. The group was called The Sot Weed Factor, which struck me as a real hippie kind of name. I was still pretty straight then and didn't have a clue as to what that world was like.

Sonja took me to an address in Hollywood, which turned out to be an old abandoned movie set built for Rudolf Valentino in the 20's. The band had rented it for living quarters. They were young, crazy and the incarnation of the hippie life style. Each band member had an odd-shaped room in a corner of the set. The place was always full of music, beautiful girls and reeked of pot. Between their constant pot smoking and dropping acid regularly, I couldn't understand how they could function, but they did. We recorded a single, "Bald Headed Woman" and "Say It's Not So," for Original Sound, an old Hollywood label. Jeff Addison, the lead guitar player, would eventually sit in with Canned Heat years later. We were regulars at The Sea Witch on Sunset Boulevard. Then we started playing as the house band at The Topanga Corral. So there I was, playing in the same place where Canned Heat was becoming a fixture.

Meanwhile, Canned Heat was having a problem with Cook. The other band members wanted someone with more of a rhythm and blues orientation rather than jazz, which Frank was into.

Alan and Bob started Canned Heat in late 1965. Both loved and collected old jazz and country blues records, two of the few things they had in common.

Alan was other-worldly, a fragile poet, a genius, and a shy nerd tortured by the demands for exhibitionism in the entertainment business. He was lovable to those of us who knew him well but very, very weird to most everyone else. His singing voice was high and delicate. He hungered for some kind of solitary, inner peace.

The Bear could not have been more different. He worked in record stores in the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. and was an encyclopedic resource for anyone interested in old blues music. He was large in body and soul, a mountain of appetites. He was Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, sex and theater. He would eat, smoke, drink or fuck anything he could get his arms around. He yearned to be on stage because that way he could start a party. He sang for money when he could get it but was perfectly willing to perform all night for free if there was anyone else awake to party with him. His singing voice was like gravel going down a steel chute. He hungered to be loved by everyone, or at least everyone who would have a drink or a joint with him.

Henry was another blues record collector and he introduced Bob to Alan, whose scholarly works on the blues in American music history were published in respected professional journals. As one reference book noted: Alan "was so accomplished a musician by age 20, that he was invited to play at Newport."

The friendship and common musical interests of the three became the nucleus of Canned Heat. At first, Alan and Bob had this idea to form a jug band, an eccentrically American combination that dates back to poor farm boys in the 19th century, making music with the odds and ends found around a barn. Some players blow across the tops of bottles or jugs--bigger ones producing deeper notes--while others scratch washboards with their nails or play an acoustic piano or guitar. Some included kazoos and Jew's harps. The jug band came and went quickly and was replaced by the idea of forming a blues band called Canned Heat.

Taken from a 1928 song by Tommy Johnson, "Canned Heat Blues", the name refers to a sort of jellied alcohol like Sterno that burns in its own small can when ignited; it's typically used for cooking on camping trips or to warm buffet dishes.

During Prohibition, when booze was illegal, many poor southern blacks bought the cheap canned fuel, dumped the jelly into a sock and wrung the liquid alcohol from it. This was mixed with Orange Crush or Coca Cola and the result was a strong potion that could put the drinker away for hours. It was also poisonous. No manufacturer ever put cognac in a fuel can. They used cheap industrial alcohol, which is chemically different from drinking alcohol. Many drinkers died or went blind from it.

That was a risk they often knew they were taking, making it the drink of the desperate. If you had to turn to canned heat for relief, you were deep in the blues.

According to Alan, the band held its first rehearsal on November 19, 1965. Two years later, he and Bob were the only original members left. The band went through two other drummers before Cook came in, two other bass players and two other lead guitars before bringing in Vestine, who The Bear knew was playing bar gigs in the San Fernando Valley.

Back in his record clerk days, Bob put together a list of rare records to be auctioned and Henry was one of the buyers. Although Henry's earliest claim to fame was getting bounced from Frank Zappa's famous "Mothers of Invention" for excessive drug use, he actually had acquired music research credentials that put him on common ground with Alan and The Bear. When he was 19, Henry set out on an expedition with acoustic guitar legend/scholar John Fahey and another young blues fanatic named Bill Barth to track down the legendary singer Skip James, who made a couple of records for Paramount in 1931 and later became a minister before disappearing.

They found him in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi and talked the 62-year-old James back into playing and recording the blues after a 30-year absence. In what was later called "one of the greatest triumphs for classical blues that Newport has ever seen," James appeared at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, along with blues greats Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and Robert Pete Williams.

Son House was re-discovered by Phil Spiro and Dick Waterman on a tip from Alan Wilson In 1964. House hadn't touched a guitar in years. Soon afterwards, producer John Hammond, Sr. asked Waterman if House would be willing to record for Columbia. By 1965, the Legend was a frail husk, his hands crippled by tremors, his memory clouded by years of alcoholism.

Alan was already an expert on House's repertoire, and was called in to sit down with House and literally show him how to play his own music, clearing the cobwebs out and paving the way for the "Father Of The Delta Blues" LP soon after. Alan was even featured on "Empire State Express" and "Levee Camp Moan" on guitar and harmonica. It was the student helping the master recall his trade; Alan Wilson taught Son House how to play Son House again.

Even with Henry in the band, Canned Heat was having little success. "In Los Angeles at least, there was no interest in blues, and an actual fear of blues music by club owners," Alan later told an interviewer. "We hardly got any work and folded up; one of the most ignominious economic failures of the year in the music business."

The next year, 1967, the band re-formed and attracted John Hartmann and Skip Taylor as managers. As Alan put it (and only Alan, of all the musicians in the world, would phrase it): "They knew enough about music to realize we were playing in an exceedingly specialized area, but they felt the band's personality--The Bear's shtick and all that stuff--would attract enough interest among the record buying public to overcome the relative unpopularity of the blues."

Shortly after Hartmann and Taylor signed on in February, Larry Taylor joined to play bass. When other kids his age were just starting to listen to rock records in the 1950s, Taylor was making them. A Brooklyn-born kid, he was on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis at 16. He performed with Teddy Randazzo, known for writing such best-selling songs as "Going Out of My Head" and "Hurt So Bad." He was a top session player and even made several hits with The Monkees.

By now, the band was getting known, for reasons good and bad. In the spring of 1967, it came out with its first Liberty album called "Canned Heat," which had an orange cover showing the band around a table littered with Sterno cans. It didn't contain any original material, relying on blues classics like Muddy Waters "Rollin' and Tumblin'," Willie Dixon's "Evil Is Going On," Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" and Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me." It wasn't a big seller but received rave reviews from authoritative critics like Pete Welding in Down Beat magazine.

In June, the band appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, establishing the group as L.A.'s answer to Paul Butterfield's Blues Band in Chicago and England's Bluesbreakers, also pioneer white interpreters of black blues. The festival was small by today's standards, only about 35,000 spectators, but it established a new wave of bands as the standard bearers for a cultural revolution. Up there on the same stage with Alan and The Bear were Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Animals and Jefferson Airplane.

"Down Beat" featured Canned Heat on the cover of its festival issue and the band took off. They appeared at the Avalon Ballroom, where owner Chet Helms had a helper, a quiet young Jewish guy who collected tickets and swept the floor. His name was Bill Graham and he went on to found a music empire based on the now-legendary Fillmore Ballrooms in San Francisco and New York, command posts of the '60s rock movement.

Helms booked Canned Heat into The Family Dog, his new place in Denver, setting the stage for a drama that gave the band one of its best known songs, but also saddling it with a financial burden that would have repercussions for decades afterward.

The Denver police hated the idea of a hippie haven in their city and had done all they could to stop the club from opening. Nothing worked. Helms was way too smooth for them and met all legal requirements. When the club finally opened, Helms and his people were subjected to a barrage of harassment and illegal searches. This prompted them to get a restraining order against John Grey, the rabidly anti-drug detective also known as the "Wyatt Earp of the West" for his promise: "I'm going to rid Denver of all long haired people."

It was Canned Heat's bad luck to show up just as the police figured they'd get one of the bands and the bad press and legal troubles would slop over on Helms. On Saturday night October 21, 1967, the police dispatched a stool-pigeon with some weed to Canned Heat's hotel to socialize a little and get the band high. The Bear swore that the band members (knowing the city's reputation) actually didn't have drugs with them that night.

It turned out the stool-pigeon was an old friend of Bob's--Bear grew up in Denver--so he trusted the guy, until he suddenly slid out the door and the cops came barging in to "discover" a lid of grass under the cushion of the chair where the "friend" had been sitting. They arrested everybody on charges of marijuana possession--still a big offense in those days.

Skip, the one guy who did have drugs, wasn't there. He was in his room with a girl, but the cops went to arrest him anyway.

"You with that band?" asked the cop who knocked on the door.

"Uh, yeah," said Skip, who was wrapped in a blanket from the bed. His girl was in a sheet.

Sitting on his nightstand, wrapped in tin foil, was a flat chunk of rich, dark brown Afghani hashish; it looked like a Hershey bar.

"You're going to have to come with us and the rest of the band." The cop said. As they left, the cop said to the girl: "Sorry to bother you with this, ma'am, but you'll have to finish that chocolate bar all alone."

The only real dope in the place--except him--and he missed it.

The band was hauled off to jail after the search. A judge was not available to set bail until Monday, so the boys spent the weekend in the can. Larry--who never got high--was thrown in a tank with 50 drunks and no sleeping facilities. The bust was immortalized in "My Crime," which tells the story best.

I went to Denver late last fall

I went to do my job; I didn't break any law

We worked a hippie place

Like many in our land

They couldn't bust the place, and so they got the band

'Cause the police in Denver

No they don't want long hairs hanging around

And that's the reason why

They want to tear Canned Heat's reputation down.

To a reporter at the time, The Bear said: "To sing the blues, you have to be an outlaw. Blacks are born outlaws, but we white people have to work for that distinction."

Being led away in handcuffs kicked off the band's image as the bad boys of rock; heavy-duty incorrigibles, which eventually led to our becoming a favorite band of the Hells Angels and other outlaw biker clubs.

At the moment, the band was on the downside of the outlaw life. Skip was desperate. He had a band that was far from a sure thing but was suddenly hot. Unless they could follow up, they might get cold just as quickly. Unfortunately, they couldn't play anywhere if they were looking at possible jail time.

In a gin rummy game in Los Angeles with Al Bennett, President of Liberty Records, Skip mentioned that he needed $10,000 right away for legal fees to fight the bust. Bennett, a shrewd businessman, offered him that much for the publishing rights to the band's works and Skip grabbed at it. He had no choice.

Skip hired a brilliant, connected Denver attorney who sprung the band, but at the price of publishing rights that would be worth millions in the years to come. It was the start of a chain of events that created a band that rode a powerful wave of popularity in the rock explosion of the late '60s, but was always just one gig away from being broke. It was only six months later that the "Boogie with Canned Heat" album hit the stores with "On The Road Again," which became a worldwide hit.

To this day, the band has not received a penny of the publishing rights for that song, a song that shows up regularly in TV commercials as a way of instantly creating the aura of the vanished '60s.

This was the band I was so thrilled to get a chance to join. I just didn't know, and wouldn't learn for years, that it was already a band that was crippled financially by the same offstage life that fed its music and its fame.

Shortly after being released on bail pending trial, Skip and John came to the Tomcat Club to hear me play. They'd heard about me from good reviews I got playing with Bluesberry Jam in a concert at UCLA, as well as the guys in Sot Weed Factor, who visited their office looking for a manager.

Boy, had Skip changed. The clean-cut, preppy agent in the corporate suit I met three years ago now had long hair. He was wearing a funky hippie outfit, doing drugs and managing Canned Heat. He'd come a long way from William Morris. On my break, they asked me to sit at their table.

"You do know there's something else happening besides this kind of place?" asked Skip, gesturing at the Tomcat Club. "There's a movement out there. A true musical revolution. Guys like Jimi Hendrix. You want to be part of that don't you? Canned Heat's looking for a new drummer. How would you like to play with Sot Weed Factor or Bluesberry Jam and open for Canned Heat in its next LA appearance? Then Bob, Alan and the guys can hear you play."

They arranged for Bluesberry Jam to open for Canned Heat at a little place on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley called the Magic Mushroom. We were a little uptight that night because Canned Heat was already the Los Angeles blues band and people were talking about them with respect.

It was a magical evening. There were drugged-out hippies in paisley and stripes, silk and bellbottoms, chains and headbands, flower wreaths in their hair, dancing and blowing this shiny dust in the air. There was a gang of beautiful women, called Vito's Dancers, who showed up as a group at parties and rock shows, 10 to 20 of them, wildly dressed, with Vito leading the pack. Any place they went became a party.

Bluesberry Jam opened and we played a hot set. Can't say as much for Canned Heat, which had just gotten out of that Denver jail. Throughout the years, the band has played brilliantly most of the time, with occasional off nights, when the guys were just terrible. Not bad, but terrible. Really sucked. Always black or white, never grey, that was the band's character.

Maybe it was destiny that this was one of the rotten nights. And maybe it had something to do with the pressure they were putting on Frank about his drumming. And he didn't even know that I was there auditioning for his job.

When it was Canned Heat's turn, I noticed Frank tried to play the way I played, a strong aggressive rhythm instead of his usual laid-back jazz style. That's the worst thing a musician can do, try to make an instant style change. You might be able to work at it and do it a year later, but nobody can spin on a dime and pick up a new style in a night.

When Sonja and I got home that night, we were both really excited. Around 3:30 in the morning the phone rang. It was either Skip or John, I don't remember which one, but I recall the words:

"The guys really enjoyed your playing. They'd like you to rehearse with them tomorrow, so they can make the final decision on your replacing Frank. Okay with you?"

I didn't sleep that night. I lay in bed, holding Sonja, unable to believe my luck. I was getting a shot with the best band in LA, a band with a record contract.

My friends in Mexico sarcastically told me I was trying to be a "god," but I never expected it. I thought I'd come to the States and play funky, black music with people who knew the music well, but I didn't let myself dream of becoming any sort of star. That was too unrealistic. Suddenly, it wasn't so farfetched.

Around three the next afternoon, I showed up at John Hartmann's house in Canoga Park, a ranch with horses stabled outside. (Skip and John were already starting to live the good life.) Under my arm, I'd tucked LP's by Junior Wells ad Buddy Guy, two blues masters from Chicago. I always brought records to rehearsals for the other guys to hear, to adapt arrangements from, things like that. I didn't realize the impact this simple act would have. I didn't know that Alan, The Bear, and Henry were such avid musicologists and record collectors. I didn't know they were so deep in the same music I had been possessed by since I was a kid drumming on cookie tins In a Mexico City Garage.

The Bear told me, a long time later, that as I was setting up my drums, he was thinking: "I've already heard you, I know how you play. But those records under you’re arm, that’s your ticket into this band. A drummer who doesn’t come with a jazz attitude or with any other kind of baggage but the blues. That's our drummer, the guy who's going to get us where we want to go."

We played blues standards and I had no trouble fitting in. When we finished, I remember Henry looking at the other guys. He didn't want to make up his mind on the spot. Henry was still a good 'ol boy, a southern racist back then and he thought only a southern white guy could have the right feeling. It took him a decade to lose that crap. But in the minds of Alan and The Bear and Larry, I was in. Skip and John took me by the arm and led me outside. We leaned against a rail by the horse corral.

"The guys want you. What do you think about joining Canned Heat?" Without hesitation, limited English and all, I blurted out what I really felt, a line that became attached to me - my mantra, my battle cry - when the others heard it:

"I was BORN to play with Canned Heat."

A salute from the Bear In front of the first Canned Heat Van

At the Tomcat club with my brand new 1967 Pontiac Firebird 400 4-Speed.

Buddy Miles brings Larry his birthday cake at the Kaleidoscope, 1968. John Hartmann looking on.