Читать книгу Rocket Norton Lost In Space - Rocket Norton - Страница 8

We were spending a lot of time at The Retinal Circus. We tried to rehearse there one Sunday afternoon but we had dropped acid and we weren't getting anything done. Every time we tried to play something, we would get stuck playing one note for an indeterminable length of time. It sounded amazing to just bash the snare drum as hard as I could and then sit there and listen as the sound reverberated around the room, each wave getting slightly quieter than the one before but never seeming to die out completely.

Geoff and Jocelyn were all over each other. There was more to it than mere mortal love; they were already connected in a deeper bond. After a long hushed discussion together they disappeared into the band room. When he emerged, Geoff was so stoned he was unable to walk on his own.

It wasn’t much of a rehearsal but I was having a lot of fun toying with the deranged sound. I tried not to notice that Geoff was not having fun. He had collapsed into Jocelyn’s lap on a bench at the far end of the auditorium. His limbs hung limp, his face was pale and his eyelids fluttered to stay open. Jocelyn held him in her arms like a child, hunched over him, speaking softly to him. The heroin that was coursing through his veins rushed to the centre of his head, shut him down and locked him up. He was as close to death as the living can be – and he liked it.

Lindsay, Steve, John, Jim and I were concerned. We convened at the side of the stage. I was having a happy trip; the colours were warm and bright. The scene at the other end of the room was cold and dark. I wanted to turn away and run but, at the same time, I felt I should help Geoff in some way.

“What's wrong with him?” John asked.

“It's smack,” Jim answered in a disgusted voice.

“Heroin?” said Steve. “Man, that's a bad trip.”

I felt like I had been punched in the solar plexus.

Gary Wanstall thought, 'wasn't heroin the very worst thing there was in the whole world?' The Rock wasn't sure.

I stole a glance at Geoff to assure myself that he was alright. He wasn't. He looked like a corpse. I started to panic but he rolled over and sat up. I felt a rush of relief as Jocelyn helped him to his feet. Geoff was alive but our rehearsal was over.

It was night and raining when we left. Jocelyn and her brother Jeff helped Geoff as he struggled to make his way up Davie Street into the darkness like the splendid Achilles carried on his shield by Ajax and Ulysses.

There was no question as to our commitment to The Seeds of Time, to each other. We were cohering as a group on levels that none of us could have imagined. We were writing songs together; the latest was One Hand Clapping (That’s The Sound Of), and all of us were investigating our spiritual selves.

I hadn’t given faith much thought since I was little and my Grandma, who was the sweetest person I have ever known, would play hymns on the old stand-up grand piano in the parlour of her house at Second and Trafalgar in Kitsilano. Even though I had attended Sunday school at the Anglican Church, hearing her sing those songs so softly and kindly inspired my first thoughts of God and spirituality. My Grandma was devoutly religious in a quiet way and had a loving belief in the Lord Jesus and His Dad. I had never really considered these things again, until now.

Jim introduced us to a friend of his named, Karl, who invited us to visit him and his wife, Rose, at their tiny basement apartment on Robson Street in the West End. Their place consisted of one room with a sofa, table and some chairs and a cooking area with a stove, fridge and sink in one corner. There was an alcove containing a mattress separated from the living area by a partition of colourful beads. There was also a bathroom but no bath. It was all illuminated by a bare white light-bulb hanging from the ceiling and several coloured lamps scattered around on the floor. Jim and the band and others, including as many girls as we could find, would cram in there and get off, smoking pot or hash or taking more LSD.

Stephen, one of the Addled Chromish Light Show artists; a tall, thin Ichabod Crane type of long-haired freak who was peaceful except that he considered himself a militant pseudo-intellectual, looked at me with very bruised stoned-out eyes and said, “no man is a camel.” Then he lit up a joint and fell back on some pillows.

Our host, Karl, was a slight wiry man in his early twenties with thin blond hair and a scraggly mustache and goatee. He looked like Karl Marx. Rose was native Canadian or perhaps of some mixed heritage – I've never understood that ignorant term, “half breed”; it seems to me, if you're blessed with the heredity of more than one pedigree you are really a “double-breed”. She was short, round and affable. She laughed at anything anybody said to her; it was almost as if she didn’t understand and had adopted this practice as a defense. It worked.

In our usual state of hallucinogenic euphoria we discussed such things as 'the white light', 'one' and 'God'. To be accurate, everyone else discussed these things while I listened. Like Rose, I had become very good at laughing, crying, pondering and nodding at the appropriate time. I did not actually speak or join in any of these discussions. It was because the people around me were, in my eyes, extraordinary. Jim was a philosopher/guru, Geoff a charismatic God-warrior, Steve so ultra-cool and astutely witty, Lindsay the intellectual genius and John the gifted musician. I felt like a hanger-on. I had nothing intelligent to say, nothing to contribute. Clearly, my best option was to shut-the-fuck-up.

Stephen, the militant pseudo-intellectual, leaned close to me so that his nose was only about three inches from mine. His pupils contracted to mere pinpricks, he proclaimed, “two seagulls an airport doth not make,” and passed out.

The previous year, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had blown our collective minds. Now we expanded our consciousness with Magical Mystery Tour and The Rolling Stones’ December ‘67 release of Their Satanic Majesties Request. We, er, they could spend the entire night dissecting John Lennon’s invitation to take us down to Strawberry Fields and how nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. Jim would speculate on how everything is nothing and therefore nothing is real but that really means everything ... and so on.

Geoff, Steve and Lindsay would exchange knowing glances when Jagger sung of going from a hundred light years from home to two thousand light years from home. They seemed to know what it meant and John could play all the parts. These guys even found some hidden meaning in the Dave Clark Five’s pop hit Over And Over. When vocalist Mike Smithsang, “Well, I went to a dance just the other night, Everybody there was dead”, they all smiled because they thought he said 'Everybody there was there' and that the ‘there’ part that Mike was referring to was like 'the white light' or 'one' or 'God' or something like that.

“We're all 'there' ya know man,” Jim began one of his sermons, “its like far out, man – ya know, it's cool.”

Suddenly, he lunged at me with both fists but stopped short of hitting me in the face and spread both hands open so that all of his fingers were stretched wide in front of my acid-scarred eyes, “Free Flash!” He laughed. He was right, it was a flash.

Then he fell back and started to roll a joint. “People can cross-over ya know, they can be 'there' and they can be unreal and real all at the same time.”

Steve added, “I read that some cat, he like saw the white light, he was so high he actually saw the fuckin' light, man. It was really far out, man.”

“You could do that, you could touch the light. John could, Rocky could, Lyn could ...” He watched Lindsay suck a whole joint into his lungs. “... Lindsay definitely could ... We've got the power, we could make it happen.”

“Let's fuckin' do it, man ... I wanna see this white light,” said Geoff.

Jim thought for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Fuck around - I just blew my fuckin' mind.” He composed himself and said, “Tell ya what, when one of us offs his self, we'll all meet him at the Afterthought on July 1^st.”

“Far fuckin' out!” Geoff exclaimed.

“Man, I'm there,” Steve whispered in awe

“That's what I said,” Jim said.

Lindsay joined in, “let's make it a pact.”

“It's a pact then!” Jim announced.

“Groovy,” Steve declared.

There was no blood exchanged but we did all clasp hands and proclaim that when any one of us died, no matter what year, the others would meet him at 8PM on July 1^st at the Kits Theatre, site of The Afterthought.

I went with Steve to see The Yardbirds at the PNE Gardens. We dropped acid on the way out there. This was to be the end of The Yardbirds. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith had all quit and The Yardbirds was now a four-piece with Jimmy Page stealing the show. In my heightened sensory state they sounded incredible. Page did his whole violin-bow act, sawing on his Fender Telecaster and astounding everybody with his wizardry. Their performance of Over Under Sideways Down humbled me into a worshiping disciple.

I was so blown away that I returned the next night to see them again. This time I came with John and we drank some beer which we sneaked in the back door of the Gardens. Regrettably, on beer, they sucked. It seemed that the LSD had gone a long way to enhance the actual quality of The Yardbirds’ performance the night before.

Sadly, they broke up after this tour, but I will always remember them as pioneers who led the world into a whole new wave of rock. In October, Jimmy Page would come out with his new band, Led Zeppelin.

Heroin had become the dominant topic of discussion in the band. Geoff was using regularly. Steve and Lindsay were talking openly about joining him. They wanted to go there with him, experience what he was experiencing. Instinctively, I knew this was dangerous. Gary Wanstall was afraid but The Rock realized that this was part of the danger that I had come searching for. I agreed to tag along.

The three of us met Geoff, Jocelyn and her brother, Jeff, at his little shack on Welch Street in North Vancouver one rainy night. Jeff's family was wealthy but he and Jocelyn chose to go their own way and lived in near squalor in this hovel in the bushes near an industrial area. John did not want anything to do with heroin and stayed home. Jim was critical. He tried in vain to dissuade us from this.

In total, there were sixteen first-timers there. I watched as a skinny man with long greasy hair hunched over a filthy little wooden table in the kitchen and proceed to carefully dump some white powder into a spoon. He applied the flame of a Zippo lighter to the spoon and cooked it into a liquid. He had a small syringe. With its short needle, plastic tube and flimsy plunger it appeared to be homemade. He sucked a small quantity up into the tube and tapped it. He handed a rubber surgical hose to Steve, who was sitting in a chair across the table, and showed him how to tie it tight around his bicep and how to flex his arm a certain way to make the vein pop up. He put his thumb on the bulging vein and stuck the needle in. He pulled the plunger up a little and sucked a small rivulet of blood into the tube to guard against an air bubble – which, we were told, could kill you. Holding the syringe between his thumb and middle finger, he pushed the plunger down firmly and expertly with his index finger. Then he barked at Steve to loosen the rubber hose and he leaned back to witness the results of his good work.

Almost instantly, Steve's shoulders sagged, his head nodded forward, his face drooped and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. He sat there for a long time before he forced himself to rise and give his seat to Lindsay.

The man repeated the process with Lindsay then with me; he used the same needle for everybody. My heart was pounding as he prepared the syringe and as I pulled the rubber hose tight around my arm trying hard to do it right, to make a good vein. I flinched as he stuck the needle in but that was just a reflex, it didn’t hurt. He shouted at me to release the rubber hose and he sat back, folded his arms and looked right through me.

A rush of absolute bliss engulfed me. It came on so fast and so strong that it nearly knocked me out. I fought to stay conscious in the chair. I was overwhelmed by waves of utter contentment. I loved it here in this chair, in this shack, with these good people. I didn’t want to move, I didn’t need to move. Life was as good as it gets right here, right now, in this position. Don’t move. Why move? It’s perfect.

“Next,” said Syringe Man.

Slowly, I turned my head and was aware of someone hovering over me. He was impatient, anxious for his turn, and pulled the chair out from under me. I had to give up my place here in this wonderful chair by this lovely table. Okay. I got up. Oh why? I floated into the living room area. Steve and Lindsay were crumpled on the floor in the corner on pillows. They were head to head murmuring quietly to each other. I flopped down across from them and did not move for the rest of the night.

I watched a tender scene as Geoff fixed Jocelyn in the back of her hand. He held her palm gently while searching for just the right vein and then kindly guided the needle in as she gazed lovingly into his face. Hardly Romeo & Juliet’s balcony scene but it had its own romance just the same.

Geoff and Jocelyn and some of the others were already veterans at this but the rest of us sixteen rookies got off on one single cap. I had never felt so pleasantly euphoric in my life but there was a little voice inside my head saying, 'Don’t you ever do this shit again.' I should have listened to that little voice but I turned it off instead. I wouldn't hear from Gary Wanstall again for twenty years.

We opened for a Toronto band called, 3’s A Crowd featuring Donna Warner and Brent Titcomb, at the Retinal Circus on March 1st. They were very slick and featured complex six-part vocal harmonies. Our set was, as usual, a raw and dirty mixture of rock, blues and R&B. With Steve and I as a rhythm section and Geoff’s limited vocal talent we relied on John’s musicianship and Lindsay’s virtuosity. We may not have been a proficient band but we could cook a groove. When we locked into a shuffle we rocked! And, on the right feel, we would create a grungy syncopation that some people likened to the sound of a washing machine (I believe that was a compliment). Additionally, Geoff made up for his lack of voice with emotion and his gift for improvisation.

And Steve and Geoff were starting to discover their flair for comedy. Their ad-libbed ribald humour could materialize at any time and, once they got going, could gross-out a tug boat captain.

The following weekend, The Circus featured a great bill with two incredible Vancouver bands, Papa Bear’s Medicine Show (with Robbie King on organ and Kat Hendrikse on drums) and My Indole Ring (featuring guitarist/vocalist John King and organist John Cluff) as well as a new band called The Yellow Brick Road.

Papa Bear’s applied exceptional musicianship to their blend of jazz and folk while The Ring, who formed from a band called Jabberwock, excelled at creating exquisitely long blues based psychedelic jams.

My dad lent me the Impala and John and I went to see them. While we were there Stephen of the Addled Chromish Light Show laid some acid on us which we quickly gobbled up. Then, I remembered that I had an early curfew on the car. Just as the drugs were kicking in we had to leave. I could feel a really wild ride coming on so I hurried up the street to where the Chevy was parked. I pulled out into the traffic flow and passed slowly in front of The Circus. We noticed Anne, Bob’s former skirt, and a girlfriend standing in front being hassled by a car full of guys. John called out to them. Anne looked relieved to see us and the two girls rushed over.

“Wanna ride? John asked.

“Oh yeah, thanks,” Anne gushed as the girls jumped in the back. “I wasn’t going to get in a car with those guys - I think they're drunk!”

I turned onto Burrard Street avoiding the purple and pink polka-dot elephants that were stampeding in the street and aimed the pointy end of the car towards the Burrard Bridge. This was not easy as the bridge was swinging back and forth.

“It’s pretty dangerous to drive while drunk,” I agreed.

When we arrived unscathed at my parent’s house it took me a long time to inch the car into the driveway because it kept jumping out of the way. It didn't help that the bushes along one side were attacking the car. Finally, I got it in and we escaped out the passenger side before the savage shrubs engulfed us.

The car had a curfew but I didn’t so the four of us started to walk up Fiftieth Avenue toward Anne’s place. I turned to check on the car. It was leaping about, doing somersaults in the driveway while the trees did the hula. “Yep,” I said to my friends, “you should never accept a ride from someone who’s been drinking.”

Marc Derek opened a coffee house on Fourth called The Village Bistro. It was across the street from The Afterthought and right next to the Psychedelic Shop. The Bistro served coffee and soft drinks; you had to bring your own high. Marc featured folk singers and bands.

One night The Seeds of Time played a set on the same bill as a singer named Trisha. Trisha had a strong voice. She sang songs by Joan Baez, Janice Joplin and a powerful a cappella version of Big Mama Thorton‘s bluesy In My Time Of Dyin‘.She was seventeen but mature beyond her years. Her parents were musicians and her older brother a guitarist. She was slim with long sandy-blonde hair that hung straight down to her ass. She was pretty and wore little horn-rimmed granny glasses that looked very cute on her.

I was instantly attracted to her. She gave me her number and I went to see her at her parent’s house on Capilano Road up Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver. Her folks worked day jobs, came home and went to sleep, then got up and played all night at the prestigious Press Club on Beatty Street. Her dad was a talented jazz guitarist and her mom a singer. I hardly ever saw them. When I did run into them, her dad seemed to like me, probably because I was a musician but her mother hated me, probably because I was a musician.

Trisha and I really hit it off. Before I knew it we were fooling around on the couch in her den several nights a week; whenever I could borrow my dad’s 1967 Toyota station wagon. (The ‘64 Impala had been stolen one night from where it was parked right under my parent’s bedroom window. It was never found.) Trisha came on with some experience. Although not as explicit as my make-out sessions with Liviana, I sensed that I was finally close to ascending the top of Mt. Eros. I was optimistic that she may finally be the one.

Things were not going well at school. The Seeds of Time were gigging constantly and I was smoking a lot of dope. Someone would bring a chunk of hash to practice and Geoff would break off a piece, stick it on a pin and light it up. We‘d take turns sucking up the smoke through the bottom half of a pen. John didn’t like it. He’d say, “I ain’t gonna smoke that mouse turd!”

I was also enjoying frequent acid trips including one day when I dropped at lunch and came to my Biology class peaking. My very straight lab partner picked that day to start lecturing me on what happens to people when they take LSD.

“They go into a coma and see visions,” she explained to me knowingly.

I tried to concentrate on her face but her mouth was gulping like a fish out of water and her eyes were shooting starbursts at me.

“Yes, and sometimes they freak-out and jump off bridges and stuff like that,” she continued.

“Oh I don’t think that happens very often,” I assured her.

“Oh, how would you know?” she scolded me.

“Well, because I’m on acid right now,” I confessed.

Her whole head began pulsating and her eyes bugged out like a demented frog. Suddenly I was aware that something was wrong. What was that noise? It was nothing. It was silence. I looked up at my teacher. She was standing over me with her hands on her hips. She said something that sounded like a foghorn and stood there waiting for a reply. Every student in the room was staring at me. My lab partner had slowly backed away from me as if I was a ticking time-bomb. I tried picking up my books but they kept falling through my fingers like soup. I gave up. My only hope was a desperate dash for the door. It looked miles away and my legs did not seem to be making any progress. I tried to stay calm and reassured myself thinking 'keep moving, whatever you do, you must escape – or die!' After eons I finally reached the door and fumbled to grasp at the doorknob as it darted from one side to the other like some character out of Alice in Wonderland. When I caught hold of it, it felt like mush and would not turn. I grabbed at it with all of my hands, I suddenly had quite a few, and thankfully it gave way and I broke through to freedom.

That was my last day of school. The next day I announced to my poor suffering parents that I was quitting school. They were devastated and to appease them I agreed to finish school by correspondence.

It was strange to be so abruptly thrust into a new life of leisure. The first few days I felt guilty. My friends were at school while I was home watching game shows and reruns of I Love Lucy on TV.

I would get over that feeling very soon.

The Seeds of Time travelled to Victoria for a weekend gig at a club there called 9 In The 5th Place managed by Max Anderson who also ran a light show called The Ecto-Plasmic Assault Light Show. This was an exciting road trip for us. Victoria is the capital city of the Province of British Columbia and is located on Vancouver Island. We had to ride a big ferry boat to get there and then we were put up in a motel near the club. It was only two rooms between the six of us but that was luxurious to us. It was better than sleeping under the van. Steve was sick with Mononucleosis. He was wasted but insisted on making the trip.

On the second night, Steve could not continue so he lay down at the back of the stage. John turned up the bass control on his Eco-Sonic organ and played the bass parts with his left hand. It was like an explosion! Suddenly, John was free to take the music anywhere by playing certain bass notes against the chords; changing the triads and creating exotic new chords and discords and nuances and whatever he wanted.

Lindsay took flight. Soaring solos flowed out of his fingers. He was a crazed genius weaving magic from the strings of his guitar. I just bashed away underneath it all, making as much noise as I could. We were jamming in ways that we had not dreamed of before. Geoff even jumped in with improvised lyrics and melodies. It was like playing spontaneously constructed songs with verses, choruses, bridges, middle-eights. We were blown away.

John was the only one of us with any formal music training and that was limited. None of us had studied composition or arranging. We didn’t really understand how important the bass was until that moment. After that, John and Lindsay worked with Steve on the bass lines. This may have been elementary to other more accomplished musicians but it was new to us and we were flying high. Of course, I likened it to sex ... When it first happens to you, you can’t believe the pure ecstasy but to others who are already doing it, it’s old hat and drops to a level of basic rapture ... As I was about to find out.

Back in Vancouver I returned to my lethargic life as a high school dropout. One morning, after my mom and dad had left for work, Trisha came over to visit. There was only one purpose in mind ... this was the day!

With Paul Mauriet’s tender harpsichord instrumental, Love Is Blue, wafting from the radio, Trisha and I began our first pre-mating ritual. Kissing, petting then awkwardly disrobing. She was naked on my bed, the site of so many nocturnal wet dreams, eager to fulfill my carnal desires. I wish there had been more romance but, even though we as a species are driven by lust to mate, copulate and procreate, each of us must find the meaning of romance on our own; some do - some do not. I would, but not today.

I was beside her, my heart pounding in my chest; then she pulled me on top and guided me home. Immediately upon entry, as soon as I felt her hot, wet juices engulf me I exploded in her. It was nothing like masturbating, this was some kind of mutated super-orgasm. It was so intense I just about blacked-out. After, I hovered over her, propped up on my elbows gasping for air, looking down at her face. She seemed so composed like she knew this would happen. I felt I had to say something. Surely a moment like this required some pearl to express my love, my passion, my relief - but what? Trisha had an axiom that she said when embarrassed. Tragically, I chose that saying to utter now.

I looked into her eyes and expressed tenderly, “you old sod.”

I wasn’t even sure what it meant but I wanted it to mean, 'you are a beautiful woman. Thank you for making such sweet love with me, it was really, really special', but I don’t think it sounded like that.

She was cool. She purred sarcastically, “how romantic.” Then she smiled and pulled me back in for an encore.

The box score and wrap up sounded something like this:

After going O-fer in his previous at-bats, Rock

Wanstall finally broke out of his slump with a

two home run game, although the first blast could

have been scored an error-assisted in-the-parker.

After that day I was racing up the mountain to Trisha’s house every chance I got. Neither of us every used the term, 'old sod' again.

On April 5th Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee while speaking at a rally for striking garbage workers. A small-time white criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested and convicted of the senseless murder. Canada was somewhat removed from the deep-rooted racial problems of the United States of America. We had issues with our Natives which were not handled very well, and there was anger growing in French Canadians within the Province of Quebec, but nothing as deep rooted and as hateful as the plight of African Americans in the United States.

I had cried when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas Texas. They sent us home from school and I sat bewildered, staring at the horror on television. But I was older now, and I was beginning to understand the profundity of discontent in America, so this heartbreaking tragedy had a powerful impact on me. I had heard and was moved by Reverend King’s 'I Have A Dream' speech (not in August of ‘64 when he delivered it, but a few years later in a documentary) and now he had been gunned down for preaching about harmony and freedom and civil rights and liberties for all. The world was most definitely spinning out-of-control.

Hippies in Canada had all the love, peace and harmony as our brothers and sisters to the south but we did not have the same political agenda; we did not suffer the same racial strife and we were not at war. Our leaders were not being slaughtered on television and Canada was not sending our boys off to a jungle in Viet Nam to be blown to bits and shipped home in a bag. We were tie-dying shirts and threading beaded necklaces while the youth of America were hung out to dry by their own government. We were somewhat insulated here on Canada’s west coast and sheltered from the conflict. We were aware but we did not participate. This was a little like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand.

We wouldn't remain passive for long though. In three years, some environmental activists would set sail out of Vancouver in what would be the start of one of the most important protest groups of our time.

In Canadian politics something astonishing happened - On April 20th, we elected a hip Prime Minister. His name was Pierre Trudeau. He was arrogant, conceited and insulting. He was also somewhat of a handsome playboy who was intelligent, witty and tuned-in. Although we had had some very good Prime Ministers, Trudeau was the first to represent Canada who had charisma. He would later marry a sexy brunette from Vancouver named Margaret Sinclair. She eventually divorced him and hung out with The Rolling Stones - that’s pretty hip.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had been producing the television program Let’s Go since 1964. Mostly, it had been a top-forty show with a house-band and featured singers. The program’s musical director was a talented pianist named Tom Baird who later went off to produce records for Motown. He wrote Love Child for Diana Ross & The Supremes and produced or wrote for Earth Wind & Fire, Rare Earth and Stevie Wonder. Sadly, he died young.

Now, Let’s Go producer, Ken Gibson, was interested in the new original sounds being created by The Collectors, Spring, Tom Northcott, The Seeds Of Time and others. Coincidently, some members of The Collectors had been the nucleus of the house band when they were called The C-FUN Classics and Northcott had been one of the featured top-forty vocalists. Spring’s guitarist/vocalist, Terry Frewer also played in the house band on earlier Let’s Go shows. He and Bob Buckley, on keyboards and saxophone, had put Spring together with bassist Pete McKinnon (formerly of The Stags) and drummer Rob Fisher to play a mix of rock and jazz. They were all among the best musicians in town.

We were booked to appear on an episode in May. We backed Sub-A-Lub right into the small studio on Georgia Street near Bute Street and unloaded our stuff onto the tiny stage. I had used some of the paisley 'Cling' left over from our interior decoration of Sub-A-Lub to re-finish my drum kit. It was very unique. We went live to air at five o’clock. The floor director stood beside one of the enormous cameras and counted down from five.

The red light came on, Geoff said, “Hit it Rock,” and I hit the drum-shot intro that launched us into a spirited version of The Nazz Are Blue.

After a commercial break we came back with two original songs titled, A Long Time Ago and Kaleidoscope.

On June 27th The Velvet Underground arrived in town to play at the Retinal Circus. The Seeds of Time was the opening act. The Velvet Underground had emerged as the musical focal point of the New York pop-art scene led by Andy Warhol.They featured an enigmatic vocalist named, Nico, who was a darling of Warhol and not really a singer. The real essence of The Velvet Underground was their poet leader, vocalist/guitarist Lou Reed, and his writing partner, bassist John Cale. The Seeds were playing two of their songs, Heroin and I’m Waiting For The Man. Lou Reed’s recorded performance of the seven minute Heroin was powerful and convincing. Our version was longer, more psychedelic and naïve; what you might expect from a bunch of kids from the suburbs who were chipping on weekends.

The Velvet Underground was also booked to play a show at the Agrodome the night before. During the show bassist John Cale fell off the stage and broke his wrist. They asked Steve to play with them for both of their Retinal Circus dates. So, Steve played the opening set with us and the headline set with The Velvet Underground. We must have been high on something because we wanted to play our version of Heroin. Jim went to Lou Reed in the dressing room and asked his permission. He said “yeah.” Afterwards he dismissed it as “teenybopper.”

I felt very strongly about dropping acid with Trisha. I pressured her until she agreed. We met in the West End one rainy night and walked to Karl and Rose's place on Robson. Trisha was nervous but excited at the same time; I knew the feeling. Karl and Rose invited us in. Jim was there too. Whenever someone embarked upon their first trip, the whole act of getting high took on a ceremonious modus vivendi, and Jim couldn't allow such an event to occur on his watch without being present to supervise it.

Karl made tea while Rose giggled at everything that was said. Jim, who was sitting on the floor across from Rose, stared right at her and shouted, “the fucking pigs man ... they're out there waiting to lay a bummer on all of us ... Do you know that Rose?”. Rose looked down at the floor, covered her bad teeth with her hands and laughed so hard she had tears streaming down her face. This was one very simple and very happy woman. Jim just shrugged and giggled too.

I held Trisha's hand as she popped the capsule into her mouth. Then I knocked back one of my own and washed it down with a little marijuana tea. By now, I was used to the sensation of the roller coaster car climbing the first big hill; ca-clack, ca-clack, ca-clack, ca-clack, but for Trisha it was a new adventure. Before she could think about it, there was the incredible acid rush and she was whisked away two thousand light years from home soaring around the universe on her first psychedelic trip.

Jim launched into his guru routine. It started to freak Trisha out.

“Can we go out?” she inquired as if this might be a preposterous idea.

“Out there?” I said looking towards the door that had shrunk to the size of a mouse - Out there scared me. “I don't think that's a good ...”

She grasped my arm and locked eyes with me. Her pupils were dilated to the point that there was no iris, only deep black mirrors that opened into her soul. This girl really wanted to go out.

“Uh, yeah, we can go out,” I said. “We'll go for a walk ... out there.”

Jim did not like the idea that this mere girl could just barge in here and start ordering me around; that was his department. “Watch out for the pigs,” he warned. But Trisha had already gotten her coat and was helping me into mine.

We shrunk ourselves down, squeezed through the minuscule doorway and popped out full-sized onto the street. It was night. The lights were dazzling, especially when the raindrops caught the light and refracted it and reflected it into millions and millions of colourful exploding stars that burst all around me. I don't know how long we were there among the stars but eventually I felt Trisha's gentle tug and we started walking up Robson.

Within a few steps I was paralyzed with fear. I spotted a Vancouver Police car cruising right for us like a Great White Shark in dark murky water; just as Jim The Soothsayer had prophesied. I was waddling like a God-damned zombie, all straight legged and spastic, attempting to look normal - whatever that may be - while trying desperately to escape those terrible shark teeth before they cut me to shreds.

Trisha began to laugh uncontrollably. 'Oh no,' I thought, 'The police have laws against laughing. We're dead for sure'. I braced for the inevitable. But the shark just swam on by. He didn't even look at us. Trisha was still laughing. At least somebody was having a good time.

I realized then that we had walked all the way up to end of the block. We got turned around and began the long journey back to Karl and Rose's. Trisha scrutinized every person that we met along the way. She laughed at each of them and muttered something as they walked by. When one man passed us she looked up at me and said, “He's a pedophile. I can see into him. The bastard's a child molester.” She was horrified with this knowledge; then she laughed again.

I was very confused. I really liked her. I thought she might be my first love. But I felt so inadequate, so insignificant, so undeserving. I wanted to announce my authority. I turned to her and said, “Trisha, you're a big piece of shit.” Clearly, I had not yet mastered the art of sweet-talking my girl.

Trisha stopped laughing and looked at me with a puzzled face. She was angry; hurt. She looked down. I didn't know what to do. What if she started crying? I made an awkward move to console her.

She pushed me off and burst into laughter again. When she was staring down at the sidewalk she hallucinated a big pile of shit with a happy face in it grinning back at her. That's what made her laugh.

Her laughter made me mad. I shouted the worst insult I could think of, “you've got one giant ego!”

I walked on ahead of her back to the apartment. I realized that I was crying. When I entered, Jim took one look at me and yelled at Trisha, “What have you done to Rocky?”

I went right through and out the back door to where our trusty van, Sub-A-Lub was parked. I got in and sat alone for a long time thinking about what had just happened. I had convinced myself that it was my duty to tell Trisha about the 'white light', the 'oneness' and 'God'. I thought I could be Jim but I had no idea of what it all meant, or how to say it. I didn't know it at the time but I was wrong. She understood what I was talking about even if I didn't.

I went back in and we enjoyed the rest of the trip together.

In the early morning hours of June 6th, 1968 Senator Robert F. Kennedy died from gunshot wounds at the hand of assassin Sirhan Sirhan. He had been shot at point blank range after delivering a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Another American leader had been murdered in his prime; first his brother John, then Martin Luther King and now Bobby. Stubbornly, we tried to hold onto the Summer of Love.

Trisha was going to Brighton in the south of England for the summer. Even though we were fucking like minks our relationship was still undefined. Were we boyfriend and girlfriend? The answer would have to wait until the fall when she came home.

Jim was organizing a second barnstorming tour. This wasn’t that difficult a chore as the only actual organizing involved was to point Sub-A-Lub east. This time we set our sights on Halifax, Nova Scotia even though it was almost six thousand five hundred kilometers away on the Atlantic Ocean. We reasoned that we should play our way across Canada and live on the east coast for a reversed perspective.

In July we hit the road in much the same fashion as last year. The only difference was that, instead of Howard and Norm, we took along Keith Light. It was Keith’s mom who wrote the magazine article that had freed me from imprisonment at school. Keith was tall and sinewy with long straight hair and an even longer beard. He had a spiritual aura about him and was hard working and enthusiastic.

Also, Geoff had married Jocelyn in a quickie civil service and they rode separately in their new 1968 Datsun 2000 station wagon; a wedding present from Jocelyn's parents. Funny, even though there were now only six of us in the van, I still seemed to be sitting on some uncomfortable piece of musical equipment.

There would also be a very big difference for me on this trip. From the first night out I found free-love; or more factually, it found me. It simply seemed to happen wherever we went. We drove directly to Nakusp like we were drawn there. We arrived just as a parade was about to start in celebration of some civic event. The mayor loved Sub-A-Lub and insisted that we act as the Grand Marshall of the parade. After the parade was over we set up in the mayor’s front yard and played all afternoon.

Later I slept with a local girl in a sleeping bag on the shores of Summit Lake. She was only the second girl that I had scored with. I marvelled at how different she felt than Trisha. Different, but the same ... It was mystifying. I decided to stop trying to comprehend it and just swing for the fences.

Coincidently, there are a lot of Wanstalls in Nakusp. I heard that one of the local Wanstall girls later had a son who she named Gary after me. Was it the girl in my sleeping bag? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have anything to do with it or I would have heard about it by now. Donna, the girl who had introduced us to Nakusp last summer, and who had been sleeping with Geoff, also had a son around that time. She named him Geoff, after our Geoff, but never disclosed the meaning of this.

We discovered a pretty little town one valley over called Nelson. There was a nightclub there called Garth’s Grotto run by a young local named George. We stayed a couple of nights and played at the club. I met a living-doll named Candy. Nothing happened there but she followed me to Banff and we made love in the back of the Datsun parked under a tree in the campsite. She was a sweetheart but she only stayed one day. She broke my heart when she left to go back home to Nelson.

I found consolation in the arms of a seductive seventeen year old who worked at the Grizzly Bear House restaurant. She snuck me up to the tiny dorm that they provided to her for the summer and ravished me for hours. The frenzy continued for several days in her bed, in tents, under trees, in the van and anywhere we happened to be. She was insatiable. My appetite for her was equally voracious. I was up to the task and we devoured each other day and night. She turned out to be the girlfriend who had broken George Greenwell's heart before last year’s barnstorming tour ... I didn‘t know! As the band was getting ready to leave she informed me that it was her ambition to get herself pregnant that summer. She thanked me for my contribution. As we pulled out of town I couldn’t help but wonder if any of my shots had hit the target. I never heard from her again so I guess I’ll never know.

And so we went - and so I came - across the infinite prairie provinces of Canada; Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

There is a saying, or maybe it was the result of some scientific study or maybe it’s a law of nature, or maybe I made it up - regardless, 'they' say a person is defined by the song that was Number One on their eighteenth birthday. I turned eighteen on July 18th. Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild was Number One on the Canadian charts:

Get your motor runnin'

Head out on the highway

Lookin' for adventure

And whatever comes our way

Born to be wild

Born to be wild

We hop-scotched our way from city to town all along the way - renting halls, drawing up posters and playing for food and gas money. We discovered that Edmonton was a city of fabulous musicians, Saskatoon had gorgeous women and Winnipeg loved to rock & roll.

Jim did almost all of the driving but allowed me to take the wheel when he was exhausted. I loved this, as anything was better than sleeping on top of a drum kit in one hundred degree weather while hurling down the highway in a tin box - and I did consider myself to be an excellent driver. However, by this time the gear shift lever on the steering column had broken off; I believe it was kicked off in the passion of some sexual encounter that I claim no responsibility for, and in order to keep the van in gear you had to hook your right leg over the stump and hold it firmly in gear under your knee. I drove for four hours from Regina, Saskatchewan to Brandon, Manitoba without moving because there is not a single curve or hill on that four hundred kilometer stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway and I didn’t have to shift, brake or turn the steering wheel the entire way. My right leg was so sore I couldn’t walk properly for days. After that I never complained about sleeping on the drums.

It was early-August as we pushed on around Lake Superior, through Sudbury and down to Toronto; a twenty-one hundred kilometer journey from Brandon. I was beginning to understand that Canada is huge! We headed straight for the Yorkville area in the centre of Toronto where we were told we would find others of our kind. Sure enough, the corner of Bloor Street and University Boulevard was infested with hippies. They roamed free; draped on benches, scurrying up and down the sidewalks and cluttering the doorways of shops and boutiques. The volume of freaky humanity was overwhelming. Still, we only stayed one night and did not play Canada's biggest city-metro. Jim had people in Montreal and wanted to get there right away.

We left the next night. I got to drive because Jim had found no sleep in Toronto and crashed in the back of Sub-A-Lub. Due to the volume of traffic; even at night, I had to hold the stub of the broken shift lever firmly with my right hand and steer with my left while shifting, braking and passing. This made it difficult to accept the joint when it came my way.

The highway between Toronto and Montreal was like nothing I had ever seen. Its official name was the McDonald-Cartier Freeway but most people just called it the 401. At times it was as many as sixteen lanes divided but, as we got out of Toronto, it was mostly two lanes each way with the oncoming traffic separated by a wide grass median.

There was a never-ending stream of red tail lights from the hulking eighteen-wheelers as far as I could see ahead of me and a blinding wash of white headlights glaring from an endless string behind me in the rear view mirrors. Sometimes a truck would flash its high-beams at the truck in front of it, dart out of the neat line and pull ahead of the leading truck. When it was far enough in front the truck behind would turn off all of its lights for an instant and the passing truck would pull back in line - then the now lead truck would tap its brakes in thanks. All night I pretended I was driving a big rig and learned to flash the trucker’s signals with the little lights on Sub-A-Lub. Here was one language that French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians could agree on.

Montreal’s morning rush hour was like driving into a demolition derby only everyone was driving more-or-less in a forward direction at about a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. I didn’t mind being up all night. The weariness lulled me into a Zen-like state where I could sense the cars coming at me and swerve to avoid them before catastrophe struck. Those clairvoyant powers were nullified by the marijuana I was smoking. It made me somewhat paranoid so I tended to swerve and avoid cars that weren’t really there. Cut left, bob right ... serpentine! ... serpentine!

We raced by Pointe-Claire with Sub-A-Lub flat out - all of the other cars honked angrily as they flew by. “Vous baiser le connard to you too!” I hollered back; whatever that means. Then Dorval went by in a blur. Cut right, bob left ... serpentine! ... serpentine! Did that sign say St. Laurent? Route 520 turned into 15 and suddenly I was speeding through Mont-Royal. I shut my eyes and yanked the wheel to the right. The little blue bus shook and shuddered, shot off the ramp and weaved its way into the morning rush down Rue St. Urbain.

Merde! There were people standing on the white lines all over the streets. As the endless stream of cars roared past the pedestrians, they would look for a small gap and run from the curb to the first white line and then wait for the next gap and jump to the next line until he or she made his or her way across the six lanes of traffic. Nobody used the crosswalks because the cars considered anyone in one as fair game.

'If I could just slow down to about eighty,' I thought, 'I might actually live to write a book about it.' We careened left onto Rue Ste. Catherine and accelerated to keep up with the flow. Then, mercy! - A red light. Finally, I stopped in the right hand lane and saw that we were at Rue St. Denis. Miraculously, this was the very street that we wanted. I proceeded to turn right.

Pedestrians screamed and jumped panicking, pointing, leaping back onto the sidewalk; drivers slammed on their brakes and laid on their horns. I don’t speak French but I understood that they were not yelling pleasantries. It seemed that you could not turn right on a red light in Montreal. My violation frightened and angered them. Jim woke up, quickly assessed the situation and took over the wheel. I was out of a driving job and banished to the back.

In a few short blocks we arrived at the gates of tranquil Old Montreal. Jim turned left at the police station onto Rue Notre Dame Est and proceeded across a land bridge to number 1201 on the corner of Rue Montcalm. The three story apartment stretched the entire length of the block. The aging gun-metal gray paint was peeling in large sections and the wood structure had begun to collapse a little bit into itself. It didn’t look all that safe; not to mention the fire hazard. But Jim was excited to be here. He jumped out of the van and anxiously pushed the buzzer.

The door snapped opened and Jim’s step-mother, Clair rushed out to hug him. She was a thin, attractive woman about forty years old. Graciously, she asked us up and invited us to crash at her place as long as we wanted. We all plodded up the narrow steep stairs and bashfully entered her apartment. It was odd to see Jim with a woman, even if it was his step-mother. The flat was small with a kitchen at one end, an open bedroom in the middle and a living area with windows in the front looking down onto Notre Dame and across the Ste. Lawrence River to the grounds of EXPO-67; the World's Fair that had been so successful in Montreal the previous year. She made coffee and sandwiches for us. Clair was English speaking but served us strong French coffee and offered French made cigarettes called Gauloises. One puff of one of those babies was like getting struck in the face with a shovel. John wisely rolled his own. I wasn't as smart and turned greener with each puff.

A monk appeared in the doorway. He was short and sturdy with curly black hair and a trim black beard. He was wearing a coarse brown monk’s robe complete with a rope sash and sandals. Jim and the monk had a warm reunion in the middle of the room as we all sat and wondered. Jim introduced him as David the Candle Maker. He claimed to be a legitimate priest ordained in some obscure Californian cult and was allowed the title of Reverend David the Candle Maker.

When Geoff greeted him the Reverend stated, “I know you my friend.”

Geoff shrugged and said, “Far out.” It was obvious he had no recollection of him.

“It's alright my brother,” continued the Reverend, “it was back when I was my former self, David Harpine and I was operating The Trans Euphoric Express Light Show at the Afterthought. I remember you and I remember this string bean too.” He pointed at Steve.

“Cool.” Steve said with a puzzled look on his face.

“You two were involved in a bit of a fracas in the balcony. Let me guess ... There was a women involved.”

“Right,” said Geoff.

“And now you're brothers.”

“Right on,” said Steve.

“My friends, you do not know what fate awaits thee.”

The Reverend David the Candle Maker had come out to Montreal with Jim last year for EXPO. Then he had gone to California and returned alone to Montreal to have an affair with Jim’s step-mother or to escape a murder rap, I never really understood which. He turned out to be my guru’s guru. Jim seemed to worship his sandals even though the Reverend David The Candle Maker was sleeping with his step-mother. It appeared even gurus had needs.

Reverend David the Candle Maker took us all to his favourite restaurant, Le Fripon on Place Jacques Cartier in the heart of Old Montreal. The street was directly in front of the magnificent City Hall and was a mall for pedestrians only, closed off to traffic, with old-world cobblestones, massive stone walls and glorious statues everywhere. Some of these stones were rumoured to be as old as Montreal itself dating back to 1642. By comparison, Vancouver was barely eighty years old in 1968, having just been incorporated in 1886.

Le Fripon looked like a quaint French farmhouse yanked from its quiet countryside setting. It had a large awning and a sidewalk café out front on the cobblestones. We all squeezed in around a long table inside the dimly lit bistro and The Reverend David The Candle Maker ordered rounds of Kronenbourg beer. It was cold and it was fizzy and it poured down the gullet with ease. I listened as he held court, preaching about 'the white light', 'one' and 'God'. He was more eloquent than Jim and more commanding - and, he was buying.

Hey! When did the room start spinning? While all around me engaged Reverend David The Candle Maker I had, as usual, kept my mouth shut and observed. But my vision was now blurred and my hearing muffled. Still, I reached for another beer - who could resist this stuff? It was courage in a bottle; it granted me a sense of self-confidence, of daring, of all the things I wished I might be.

I was horrified to realize that I was speaking. I had taken hold of some tourist at the next table and held him by the arm as I babbled incoherently into his face. As luck would have it, the poor creature broke free of my grasp and escaped out the door. No matter. I had friends, comrades, accomplices. Each of them looked to be in the same state I was in. Every one of us was talking at the same time. Maybe I did belong after all.

We staggered out into the warm summer night and wobbled along Notre Dame across the old steel land-bridge to the comfort of 1201. I passed out on the kitchen floor as contented as a pig in shit. This was my first public drunk and I liked it a lot. It would not be my last.

I woke up with my head resting on a Hoover vacuum under the kitchen table. John was sitting on a chair next to me sipping coffee and rolling cigarettes while Lindsay scribbled on a notepad. Geoff helped Jocelyn cook up a huge pan full of scrambled eggs - crashing in a stranger’s three room tenement with seven men, most of whom were not her husband, could not have been how she had dreamed of her honeymoon as a little girl - the mouth-watering aroma made me aware of how hungry I was. I sat up and welcomed my first hangover. I felt wonderful!

Last night I had been part of the party; not an observer but a participant. Regrettably, the magical confidence that I had experienced did not linger into the harsh light of day. No matter, I knew how to get it back.

John peered over his half-rolled cigarette at me like an old man. Lindsay didn’t even notice me there. Keith was helping Steve fix something on his bass in the front room. Jocelyn and Geoff went around to each person spooning out platefuls of the steaming hot eggs. Jim was sitting on an unmade bed in the adjoining bedroom reading the newspaper. He stood up and announced, “Okay. Pack it up ... We’re leaving.”

We were not enthusiastic. Last night was enchanting. We had fallen in love with Montreal. She had seduced us with her charm and had made sweet passionate love to us. We told Jim that we refused to go ... we would never leave! ... Never!

As our tiny convoy drove out of town heading east my heart was breaking. Jim reminded us that we had set out to reach Halifax and immerse our souls in the Atlantic Ocean. We couldn’t abandon our quest just because our head was turned by every pretty little town that winked at us. Reluctantly, we knew he was right. It was almost seventeen hundred more kilometers to Halifax and what we thought would be the end of our journey.

Certainly, there is a sense of great accomplishment in driving across Canada; it's seven thousand, seven hundred kilometers from Victoria BC to Saint John's NL. It is an especially difficult journey when squashed into a van full of sharp and pointy instruments even when you are together with the guys you love the most.

You gain an understanding of the vastness of the land and the diversity of the people. The laidback westerners of British Columbia, the heart of the flatlanders in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the industrious people of Ontario, the passion of the French and the English alike in Quebec, the hospitality of Maritimers in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and the warmth of the best people on earth, the Newfies of Newfoundland.

So, when I first spotted the Atlantic Ocean, it took my breath away. I had always thought of the Atlantic as angrier than the Pacific. It didn’t look mad this day. Gentle waves lapped onto the rocks where our pilgrimage ended just north of Peggy's Cove Nova Scotia. The water stretched out to the horizon all blue and green with millions of sparkling whitecaps flashing in the sun. It was a glorious sight. John ceremoniously collected Atlantic sand into a jar to take home. Steve unceremoniously pissed into the bay ... We’d been in the van for a long time!

Most of the coastline of Nova Scotia is jagged and rocky. We made camp on the rocks near the water in Peggy’s Cove. Then we set out to establish ourselves in the nearby city of Halifax. It didn’t take long to realize that, if we were going to change the world, it was not going to initiate from Halifax. There was not really much of a scene there in those days and it was not our mission to start one. We set up in the campsite and played a set for our neighbours just so we could say that we‘d played the east coast. Then we threw everything back into Sub-A-Lub and headed for La Belle Province and our destiny in Montreal. I loved Halifax but it wasn't our time to be there. As we drove out of town we sang:

(sung to the tune of:

Yes! We Have No Bananas,

the great show tune by Frank Silver & Irving Cohn)

Yes! We have no va-scotia

We have no va-scotia today

It was late in August when we took over Clair’s apartment on Notre Dame Est. The eight of us, including Jocelyn, were living in three rooms along with two girls who were friends of Clair’s and a patriotic American youth named Frederick Dean Jefferson III who was forced to flee to Canada to avoid getting dead or worse in the jungles of Viet Nam. Frederick was an odd looking guy, kind of like one of Robert Crumb’s freaky characters in Zap Comix. But, he came from excellent stock, was highly intelligent and well educated, and he had some far-fucking-out dope.

There was no language barrier in the lessons of love that I learned in Montreal that summer. For a guy who had only dreamed of sex until four months ago I was now living huge in reality. I discovered the meaning and application of the Latin terms, cunnilingus and the treat, fellatio, I participated in scientific experiments called orgies and practiced the ancient Greek idiom, 'three-some' which translates to, 'me and two sisters'.

One time I was fooling around with this very nice college girl named Agnes but, as I had become momentarily entangled with a girl who had been sitting beside her, Geoff took Agnes by the hand and led her into his little alcove; under the amenable eye of Jocelyn of course - They had what could be called an open marriage. Agnes did not seem immediately thrilled with this idea but after Geoff got her motor running she decided that she had to have everybody in the house so she went methodically from one to the next until she had fucked us all. Strangely, this behavior by women who took it upon themselves to do-the-band became more and more commonplace as the years wore on.

Late that night I was awakened by screaming. My sleeping place was on the floor was by the bathroom door. Blurry-eyed, I could see Keith and Frederick huddled over Lindsay who was writhing on the floor holding his penis. Then I saw blood; lots of blood. Everyone was fumbling, uncomfortably to apply a toilet paper bandage to the wounded appendage. They got it under control and Lindsay sat naked on the toilet holding it gingerly in both hands. He had somehow torn it open in mid-thrust. The poor girl responsible was in hysterics sobbing about her body being dangerous and her vagina a weapon.

The danger aside, for most of that summer, there was someone having sex in some room twenty-four hours a day every day. There literally was a line-up of girls out in front on Notre Dame.

One sunny afternoon Frederick supplied us with some free LSD and John, Steve and I went with Keith to buy a little food. Keith drove Sub-A-Lub with Steve riding shotgun and John and I in the back. I stared out at the sights of Montreal. At the time it was the most exciting city in North America. It was cosmopolitan, sophisticated and vibrant. In my heightened psychedelic state, I gawked at the bustling businessmen in their fine European suits and ogled the gorgeous women in their exquisite, stylish outfits. I spotted two men strolling along the sidewalk. It was folksinger Pete Seeger with his banjo in a pack on his back and the son of legendary folk hero Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie of the famous song Alice’s Restaurant. They seemed to have an aura around them.

We spent the night smoking dope and grooving to the spooky but very cool Dr. John’s Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya-Ya:

They call me Dr. John,

I'm known as the Night Tripper,

Got a satchel of gris-gris in my hand,

Got many clients that come from miles around

Runnin' down my prescriptions.

I got medicines, cure all y'all's ills,

I got remedies of every description

Around the corner on Rue Montclam there stood a two hundred year old farmhouse that had been engulfed by the city. The rustic stone structure was perfectly preserved but now squeezed in between the backside of our rundown tenement and another big old apartment on the other side.

The place was occupied by a performance artist/dancer named Alfred North and an erogenous creature named Nijinski who was introduced as his 'wife'. Alfred was small and waif thin but he walked tall and he was imposing; almost frightening. He had a lean craggy face with piercing, hypnotic eyes and a long jet black beard. Every movement was like a dance as if planned and choreographed.

Nijinski was a youthful boy, maybe sixteen, but he believed himself to be a she. He/she was excessively effeminate to the point of being an exaggerated caricature of a 'cupcake' wife; a spoilt, high strung woman who shrieked and cried at every little thing. However, the two of them seemed to have a strong marriage.

Alfred spoke with such fervour, such conviction - it seemed that everything he spoke of was “incredible!”

Alfred took an “incredible” liking to us. He loved that we were “incredibly” dedicated to our art form. Perhaps he saw our lifestyle as our art form and perceived us to be “incredible” performance artists like himself.

The North’s invited us over for marijuana tea. We sat around their living room in the two hundred year old farmhouse and listened as Alfred spoke to us of “incredible” art, creativity and discovery. He directed Nijinski to play us an old 78 RPM record by Charlie Chaplin. In addition to being a legendary comedian from the silent film era, Chaplin was also a composer and conductor. We heard a song called, Sing A Song; a kind of ragtime pre-swing type number from the nineteen twenties that caught our attention. They played many such songs that afternoon.

Inspired by the sound, John, Lindsay and Geoff wrote a little ditty called, Steal Away:

Would you like to steal away on a star with me?

We can sail away forever, immediately,

We can sail into the sun, never to return,

Oh, would you like to steal a-way?

The lyrics reflected the very adventure that we were embarked on; to leave behind the lives that we knew and disappear into our future. The music was a very simple swing feel. It was built around John’s piano – it started sparingly but built, during the song, into a crescendo of pounding boogie-woogie backed by my Chicago shuffle beat, Steve‘s walking bass and Lindsay‘s strong jazz chording.

We found an ancient Wurlitzer electric piano in Archambault Music on Rue Ste. Catherine that was ideal for the musical style that was fast consuming us. Lindsay was playing a Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar almost exclusively now and my drum kit had reduced to a kick drum, snare drum and hi-hat. I also incorporated a cow-bell, woodblock and other tidbits of wood and metal percussion. We began to write and rehearse night and day in the basement of the farmhouse on Montcalm.

The only hazard was the occasional spider. Steve lifted a furry black wolf spider off my back one day that was bigger than his hand. When I was a kid I had no fear of spiders but my sister used to go insane when one galloped across the carpet and that spooked me too.

The next composition was Harry Schwartz. The lyrics were all Geoff:

I met a girl today,

I took her to the bay,

And there I heard her say.

You’re leading me astray,

Don’t break my heart I pray,

Please tell me that you’ll stay.

I love you,

Yes I do,

Simple ‘cos you’re you.

I love you,

Yes I do, yes I do.

And if you tell me that you feel the same,

I’ll change your name to mine,

And you’ll be stuck with Harry Schwartz.

Hairy Shorts!?

Harry Schwartz!

She didn’t seem to mind,

She wasn’t even sad,

But she said I’d find.

That I’d have to wait,

To find a perfect mate,

With a name like mine.

After what she said,

I went home to bed,

And did it on my own.

I took myself aside,

Looked past my wounded pride,

And I was still alone

There was more of the chorus, “I love you, yes I do, simply ‘cos you’re you” and another query, “Hairy Shorts!?” which was screamed out by the whole band and then answered correctly by Geoff, “Harry Schwartz!” Lindsay had acquired an antique mandolin and he used it well in this little swing tune. I played brushes and then switched over to sticks when we got into the long tag section with everyone singing the chorus in unison and Lyn’s fingers dancing over the inlaid fret board of that old mandolin.

Lindsay and John also wrote an instrumental for the mandolin titled, Muskrat Rumble. This was a jumpin’ bluegrass two-step with a catchy melody. Each verse became faster and faster until it collapsed into itself and left musicians and dancers in a heap on the floor.

Then came a classic Geoff song with music by John and Lindsay, Candy Man. Taken literally, the lyrics were especially offensive even for us:

Hey kids, do you really know about candy?

It’s mmmmm good and it’s plenty dandy.

Would you like to try it?

Then go to Candyland

And ask for the Candy Man - That’s me.

After a chorus and another verse Geoff got into character and spoke the rest:

Hey little boy ...

Why don’t you get in my car and we’ll go for a little ride,

Maybe eat some ice cream - candy - mmmmm.

Uh oh! Here come the man!

We’d better split!

If we played this song today we probably would be arrested or lynched or both but Geoff delivered this song as if Geoff himself was the kid and the Candy Man was in fact a dope dealer looking to attract a new customer.

Geoff and Jocelyn had managed to stay straight during our trip but they were thinking about scoring quite a bit at that time. Living in extremely close quarters, the rest of us would have known if they had found a heroin connection in Montreal. Geoff teased himself by shooting up other drugs like diet pills and even Aspirin. One night we all let him shoot us up with LSD. The roller coaster car climbing the hill and then plunging down the other side beginning to most acid trips was replaced by a new beginning - like getting shot out of a cannon! The drug just exploded round my brain. There was no waiting your turn, no rounding go, no collecting two hundred dollars, I rocketed directly into space.

We decided that we were so tuned into each other that we could achieve telepathy. Inspired by our earlier composition, One Hand Clapping (That’s The Sound Of), we conceived a plan to test our powers. The five of us crammed into a dark closet and shut the door. It was so black in there that my stoned out eyes were bombarded by bright white starbursts and clusters of exotically colourful conflagrations. We all stood straight up with our backs to the walls. We knew what we had to do; we were all to clap simultaneously without prompting, without counting, without warning. If we could accomplish this we could eliminate the need for rehearsing ever again. I poised myself with my hands up and ready, ignoring the fireworks flashing before me. I waited for a transmission. Then, there was a thunderous noise and a smack of pain shot up my arms as the sound of ten hands clapping in unison reverberated around and around the tiny black space. We had done it!

Frederick Dean Jefferson III had an American friend named Roger, who was a draft dodger. He had a successful enterprise working in Canada providing a steady supply of marijuana to pot-heads, drug-fiends and dope smokers all over Montreal. Business had been good but he was experiencing a slight problem with his latest shipment.

Two days prior, armed with phony ID, he had been accompanying two kilos of Acapulco Gold out of New York city bound for Montreal on a Greyhound bus. He had unscrewed a panel in the bus’ bathroom and hidden the grass in the bulkhead. His plan was simple - cross over the border into Canada as an innocent tourist, unscrew the panel retrieving his goods and then distribute the product to his customers. But, when he got to the Canadian border, the customs officials refused to admit him because he had no money and they were afraid he would become a parasite of the welfare system. He couldn’t explain that all of his capital was tied up in his product neatly stashed in the bathroom bulkhead so they tossed him off the bus and he stood in the rain watching his big payoff drive away.

Being no fool, he memorized the bus number and proceeded to Plan “B” which was to follow the bus to Montreal and retrieve his illicit goods there.

He snuck across the border that night and made his way up to Montreal. By the time he arrived at the Montreal bus depot, his bus had turned around and was on its way to Burlington, a small town in Vermont. Now, being a fool, he proceeded to Plan “C” which was to ask Frederick what he should do.

Frederick asked Jim if he would drive Roger down to Burlington so that his successful enterprise could be restored. I went along for the ride.

Three long haired freaks approached the U.S. border at Swanton, Vermont in a beat-up blue van with a paisley interior, red, yellow, blue and green wheels and a peace sign on the door. The border agent grasped the handle of his service revolver as we drew near. The U.S. authorities were still sensitive after the police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this August. This guy looked like he blamed us personally. Our Canadian plates didn’t help. Americans are suspicious of all foreigners. In fact, they seem suspicious of anyone who isn’t living within their very house; and I’m not sure they trust them either. I believe that their Constitution states that every citizen must open fire on anyone who comes anywhere near them ... it’s the law!

If the agent had known that Roger was a fugitive on the lam he probably would have shot us all on the spot. But he let us through with a bored “Y’all have a nice night.”

We sped down Interstate 89 to Burlington. Roger directed us to the bus station. He told us to wait while he went in to rescue his package. Jim and I did as we were told and watched from the van. Roger crept among the darkened buses in the lot until he found the number he was looking for. He pried open the door and disappeared inside. I could see two security guards standing, having a smoke, just one bus over. Even they had guns. I wouldn’t be surprised if playground supervisors were packing even in the laid-back State of Vermont.

Roger popped out carrying a package wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag and darted into the shadows. One of the guards heard a noise and snapped his attention towards the bus. They both tossed their cigarettes aside and pulled their weapons. From my vantage point, I could see Roger crouching behind the buses shuffling towards us as the guards searched between each vehicle.

Roger got to us and Jim drove us the Hell out of there. When we reached a spot close to the border, Roger jumped out with his package. He left us with instructions to pick him up in an hour, one mile on the Canadian side, then disappeared into the bushes. We proceeded through Canadian customs and waited at the designated spot. After a long time Roger came bounding out of the trees and we returned to Montreal with the bricks. Jim and I received two ounces as compensation.

The EXPO-67 that had been staged in Montreal a year earlier had left behind many monuments such as Olympic Stadium and Habitat 67, a modernistic experiment to create housing for the masses. But, for us, the most exciting holdover from EXPO was Man & His World, Terre des Hommes, and its La Ronde amusement park. Man & His World was located on two islands in the Ste. Lawrence both directly across the river from 1201 Notre Dame est. Isle Notre Dame held most of the pavilions including Canada’s inverted pyramid called Katimavik while Isle Saint Helene was the site of Buckminster Fuller’s 250 foot geodesic dome; the U.S. pavilion. Next door was the Youth pavilion, Pavillon de la Jeunesse.

Jim heard that there would be a Battle-of-the-Bands to be held at the Youth Pavilion on Labour Day and he entered The Seeds of Time in the competition. We were far too high to have any worldly desire to compete with other bands but we really wanted to play a big gig in Montreal and this was our chance.

We weren’t disappointed. There was a massive crowd on hand at the outdoor stage of the Youth Pavilion. We soon realized that all of the bands entered in the contest were French-speaking and so was the audience. We were the only English-speaking people on the island. But, we were not to be deterred. There was no shame in being from the west coast. So what if the only French I knew was, 'ou est Michelle? - Michelle est dans la salle de classe'? I wasn’t opposed to anyone speaking French. It was only fair to ask that nobody be opposed to me speaking English.

We arrived on stage with our motley collection of original swing - skiffle - bluegrass - country - folk - rock songs. We were a peculiar sight for most of the clean-cut middle-class teenagers in their fashionably hip elephant pants and shorty leather jackets which were 'in' at that time. We were all very thin (all we had eaten for months was potatoes) and pretty scruffy. I had frayed jeans, a white tee-shirt and a worn out old black vest that I had found.

Geoff and Steve addressed the audience in English. At first they were unresponsive. We started to get to them with our happy little tunes and irreverent and, at times, naughty humour. They loved our cheap theatrics like The Popalucci Brothers; a silly skit where Steve set up Geoff and Lindsay for what looked like a dangerous acrobatic stunt but ended in an hilarious anticlimactic collapse by all of them. John and I played circus music as the three of them shamelessly milked wave after wave of applause. It was stupid but they loved it!

When we got to the tag section of Steal Away, the band was cookin'! John pounded on the old Wurlitzer piano so hard it was rocking across the stage. I swear that I could hear strings and horns coming out of it and, because we were chugging along in such a groove, I believe that the audience could hear them too. When we climaxed at the crescendo and began the last chorus ending, the crowd erupted. We were blown off the stage by the passion of the ovation. We stood for a long time as they cheered and screamed their approval. Geoff looked around at us with that Cheshire Cat grin of his and we all knew what he wanted ... God Save the Queen.

We played a rocked up, irreverent version of The Queen on special occasions. We knew instinctively that this was one of those occasions. They would either 'get it' or they would kill us. We would have accepted either.

They did get the parody. They were with us and even sung along in an entirely harmonious lampooning love-fest.

There was no Battle-of-the-Bands, there was only The Seeds of Time and the youth of Montreal. They sent me out onto the stage to accept the trophy. I didn't know what to do so I placed it in front of me and reached for my fly. Luckily, the rest of the band engulfed me and Jim whisked me out of there before I could do something stupid. Jim still has the trophy.

We adopted the bar in the Nelson Hotel directly across the street from Le Fripon Restaurant on Place Jacques Cartier as our watering hole. We were blissfully happy to spend entire days drinking glorious Canadian beer in copious quantities. In our ignorance we had no idea that upstairs, in several of the hotel rooms, a small organization that became known as the Front de Liberation du Quebec or the FLQ, was plotting a scheme designed to tear the county apart.

Based on some complicated cultural issues that remained unresolved despite a war on the Plains of Abraham and two hundred of years of bickering, the problem came down to this - Some Canadians who spoke French were angry at those Canadians who spoke English.

Instead of embracing all of the things about ourselves that bond us together as a country and as a people, things that we all agree on like falling in love, raising children, having a good job to support your family and hockey, this FLQ was about to initiate some nasty shit in an effort to get their way. Naively oblivious, we shouted, “Another round of le grande Labatts Cinquantte sil vous plaite”, and got pissed.

One afternoon at the two hundred year old farmhouse, Alfred was holding court in his living room. He was lecturing us on the “incredible” history of “incredible” modern dance in “incredible” New York City, a subject that did not interest me but he was such a compelling orator it was difficult to turn away. Still, my eyes followed in amazement the movements of Nijinski. He/she wore skin tight black pedal-pushers (or Capri-pants or whatever they’re called) and a sheer white chemise. As he/she sat beside Alfred pretending to listen attentively, he/she gazed at his/her manicured polished nails, fussed with the perfect curls of his/her short brown hair and struggled to keep his/her knees together as we all know a lady should. I was accepting but puzzled by him/her.

Suddenly Alfred stopped. Had he caught me staring at his wife and thought that I was coveting him/her? Was he consumed with jealousy and rage? He pointed a long bony finger at me.

“Your name is Rocket Norton!” he proclaimed.

There was a stunned silence.

Alfred stood up. Nijinski stood up beside him and slipped his/her hand lovingly into Alfred’s arm. “Yes! Oh, yes ... He is. He is Rocket Norton!” squealed Nijinski with glee.

I was speechless, as usual. I was also nervous and embarrassed. I did not like to be the centre of attention. I just wanted to be in the background; one of the faceless crowd. But that time was past; all eyes were on me, surveying me as if for the first time.

“Can you dig it!?” Alfred stated proudly.

“Far out!” Jim exclaimed. “What a mind fuck!”

Where Alfred came up with Rocket Norton I’ll never know but, he was right, I was Rocket Norton - I am Rocket Norton. Although it didn’t change me at first, it did change people’s perception of me. I was not so much the invisible man anymore. No longer did the rest of the guys organize clandestine meetings to discuss how worried they were because Rocky was so quite; because The Rock never spoke. Now Rocket Norton was accepted as a quiet eccentric.

In mid-September Montreal shared in a world-wide phenomenon known as Hey Jude. This Beatles single, written by Paul McCartney for John Lennon’s son, Julian, was the first on their new Apple record label and could have been the biggest hit by the biggest band in history. It was simply not possible to experience a single moment of life at that time without hearing Hey Jude on the radio or record player or just wafting in the air all around you. It was everywhere. It seemed that the whole world was singing, “Na, na, na, na-na-na-na.”

It would have gone on forever if McCartney had not written and produced a song titled, Those Were the Days, for an obscure British singer named, Mary Hopkin. The irony is that Apple terminated at a few short weeks what might have been the longest running #1 song ever by releasing Those Were the Days too soon. Only the genius of Paul McCartneycould adapt an old Russian folk song and trade the Hey Jude chorus of “Na, na, na, na-na-na-na” for the Those Were the Days’ chorus of “Da-da-da-da, da-da - Da-da-da-da, da-da” (da must be Russian for na) and score another #1 hit. Hey Jude sold five million records by December. Those Were the Days sold eight million!

We were invited back to play an encore concert at the Youth pavilion at Man and His World. The two runners-up were also invited to perform but it was clear from the enthusiastic audience that they were there to see us. We were assigned a small area backstage as a dressing room. It was really a storage room for janitorial equipment. Steve went next door to the cafeteria to get a coffee. The lady behind the counter became annoyed because he had left the assigned area and refused to serve him. Steve, who is as friendly a person as you could ever meet, attempted to charm her into releasing the coffee but she became even more agitated, calling for security. Jim, hearing the commotion, rushed to save the day. They were both apprehended by the guards and ordered to leave the grounds immediately.

“But, but, but ... I’ve gotta gig!” Steve protested.

“We’ve gotta get back to the band!” Jim argued.

It was no use. The guards stood by as Keith began to tear down the gear and throw it in Sub-A-Lub. The fans picked up that there was a problem. As the word spread that we had been thrown out of Man and His World the happy crowd quickly transformed into an angry, hostile mob. They began to throw cups, bottles and garbage. They rocked the lighting standards and pounded on the stage. They shouted obscenities at the officials. It had degenerated into a dangerous, volatile situation. A manager was called to the scene and quickly assessed the problem. He apologized to Steve and Jim and begged us to set back up and play as scheduled.

We immediately forgave and forgot. Steve and Geoff bounded out onto the stage to quell the mob. Within minutes they had the happy crowd back laughing at their zany antics. Lindsay, John and I joined them and we launched into our set.

While we were rockin’, swingin’ & rollin’, Jim was executing a little satire intended to teach the authorities a lesson in etiquette. He and Keith pretended to appropriate a 4' X 8' wooden collapsible table; they made a big show that looked like they slid it into the van and shut the door but in fact, they left it propped up on a building.

The concert was an emotional triumph. After we had gone back for several encores we finally bid fond farewell to those fantastic kids. Keith very quickly loaded the gear into Sub-A-Lub and Jim started to back out.

The police pounced from every direction at once. Even though Jim was innocent (at least of this crime), they dragged him out of the van, cuffed him and threw him into a paddy wagon. Luckily, the police station was on Rue St. Denis, only two blocks from 1201 Notre Dame. We bailed Jim out and paid his fine. The Montreal police did not get the joke and Jim flunked them in etiquette 101.

During this period we became almost exclusively an acoustic ensemble. John preferred to play an acoustic piano and, whenever one was available, he would use it; grand, baby grand, upright, spinet, in-tune, out-of-tune, with keys or without, it didn’t matter, he could make it rock. In addition to our original compositions, we did renditions of folk, bluegrass and country songs except that we would put a Seeds of Time stamp on them. When Geoff sang Jim Reeves’sorrowful ballad, He’ll Have to Go, he’d sing:

Put your sweet lips a little closer to the bone,

that sort of thing.

Life was all about the music; whatever was left over was apportioned to drugs and sex. We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, we didn't dream about worldly treasures. All we did was play music, get high on whatever was available to us and fuck girls. Then, when all that was done, we'd sit around listening, studying and discussing other people's great music.

One morning, in the afterglow of an all-night acid trip and a romp with a little French Canadian girl who spoke no English but had no communication problems, I sat cross-legged in the living area listening to Donovan's Wear Your Love Like Heaven from the December 1967 album of the same name, over and over again. Each time I would marvel at the subtlety of his guitar accompaniment and the perfectness of his diction. I was especially fascinated by the recording engineer's technique of pulling all of the effects off Donovan's voice at certain points. It made it sound as if he were sitting right next to me.

Another time, the entire group of us stayed up all night tripping on some mescaline that Frederick had laid on us, listening to a Beatles song called Flying off of their Magical Mystery Tour album. We sat enraptured, intent on every two minutes and sixteen seconds of it, leaning forward at the fade out ending to suck up every strange and wondrous note and then each and every time we’d be bowled over by the organ intro to Blue Jay Way (the next song). We'd laugh at ourselves and engage in a serious discussion about how masterfully they (The Beatles and their magician producer, George Martin)introduced instruments and simple lines throughout. Then we played it again - and again and again until the honking and swearing from the morning rush hour on Rue Notre Dame Est below drowned us out.

We did this with hundreds of records during our time in Montreal. I would have had to attend the music program at Juilliard in New York City for a better musical education. They may have disapproved of my pharmaceutical dependence, so I settled for the Rocket Norton School of Life whose motto at the time was, 'A better world through chemicals'.

Our success at Man and His World brought us more gigs around town. We played clubs on Crescent Street and a lot at McGill University. But we were living in poverty. There always seemed to be a little money for liquor and drugs but nothing for food. During our months in Montreal we ate potatoes for breakfast, lunch and, well we never ate dinner.

The only treat we got was walking a couple of miles to a Greek bakery way up St. Laurent at five o’clock in the morning when the bread came out of the ovens. We would wander back through the deserted, quiet streets, each munching on a delicious round loaf of steaming hot bread; it tasted more like cake, and fell into bed satisfied. Sometimes we would get to splurge a few extra pennies for some Greek pastries called Chocolate Kok, which, because they were made of two buns of cake filled with custard and resembled a hamburger, we called 'plastic hamburgers'.

One of our favourite things was to drop acid, score a bunch of plastic hamburgers and devour them in the back pew of Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica during the early morning mass.

Notre Dame Cathedral was a magnificent neo-gothic structure built in the early eighteen hundreds over earlier cathedrals on that designated land dating all the way back to the mid-seventeenth century. I would sit nibbling my plastic hamburger while basking in the splendor of the towering main arch glittering in gold and royal blue and framed in dazzling stained glass. I would contemplate the golden centerpiece figurine of the crucifixion of Christ glowing in the spot lights. I hoped that he approved of me being there amongst the polished floors and ornately carved dark wood of the tall pillars, rounded archways and heavy pews. I hoped He didn’t mind me admiring the stage and wondering how The Seeds of Time would sound in there.

By late October we were established in Montreal. Except for the occasional taunt that was hurled at us in French from some upper window in the narrow streets of old Montreal, we felt perfectly at home there. Then Lindsay got sick.

Jim drove him to the hospital. Some officials from the Federal Social Health Services For Youth took one look at him and seized him on the spot. He was so malnourished and run down that they brought in Health & Welfare to decide what to do with him. They called his mother, put him on a plane and sent him home to Vancouver. The rest of us were no better off than Lindsay. They would have shipped us all back in a sack if they had gotten their hands on us.

It was then that we all realized just how close we had become. We were lost without Lindsay just as we would have been lost if any one of us had been taken away.

We knew it was time to go. But we still had two gigs to play first - and good thing - gas and food cost money. Geoff filled in on guitar and we did alright. Jim also called his friend George in Nelson BC and arranged for us to play Garth's Grotto on the way home.

We packed up Sub-A-Lub and Geoff and Jocelyn’s Datsun station wagon and said a tearful farewell to all of our friends in Montreal. Geoff and Jocelyn were too weak to drive so I volunteered to drive the car. Jim, Steve, John and Keith piled into the van. Geoff and Jocelyn settled into the back seat of the car and I led the procession west. I was sad to say goodbye to the city that I had come to love so much.

It became immediately obvious that Geoff had finally found a heroin source in Montreal and had scored before we left. I drove straight through the one thousand six hundred kilometers to Thunder Bay, Ontario before either Geoff or Jocelyn uttered a word. I stopped at an A&W Drive-In just long enough to order Teen-Burgers and Root Beers and hit the road in a blinding rainstorm with Creedence Crearwater Revival’s, Suzie Q on the radio.

With my passengers stirring only to fix, I crossed the prairies in a day, roared up into the Canadian Rockies and followed a wide pristine valley down between the Purcell and Rocky Mountains to Nelson. It was on this trip where I first developed my habit of driving with a beer bottle nestled between my legs. I would take a swig from time to time as I drove. It kept me awake. I would drive the highways like this for several years before I was abruptly and painfully cured. We arrived in Nelson on the evening before Halloween. The entire forty-five hundred kilometer journey had only taken me thirty-seven hours.

I rushed up the hill to Candy’s house. She was the living doll who had made sweet love to me in Banff on the way out. She came out to greet me in the cool autumn moonlight and looked even prettier and sweeter than I remembered. I was hopeful of rekindling our romance but she quickly made it clear that it was not her intention to be my girl in Nelson. I was hurt and slunk back down the hill unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Reluctantly, I understood that she was right. Still, it mirrored the depressing attitude that I felt on our rather gloomy homecoming. What should have been a celebration of our victorious expedition was reduced to a bitter disappointment.

We played The Grotto on Halloween with a wobbly Geoff on guitar. The patrons were very kind to us but, when we were done, we hitched up the horses and rode out of town. I steered the little car up and down mountain passes and wound along precarious river gorges until the highway flattened out in the Fraser Valley and the last stretch to Vancouver.

After dropping Geoff and Jocelyn at Welch Street, I pulled up in front of my parent’s house on Fiftieth Avenue. The little house looked so safe and secure. It represented a life of predictable patterns; college, job, marriage, children, matching living room furniture, retirement, grandchildren, death. Isn’t that the way it was supposed to be? What was the matter with me?

But I wasn’t even me anymore. Gary Wanstall beget Rock Wanstall who beget Rocky Wanstall who became Rocket Norton. I had a faint memory of a chubby kid who had a dream of dangerous adventure and success in the music business. Instead of self-doubt and a lack of confidence, I now possessed an actual working knowledge that I did not measure up. If only I could continue to keep my mouth shut. Maybe nobody would notice.

I hauled my plastic bag of shredded socks up to the front door and knocked. Mom and dad were happy to see me. There’s nothing like unconditional love. They never said it but I knew they felt it ... I could smell it. You know that smell of your parents’ house? Smells like love.

Trisha returned to Vancouver a few days later. We picked up where we had left off. I didn’t ask her too much about what happened to her in England and decided that the less said about my summer trip across Canada the better. Like a junkie going cold-turkey, I went from promiscuous to monogamous overnight. We were boyfriend - girlfriend; she even had pet names for our respective parts, Bengie and Bertha. I took my girlfriend to movies and to concerts and I only had eyes for her; well, the eyes might have been roving but, Bengie was exclusively Bertha‘s. The Seeds of Time were re-grouping while Lindsay convalesced. The rest of us found asylum with our parents, so I had lots of time to fool around with Trisha.

I spent many hours listening to The Beatles’ new album officially titled, The Beatles, but known to everyone simply as The White Album. It was a double album with twenty songs written mostly while they were in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I found that, with the proper mixture of chemical enhancement, every track could sound like they were playing it inside your head. I particularly loved Dear Prudence, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Revolution1. Additionally, I acquired a new nickname in Rocky Raccoon.

I took advantage of the down time to try to improve myself. I signed up for brushes lessons at Jim Blackley's Drum Village on West Broadway between Trafalgar and Stevens. My teacher was a young, sharp drummer named Ray Ayotte. I attended several lessons. I wasn't a good student but I was impressed with my teacher. Ray was focused and deliberate and businesslike. He was also a cool guy; a radical departure from my first drum teacher.

Geoff, Lindsay, Steve, John and I were making some effort to regroup. We set up in Steve’s parent’s basement again and got together a few times to rehearse. I hung out there with Steve quite often even when we weren’t practicing. One evening, when Steve’s parents were out we went upstairs to listen to The Rolling Stones new album, Beggar’s Banquet. The Voodoo-like percussion intro of Sympathy for the Devil set an apprehensive tone and had me immediately on the edge of my seat. Then Jagger’s first verse:

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long year

Stole many a man's soul and faith

As we became aware of what Jagger was saying Steve declared, “This is one fuckin’ heavy song”:

By the time Keith Richards tore into his blistering solo I understood that I was listening to the best rock song ever recorded. After listening to songs like No Expectations, Street Fightin’ Man (which just might be the second best rock song ever recorded) and Salt of the Earth, I declared Beggar’s Banquet to be the best rock album in history.

While we had been away on our barnstorming tour of Canada, Drew Burns acquired the lease on the old Commodore Ballroom on Granville Street and started running rock shows there. His first was Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. The Commodore had been built by the George Reifel family who had enjoyed handsome profits by running their liquor down the U.S. coast during prohibition. It opened its doors December 3, 1929. In its early days it featured all the Big Bands and Vaudeville acts.

The Commodore held about twelve hundred people. You ascended a wide ornate staircase to the second floor and entered the cavernous ballroom alongside the long bar. The ceiling was high and the seating was arranged in levels around the perimeter. There were large round pillars running in two rows beside the enormous dance floor. The floor was loaded on railroad springs and, when packed, would actually bounce up and down by a few feet.

Bruce Allen booked The Seeds of Time's first gig at The Commodore for the 5^th Day Club. Our performance earned the following review:

The Seeds Of Time give forth with

homebrew philosophy a la tongue

in-cheek, couched in music that is

cleverly arranged and very, very quaint.

The Seeds can also rock ... they are

solid instrumentally to the point

of being one. In fact, they derive so

much sound from their organ, bass,

guitar and drums that in their

rendition of the circus-sounding

tune written by Charlie Chaplin

I could have sworn I heard brass.

Brain McLeod

On November 30^th Trisha and I went to see Big Brother & The Holding Company. This was the first time I had seen the legendary San Francisco band and it turned out to be their last commercial gig with vocalist Janis Joplin. She brought everyone to tears when she stopped in the middle of Piece of My Heart, turned to the band and sobbed, “I love you guys.” They played a benefit concert for the Family Dog in Frisco the next day, December 1st and then she was gone. Her solo career barely got started. She died less than a year later of a heroin overdose.

In December, we were hired to play a Battle-of-the-Bands in Rutland, BC, a tiny community just northeast of Kelowna in the Okanagan. Even though it was supposed to be a contest, we were paid to attend as a draw and were assured, 'wink, wink - say no more, say no more', of winning. We played a community centre dance in Vancouver on Friday night then packed up Sub-A-Lub to drive all night to Rutland.

Geoff, Steve and Lindsay shot heroin in the bathroom before we left. It began to snow around Hope and escalated into a heavy blizzard by the time we started up the Hope-Princeton Highway into the Cascade Mountains. This section of the highway leading up to Manning Park is steep and treacherous. The fresh powdery snow falling on top of the solid ice made the road conditions so slippery that poor little frozen Sub-A-Lub could not make it. Jim gunned it, the van fishtailed and we started sliding backwards.

“You guys have to push!” Jim ordered, “Hurry!”

None of us had any winter clothing except John. He had a big warm overcoat and a fake fur hat. It looked like the coonskin cap that Davy Crockett wore only John’s had lost its tail. John loved that cap; he called it Muskie.

So we all fell out of the van onto the icy highway struggling to stay on our feet. Slipping and sliding, we put our shoulders to the back end of the van. I was wearing loafers and the smooth leather soles made it impossible to get any traction so I kept falling on my face. Geoff, Steve and Lindsay were wasted on smack. Our task was not made any easier as each of them took breaks to throw-up in the snow.

We opened the back doors so that Jim could see us in the rear view mirror over the equipment. As we came up to the crest, and the grade eased, the van started to accelerate slightly on its own. Geoff fell into the back with Steve and Lindsay pulling themselves in after him. I ran as fast as I could but my feet could not get a grip. I dove, caught hold of the door and was just able to drag myself in too. That left John. He was running about three feet behind trying to catch up.

Jim was screaming, “I can’t stop now or we’ll never get going again! - RUN!!!”

John stumbled, lunged forward, grabbed the lip of the doorway and managed to get one foot precariously on the bumper. I caught hold of John’s heavy coat and held him in but Muskie, his beloved cap, fell off onto the snowy highway.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooo!” John screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

“I can’t stop!” Jim shouted back.

We all held John so that he wouldn’t jump out after Muskie. We lay there in the back of Sub-A-Lub holding John for a long time as Muskie got smaller and smaller until it disappeared in the darkness behind us. He mourned the whole trip. He never really got over it.

The Rutland Battle-Of-The-Bands was a contest between us, the 'professional' band from the big city, and three local bands. There was a Panel of Judges comprised of the school principal, the student council president and the head of the pep committee. The first band came out in matching blazers and started with a cover of Goody Goody Gumdrops by The Nineteen Ten Fruitgum Company. The second band was a clone of the first and attempted steps, like Paul Revere & The Raiders used to do, while playing Do Something To Me by Tommy James & The Shondells.

Jim had worked with us on a four song set that would have presented a polished, professional show. However, while watching the other contestants’ performances, we realized that the Judges criteria included points for uniforms, choreography and congeniality. We knew we were fucked.

As we were announced, and made our way to our instruments, it was still our intention to play our homogenized little set. But when Geoff looked down at the Judges table and saw the disgusted looks on their faces he turned to Lindsay and said, “Heroin.” On Geoff’s audible, our entry into the contest became our eighteen minute version of The Velvet Underground’s, Heroin. Geoff had never sung it so convincingly. He scared the shit out of everyone, including me:

I don't know just where I'm going

But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can

'cause it makes me feel like I'm a man

When I put a spike into my vein

And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same

When I'm rushing on my run

And I feel just like Jesus' son

And I guess I just don't know

And I guess I just don't know

I have made the big decision

I'm gonna try to nullify my life

'cause when the blood begins to flow

When it shoots up the dropper's neck

When I'm closing in on death

And you can't help me not, you guys

And all you sweet girls with all your sweet silly talk

You can all go take a walk

And I guess I just don't know

And I guess I just don't know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago

I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas

On a great big clipper ship

Going from this land here to that

In a sailor's suit and cap

Away from the big city

Where a man can not be free

Of all of the evils of this town

And of himself and those around

Oh, and I guess I just don't know

Oh, and I guess I just don't know

Heroin, be the death of me

Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life

Because a mainer to my vein

Leads to a center in my head

And then I'm better off and dead

Because when the smack begins to flow

I really don't care anymore

About all the Jim-Jim's in this town

And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds

And everybody puttin' everybody else down

And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

'cause when the smack begins to flow

Then I really don't care anymore

Ah, when the heroin is in my blood

And that blood is in my head

Then thank God that I'm as good as dead

Then thank your God that I'm not aware

And thank God that I just don't care

And I guess I just don't know

And I guess I just don't know

We completed our performance with a pantomime of Geoff 'fixing' himself with the microphone stand at the crescendo. The audience stood in absolute silence, afraid to utter a sound or make the slightest move. Geoff snickered, threw the microphone stand down, turned and wandered off stage.

If minus points could have been awarded I’m sure we would have received them. The school principal was so flabbergasted he tried to have the security guard arrest us. We laughed, packed up the gear and left town feeling very pleased with ourselves.

I spent Christmas at home. My mom didn’t like Trisha much. I think she thought Trisha was too harsh. Trisha had a lot of confidence and a whiskey-hush edge to her voice. She was aggressive and her sense of humour could cut close to the bone sometimes. This seemed to conflict somehow with my mother’s sense of being fair to everyone. Ironically, it was unfair of my mom to think ill of Trisha; she was always good to me.

That aside, I was thankful that I was still around. I wondered if I would make it to twenty. I figured, 'if life was a soccer match – I'd be on “stoppage” time by now'.