Читать книгу Rocket Norton Lost In Space - Rocket Norton - Страница 9

On January 18, 1969 John, Trisha and I went to see Fleetwood Mac play at the Garden Auditorium on the exhibition grounds. This was the original blues line-up of Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on bass and guitarists Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan and the great Peter Green. They played songs like Station Man and Jewel Eyed Judy (which would later appear on their fabulous Kiln House album). I loved the simple, powerful style of Mick Fleetwood on drums. This was one of the best concerts I have ever attended.

We travelled the snowy highways of British Columbia a lot that winter. Much of the province is a rain forest so, in winter, when it gets very cold in the mountains, the roads are buried under twenty feet of snow and ice. They are extremely treacherous with a very real potential of killing you at every turn. Because of the mountains you are mostly struggling to achieve enough traction to climb a steep grade or sliding precariously down an icy hill towards certain death. There are many highway curves with signs that read, “SLOW TO 10 MPH”. Some of these curves are so dangerous they have names like, “WIPSAW”. Most of the roads were carved out of the side of deep ravines so, while sliding sideways down a slope towards “WIPSAW”, there could be the edge of a two hundred foot cliff right beside you.

However, with Jim at the wheel of our trusted, Sub-A-Lub, we careened over these roads at a hundred kilometers per hour without fear or alarm. There would be at least six of us and we would often drop acid before the trip. We were like one of those early Walt Disney cartoons where Goofy’s car would be racing along a mountain highway and, at each turn, the car would sail out over the cliff in mid-air but the wheels would cling to the road and, at the last minute, pull it back to safety. I don’t know who or what pulled us back to safety but no matter how frightening the road conditions and no matter how fast we were going, I do not remember a single moment when we felt like we were in any real danger.

On one such acid-fueled road-trip, John brought along some picture cards that he got from a box of tea. This particular tea company was known for creating series' of cards and stuffing them in their tea boxes as a ploy to get you hooked on their tea. John’s cards had photos of exotic antique cars. Geoff took an instant liking to a 1927 Bugatti sports car.

He held the card up babbling, “And the Bugatti set out to take over the world. It drove on and on and on and on and on and on ... spreading the word of peace and love except that it only spoke Italian and nobody understood it and (crying now) alas, its message of salvation was lost ...”

At our last piss stop Steve had stolen a plastic flower from a gas station office. This vicious Rhododendron was now attacking everyone in Sub-A-Lub. It especially went after Geoff’s Bugatti. Sadly, the flower ate the Bugatti before its crusade of love could save the world ... now that’s 'flower power!'

For years after this, all Geoff had to say was, “the flower ate the Bugatti”, and we all understood exactly what he meant. Either he was lamenting the death of his beloved Bugatti at the petals of the cruel flower or it was a light-hearted reminder of how far we had descended into madness. An imagination is a wonderful thing but, mixed with volatile chemicals, it can only lead to one thing; insanity.

In February, on another of our drug induced trips to Nelson to play at Garth’s Grotto, we booked into two small bungalows at the Blue Top Motel. Everyone dropped more acid and we spent the day hanging out in one of the rooms watching television.

A basketball game came on the screen. My demented hallucinogenic state made me think that the ball was playing the players; that, in fact, the ball knew where it was going and used the players like robots to get it to the basket. This really started to freak me out. Somebody changed the channel to The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. He appeared so 'straight' to me.

For the first time on an acid trip I started to lose it. I slipped outside and wandered over to the empty bungalow to try to talk myself down but that made it worse. I kept thinking something was sneaking up on me and it terrified me. I went back, tried to calm myself and watched the rest of the program with everyone else. It was quite an extraordinary show with guest stars Steve Allan, Jayne Meadows and the heroic John Wayne along with regular Pat Paulson and a duet with Glen and John Hartford playing Memphis.

What saved me from freaking out and jumping off a bridge, just as my former biology lab partner had predicted, was musical guest Stevie Wonder. His first number was For Once in My Life, and it knocked me out. Then he sang Blowin’ in the Wind. It was so good it calmed me down and I sailed through the rest of the night. Still, I realized that I had taken about two hundred acid trips since the spring of 1967 and vowed that this would be my last. I almost lived up to that vow but, a few years later, there would be one more LSD trip to come.

I did quit smoking cigarettes though. I just woke up one morning and decided to quit; cold turkey. I was a lousy smoker anyhow.

Back in Vancouver, Jim knew a dealer named Bill who sold LSD, grass and hashish. Bill had an old house out on East Twenty-First Avenue at Renfrew Street in East Vancouver. Jim gave Bill the names of two bigger dealers in return for the use of the house for a year. Jim got the master bedroom on the main floor with Bill in the other bedroom.

Steve and Lindsay bunked in together in the room upstairs. Our comrade from the first barnstorming tour, Howard Diner settled into a room in the basement. The house was rundown and filthy dirty but I moved a small cot-like bed into a tiny space in the attic. I had a wooden box for a table and a small lamp with a red coloured bulb in it. I also had the Sony transistor radio that I had received for my eighth birthday.

Still newlyweds, Geoff and Jocelyn were living together at the house on Welch Street. Things were not all lovey dovey. Lindsay was hanging out with a stunning body called Jane. Jane was a woman, not a girl. She was built like Raquel Welch. She strutted around like a runway model and oozed sex from every pore.

Geoff and Jocelyn were out drinking with Lindsay and Jane one night when Geoff decided that he couldn’t keep his hands off Jane any longer. He took Jocelyn aside and explained to her, lovingly, that he felt compelled to act upon this overpowering urge. He thought he had her endorsement and scurried off with Jane. Jocelyn was not as happy with this arrangement as Geoff imagined. To fuck back she turned to the nearest man she could find ... Lindsay. Nobody knows where Geoff went with Jane, but Lindsay brought Jocelyn back to 21st and Renfrew. By the time they arrived Jocelyn had calmed down and changed her mind about fucking Lindsay to spite Geoff. Lindsay was relieved; not because he didn’t want to but because of the inevitable repercussions from Geoff after he sobered up. Jocelyn left for home and Lindsay went to bed alone in the house.

Sometime in the middle of the night Lindsay was rudely awakened by a clatter on the front porch. He could hear Geoff yelling; first in the front and then stumbling around in the back. He had come looking for Jocelyn. He assumed that she was with Lindsay and was crazy with rage and jealousy. Lindsay, sometimes an intelligent man, stayed quietly in bed and pretended that nobody was home. Geoff gave up pounding on the house and attacked his car, the Datsun that I had driven back from Montreal. Lindsay sat still in his bed and listened while Geoff kicked, and pummeled the little station wagon to a pulp. When he had exhausted himself he stopped, got in and drove the dented wreck off home.

Lindsay, shaken by Geoff’s reaction to the misunderstanding, and anxious to disentangle the situation, got up and rode his bicycle all the way to Welch Street in North Vancouver. By the time he arrived it was mid-morning. He explained to Geoff, who had, by now, slept it off, that nothing happened and they both had a good laugh about it. That is until Geoff saw what he had done to his car.

Jocelyn wasn’t at all pleased. It wasn’t long after this that Geoff arrived on his own to live at 21st and Renfrew.

John refused to move in. We were all disappointed. Geoff and Lindsay were particularly upset. This was the first time that we had not acted together and they considered John's snub as an affront to our continuity.

John had already earned the nickname, Papa John, even though he was the youngest in the group. He could be gruff and had a tendency to come off like a grumpy old man sometimes. Once, early in the morning, after driving all night, we had stopped in at a café for breakfast. When everybody’s food arrived the waitress had forgotten John’s toast. He looked up and snapped at her, “where’s my toast!?” with such a harsh tone, we never let him forget it. Another time, Geoff had reached in front of John and swiped his book of matches to light up some hash. John looked like he had been slapped. Then Geoff absentmindedly threw the matches in the garbage. John shrieked, “Hey! There were thirteen matches left in there ... WHY ME!!!???” He leaped up and dug into the trash to retrieve his matches.

John wasn't happy with the escalating use of heroin. Geoff was in the early stages of getting himself strung out and he was dragging Lindsay and Steve along. Even I was chipping from time to time. Justified or not, John's absence was cause for tension within the family.

Trisha and I met in my little attic space frequently and employed that little cot vigorously to the sounds of Marvin Gaye‘ssmash hit, Heard It Through The Grapevine blasting from the Sony. Poor Bengie was raw from overuse but still I couldn’t stop. My room didn’t have a door so I hung a gray woolen blanket across the opening. One night, as Trisha and I got it on, I could see Lindsay in his cot reading a magazine while Steve humped some girl in the cot next to him.

All of this was fine until I felt something itchy in my crotch. Upon closer inspection I was horrified to discover tiny creatures ... CRABS!!! Trisha had them too. We doused ourselves in calamine lotion, burnt all of the bedding and scrubbed the little room with enough antiseptic to sterilize an outhouse. We didn’t meet there quite as often after that.

The entire group; manager, girlfriends, dates, escorts, friends, acquaintances and anyone else that happened to be around went to see The Beatles’ new animated film, Yellow Submarine at the Totem Theatre in North Vancouver. In order to fully appreciate and understand the story of The Fab Four’s epic journey to Pepperland and the attack of the Blue Meanies and whatever else they were about to throw at us, we all toked up on some very fine hashish before we went in. The movie blew me away! To this day, I still cannot decide which song I like better, Hey Bulldog or It’s All Too Much. Regardless, George Harrison came up big. So did producer, George Martin, who wrote all of the incidental music for the film (even though some critics feel that he borrowed too much from the classics).

The general euphoria of our group was marred somewhat by Howard’s sudden hash-freak-out somewhere around the time that Nowhere Man showed up. He went running, screaming from the theatre and had to be comforted all the way home.

Perhaps to atone for his outburst, Howard shocked us all by cleaning up the kitchen the next morning. A couple of days later Bill went into his stash and discovered that five hundred hits of LSD were missing. After a frantic search of the whole house Howard realized that he must have thrown the bag out with the trash. He and Bill and Jim drove out to the city dump and spent the entire day sifting through mountains of stinky garbage. They never found the bag.

Howard was so upset, he moved out shortly after. He spent many years in India and ended up in retail in Vancouver. I never saw him again.

On March 29, 1969, The Monkees began their North American Tour in Vancouver. That same night, The Seeds of Timewere playing at Mark Derrick’s new club called The Big Mother. Jim went to see The Monkees and, after their show, brought Micky Dolenz and entourage down to The Big Mother. Micky got pushed up on stage and bounced around playing tambourine and singing back-up for a while but, he didn’t look comfortable - someone said he was stoned on acid - and made a quick but gracious exit.

The Seeds became regulars at The Big Mother. In fact, we were booked to play there a whole week. On some nights we invited Trisha up to sing Stormy Monday Blues and In My Time of Dying with us. She even stayed on to sing back-up sometimes. She had a powerful voice and I thought she raised the level of our musicianship. Jim did not agree.

After a few nights he called a huddle during a break. He chewed us out about bringing Trisha up and said that we were losing our focus on 'entertaining' ... We were supposed to be “Fun; not boring!”

He was probably right but I was told many years later by a guitarist, who attended every night of our week at The Big Mother, that he and his friend were amazed because we never played the same song twice in the entire week of four sets a night.

It’s true. We would often go on with no set list and no songs prepared. John would start something and Lindsay would jump on it. Steve and I would lay down a groove and Geoff would make up lyrics spontaneously. But we weren’t just jamming. We would actually compose songs with verses, choruses, bridges, middle eights on the spot. Our improvised songs suffered mostly from our undeveloped talent as arrangers. Our only rule was that every song “gets off!” If there was any sameness to our compositions it was that every song built to a crescendo ... we had to be exhausted at the end of every song.

Our efforts earned us a pretty good review:

The Seeds Of Time, about whom

I have been writing a great deal

lately, came up with another original

twist this time out. As far as

imagination, variety and initial

creativity goes, this group must be

the top in Vancouver.

Every time I see them I am impressed

by a new twist, a new approach or just

better programming. Last time it was jug

bands. This time it was that almost forgotten

predecessor of where it all started, the folk-

acoustic guitar, backed by a piano, drums and

bass. The soft sounds were welcomed in the darkness.

Brian McLeod

I saw a lot of great bands at the Big Mother including The Mock Duck, a very interesting jazz/rock band with guitarist Joe Mock and bassist/vocalist Rick Enns formerly of The Tom Northcott Trio and The United Empire Loyalists.

Another of Vancouver's eclectic bands was called Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck. They were led by guitarist Roger Lawand vocalist Donnie McDougall. They had a single titled, One Ring Jane. More than any other band, Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck, or Mother Tucker's for short, or Mother Fucker's for real fans, epitomized the true hippie attitude in Vancouver at that time; laid back, peaceful and drugged out.

We were playing a high school dance somewhere. Lindsay broke a guitar string and, while he was changing it, Geoff and Steve invented a routine based around an imaginary radio program starring two colourful personalities named, Jack Offenlickit and Hugo Fuckyourself.

Geoff was the sarcastic Hugo Fuckyourself who asked questions like, “Do you think, Jack, that’s it’s acceptable for a guy to go down on a girl who uses the FDS feminine product?”

Steve was the know-it-all Jack Offenlickit and would answer dryly, “You know, Hugo ... If you can get by the smell you got it licked.”

Then Hugo might say, “Whoa, did someone have fish for lunch? Now Jack, what do you think about the alarming trend of men balling with ugly women?”

Jack would answer, “Well, Hugo, I don’t have a problem with it - you don’t fuck the face now do you ... Hey folks, I’m Jack Offenlickit, here with my partner Hugo Fuckyourself, and that’s our show for tonight.” This patter could go on for twenty minutes once they got into a routine - And this at a high school dance.

There were plenty of other characters in The Seeds of Time as well. I was Rocket Norton and John was Papa John. Lindsay was Rufus Frail, Geoff was Scarface The Walnut, Steve may have been Scrotum Bagley and somebody wasRalph Hamburger. Then there was Vito and Guisseppie Popalucci and a third unnamed Popalucci brother.

We also had several bands within the band. Sometimes we were Herbert & The Herberts and other times God’s Little Children and we created two splinter groups that would act as opening acts for The Seeds of Time. They were called The Spores, a trio with Geoff on drums, and John Hall & His Orchestra; John playing keyboards and I as the orchestra.

On April 18th Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention played the Agrodome with an unknown opening act called Alice Cooper. Vincent Furnier had only just recently transformed himself into Alice Cooper and began his musical career by clearing a room of two thousand repulsed fans at his first gig in Los Angeles. Frank Zappa and would-be manager Shep Gordon were impressed and Alice was hired to open for Zappa’s entire North American tour.

After the concert Jim invited Alice and members of his band back to our place. When I arrived, the house was packed. I strolled in and noticed this foxy lady with long straight hair bent over looking in the fridge. She spun around holding a beer and I was shocked to realize that it was twenty-one year old Alice Cooper. He plopped himself down on the old tattered couch and proceeded to tell us how he was going to shock the world and then conquer it. I got the impression that he was already planning hangings, beheadings and the public execution of live chickens. Here was a guy with a very explicit dream. Mine was still a little fuzzy.

A young deejay at CKLG Radio, Steve Grossman - whose on-air name was Little Stevie Wonder because he was only a teenager when he started broadcasting - had formed a record label of his own called, Coast Records. He built a studio in a warehouse on Eighth Avenue near Cambie Street in Vancouver. We went in and recorded Steal Away, Candy Man and Muskrat Rumble with a young genius engineer named Brent Jaybush.

It took hours for Brent to get the sound the way he wanted it. I had to pound on one drum at a time for a mind numbing length of time - Then the next drum, then all of them together; then start the process all over, pounding on the first drum again. As a group we were impatient with this process. We just wanted to play!

Finally, while Lindsay and Geoff watched through the control room glass, John, Steve and I laid down a rhythm track to Steal Away with piano, bass and drums. After a few tries, which I knew were nervous and stiff, Brent invited us to come in and listen. We hurried into the sparse control room. My heart pounded as I waited for the tape machine to rewind. I was excited but afraid of what I might hear.

He pushed the play button. The song started with a drum roll on the floor tom then John counted us in:

One

(everyone answers “one”)

Two-zizzies

(everyone answers “two-zizzies”)

One-two-three-four

Then came the rinky-dink piano intro; it sounded great so far. When the drums came in, I heard for the first time my erratic, heavy-handed manner. Even Steve’s plodding bass worked with the piano but I seemed to be trying to find it. At best, I was inconsistent and that was not a desirable quality in a drummer. I could see the disappointment in Lindsay. John’s piano style was loose anyway and Geoff and Steve were not interested in boring details like excellence of musicianship, but Lindsay wished for more, and he deserved it.

We got through the session with Lindsay adding guitars and Geoff laying down a vocal. Trisha sang background vocals on the chorus. Surprisingly, despite my poor showing, it wasn’t a bad track for our first time. We completed the day by recording Candy Man and Muskrat Rumble. We were starting to get the hang of recording and even added some sound effects like a police siren at the end of Candy Man and a jet at the end of Muskrat Rumble.

Steve Grossman did not like any of these tracks to release as a single but still had faith in us. He promised another session when we had a couple of new songs that were more suitable for rock radio. In the meantime he had a big project on the go and The Seeds of Time were included.

The last weekend in May, Grossman and partners produced Vancouver’s first rock festival in a field about thirty miles up the Fraser Valley near Aldergrove. They called it the Aldergrove Beach Rock Festival. All the Vancouver bands played there including The Seeds of Time, The Black Snake Blues Band, Segment 41, The Anvil Chorus (the new rock version of the former R&B band, Jason Hoover & The Epics), and many, many more.

Trisha and I drove out together in my dad’s Toyota. There was a long line-up of cars waiting to get in and we sat listening to The Beatles’ new hit, Get Back on the radio. A group called The Fifth Dimension had a smash hit record titled, Aquarius, from the Broadway musical, Hair. The song proclaimed:

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius!

Aquarius!

The festival was situated in a large rolling meadow which was part of a farm. There were two stages; one up on a hill and another by a grove of trees on the other side of the grounds. There was a huge crowd and the whole thing was appropriately disorganized; not enough port-a-potties, long line-ups for water and food, but, nobody cared, everybody had a ball.

Segment 41 played around mid-day. Horowitz had so much energy and charisma he could have played all day and the people would have loved it.

We played later that day and again the following day. John had acquired a chopped & channeled Hammond M-3 organ and the band bought matching Acoustic amps from Kelly Deyong Sound.

Kelly Deyong was a music store and sound company supplying the sound systems for all concerts in the Vancouver area. They operated out of a bright yellow house at the corner of Fourth Avenue and McDonald Street.

Our stage was looking pretty sharp with the four tall blue and black Acoustic stacks and matching Leslie speakers on each end. Steve had also upgraded to a cherry red Gibson EBO bass. We opened with a blues instrumental shuffle by Freddie King and Sonny Thompson that had been immortalized by Eric Clapton on The Bluesbreakers album. The song was titled, Hideaway. Lindsay’s cherished off-white Les Paul guitar had finally returned from the factory, one year and eight months later (not the promised two weeks), and he was inspired; even though the guitar was now inexplicably canary yellow. He absolutely smoked Hideaway! We also introduced a song we had just lifted off a Traffic album titled, Pearly Queen. Traffic’s drummer, Jim Capaldi, was fluid, almost jazzy, but I approached the song with a heavy Mick Fleetwoodinfluenced feel riding on the toms instead of the cymbals. Then we launched into the Doors’ Backdoor Man and really started to rock.

Later that evening Trisha and I and Geoff ended up in a tent with some bikers. One of them laid a syringe and several little vials on a blanket between us. He invited us to help ourselves to some morphine. Somewhere in the back of my mind I saw images of wounded World War Two soldiers writhing in agony in their hospital beds, hopelessly addicted; screaming for more morphine. I let Geoff tie me off and shoot me a taste. Oh! Sweet sister morphine! I went numb all over. I did not care that Trisha was angry. I did not care that she was disgusted. I did not care about anything ... Only getting another shot. That wasn’t going to happen. Trisha dragged me out of there and I never saw visions of those poor wounded soldiers again.

Summer arrived and the weather was getting hot. Trisha and I went to a party in Kitsilano with all of The Seeds. The house was a big old three-story type built in the twenties all over Kits. There were few rooms on the main floor but they were spacious with high ceilings. The place was packed with hippies. There was a lot of wine, pot and hash. The lights were low and it was smoky and mellow. I heard some commotion in the kitchen and drifted in that direction to see what was happening. I was surprised to find Trisha in a heated exchange with Ron, the speed dealer.

“Aw come on, Honey,” Ron pleaded, “drop your laundry.”

Trisha laughed at him, “I don't think so ... Why don't you take off your clothes.”

Heroin had taken over from speed in his life. He was stoned on junk but that didn't stop him. He ripped off his shirt, dropped his trousers and pulled down his shorts and was naked before anyone could blink.

“Okay, Sunshine.” he grinned. “Now it’s your turn.”

Trisha stood thinking for a moment then gulped back her wine and stripped off her dress and panties. I was shocked. We all were. Then everybody began to peel off their clothes and within minutes everybody in the house was naked. Reluctantly, I took off my tee-shirt and jeans and the first nude party of the summer was flapping in the breeze.

I did not like our nude party phase. I suppose that I always wondered if I was packing the proper size in the genital department. I’m not really sure because I have never been curious about those belonging to other males and have tended to avert my eyes in public washrooms, showers and at camp. Most importantly, I have not had any complaints or returns from any females that may have been serviced over the years; at least not in terms of mass. Certainly there have been occasions when the flesh was willing but the spirit couldn’t get it up (with me, an erection was more of a spiritual thing – it had less to do with fleshy desires) but that had nothing to do with size.

Of course, all vaginae are not all the same size either. Some are tighter than others, some are wetter than others; some are hotter than others. This all has an effect on the poor erect penis which has no intelligence of its own and, worse, appropriates whatever is contained in its host brain rendering it empty and therefore stupid. This explains the moronic behavior of men in an aroused condition.

All I know is that once a fad like this was started it couldn’t be stopped. It did have its advantages. There was the stunning woman named Jane who had partly caused the break-up of Geoff and Jocelyn. When Jane slipped out of her little dress I suddenly appreciated the nude party. She displayed her Raquel Welch-like body and flounced around like a Playboy model. But for every Jane there are many non-Janes and that can quickly dampen the enthusiasm for nudity. Additionally, there is no sight in the world less stimulating than a naked man in black socks and there always seemed to be somebody in black socks.

After the novelty wore off, everybody at the party ended up wandering around talking and laughing and generally cavorting as if everything was normal except, in this case, everyone was naked.

When I met up with Trisha, I expressed my surprise, “I can't believe that you instigated this whole thing. It doesn't seem like you.”

She shrugged her bare shoulders and said, “I had to call his bluff.”

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in an oversized armchair in the middle of the living room with Trisha’s thighs straddling me and her breasts slapping against my face. She was riding me up and down while we were surrounded by a hundred disinterested naked people. Like I said, “penis up - brain down”.

As a band, we would go anywhere at any time to play a gig. We thought nothing of piling into Sub-A-Lub and zigzagging up the mountain highways to play for anybody that wanted us. On one such trip to Penticton in the Okanagan we pulled over for gas in a one-pump town called, Hedley; population - maybe three hundred. Years ago Hedley had been a bustling mining town but the mine had closed in 1955 and had been neglected ever since.

Geoff, Jim and I wandered up into the enormous dilapidated steel and wooden structure. It was like the site of some sci-fi horror film with old hulking machine-creatures rusting in the darkness. We climbed on the machine-creatures and played all throughout the ruins for quite a while. The mine hung precariously on the side of a steep cliff. We sat out on the rocks on a bluff that allowed us a panoramic view of the Similkameen Valley. Jim fantasized with an idea to build a theatre here, on this spot, right on the side of this mountain, where The Seeds of Time would play and people would come from all over the world to see and hear us. Some twenty years later a promoter did stage a music festival in Hedley then moved it to Merritt BC where it has become one of the biggest Country Music Festivals in the world. Maybe Jim wasn’t crazy. Not completely anyway.

When we got back to the gas station and Sub-A-Lub and the rest of the guys Geoff told everyone what Jim was planning. The man who worked behind the counter looked up in amazement.

“You can’t go up into the mine!” He exclaimed.

“It was far out, man.” Geoff answered.

“But it’s full of snakes ya fool!” The man shouted.

“Snakes?” Geoff repeated; all the colour draining from his face. “There’s snakes?” His knees wobbled.

“And the pile of shit is gonna fall down any day now,” he added walking away shaking his head. “Damn fools.”

“I hate snakes,” he hissed. “I hate ‘em.”

We got back into Sub-A-Lub and went on up to Penticton to play. When we returned two days later we got stuck in a huge traffic jam coming into Hedley.

“What’s the problem officer?” Jim asked the RCMP officer who was directing traffic.

“Mine collapsed,” he answered. “The whole thing crashed down onto the highway. It’s a miracle nobody was hurt. There’s going to be a delay as we clear the debris.”

“Holy shit!” we all exclaimed in unison.

My Ludwig Hollywood drum set was stolen out of Sub-A-Lub one night. They smashed in a window and took off with the kit. Fortunately for me, my dad had arranged insurance on all of our gear. We may have been the only rock & roll band in the world with insurance in those days thanks to him. With the pending insurance money I ordered a new wood-finish set of Ludwigs from a friend of Jim’s. He owned a small music store across the street from our house on 21st. He lent me an old Rogers champagne sparkle set until the new kit arrived.

We were playing a lot of gigs all the time and were earning top dollar for local bands in those days. But nobody in the band received a penny in wages. All of our revenue went back into the band; to purchase equipment, strings and sticks and to pay for repairs and maintenance. Jim handled all of the money and ensured that drugs, booze and food were also provided. John was not happy with this arrangement because he lived at home and felt that the band’s money should not pay for our recreation.

We played a high school dance and, as usual, Jim collected our fee. He did not return to the house. In fact, he disappeared for days. When he did turn up he admitted that he had taken our money from the high school gig and had gone off to Los Angeles. Geoff, Steve, Lindsay and I were pissed off but, Jim had done a lot for us, and we found it hard to remain angry with him.

However, Jim was the one who was angry ... and disappointed. The Seeds of Time was not developing into the “Fun - not boring” entertainment icon that Jim had envisioned for us. Life became very tense at the house.

One night Geoff, Lindsay and Steve concocted a scheme designed to shake Jim up. They grabbed him, tied him up and blindfolded him and threw him in the back of Sub-A-Lub. I was commissioned as the driver. We drove way out into the valley near Hope and pulled off the highway onto a deserted dirt road. They opened the door and pushed Jim out. We drove away and left him alone, lying at the side of the road in the dark.

After about twenty minutes we went back and picked him up. We told him that this was his punishment for stealing money and pointed out that we must really care a lot to go through all of this trouble. Jim appreciated the cheap theatrics of our little skit and joined in the laughter all the way home. We all hoped that our tough-love exercise had brought us all closer together.

We were wrong. Jim’s dissatisfaction deepened. He became aloof and distant. Then he disappeared again. Some said he went back to L.A. but, wherever he went, we were left without a leader.

The house at 21st & Renfrew had become a sty that was unlivable even for us. Bill, our benefactor, announced that he had found a big house out on South East Marine Drive near Boundary Road in Burnaby. The place was spectacular. It was a grand old house with a full basement, main floor and large attic. Altogether, it provided eight bedrooms and had a large parking lot with a two car garage. It featured a panoramic view of the Fraser River and had an orchard in the back. The only drawback was that there was an old man living in a small room in the basement. We didn’t think he would bother us much so we moved in. Bill and Geoff took the rooms in the attic while Steve, Lindsay and I moved into three of the five bedrooms on the main floor.

We convinced John that we needed to live together as a group so that we could rehearse at all hours and generally immerse ourselves in a wholly creative environment. He half-heartedly moved in a bed, a table and a lamp. Then he attached a padlock to his door, locked it up and went back to his parents' house. This did not sit right with everyone but we let it slide for the moment.

Our little squabbles were made to look petty on July 3rd when the world was stunned with the news that Rolling Stone’sfounder and former leader, guitarist Brian Jones was discovered dead in the swimming pool at a friend’s house in London. His death was shrouded in mystery and suspicion; there was bad blood between Brian and Mick Jagger. Additionally, Keith Richards had recently impregnated Brian’s girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Nobody ever really knew what happened.

Bill arrived home one day with a friend of an associate of his in Seattle. His name was Terry. He was white, short and slight of build with a huge afro. We needed someone to help move our equipment, and he seemed a perfect replacement for Howard, so he moved in.

Geoff’s poor little Datsun station wagon had not really survived the shit-kicking he had given it while mad at Lindsay and Jocelyn for allowing him to ball Jane. We traded it in for a brand new Datsun 510 station wagon. It was a hot little car; white with racing red pin striping and fat tires with shiny mag wheels.

On August 9th I went to see a new English band called Blind Faith. It starred guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker both from Cream, Stevie Winwood from Traffic and Rick Grech from Family. The media had coined a new term for them, 'Supergroup!' And they were that to me.

I had loved Cream, especially Ginger Baker, but had missed them when they played Vancouver in 1968. This was my chance to see him play in person. He didn’t disappoint. Simply put, Ginger Baker is the best rock drummer I have ever heard. He probably won’t like to hear this because I understand that he considers himself a jazz drummer and may deem my compliment unworthy but, nonetheless, his performance this night was infinitely important to my painfully slow development as a rock drummer. It was his technique that really knocked me out; the precise way in which he struck the drum. The execution of each and every hit was perfect; whether a simple single stroke or a complex flurry of multi-stroke rolls. He was like Rudolf Nureyev with sticks. And he was a master of time and syncopation. His drum solo, which he played partially in 5/4 time, was so good that I swore I would never play another drum solo myself because I had heard the best - why clutter the world with something inferior? (This was an oath which was impossible to uphold).

After seeing and hearing Ginger Baker in person I suddenly understood that I could do so much more with my bass drum; that I could play pick-ups and grace notes and that the bass drum could accent the bass player’s line for emphasis. I was like a child with a new toy; I couldn’t get enough.

To compliment my newly-inspired enthusiasm, my new wood-finish Ludwigs arrived. The kit featured one rack tom and two floor toms. The second floor tom made an ideal beer table.

By chance I also discovered another musical passion that would help me improve as a drummer. I bought a gorgeous Gretsch G3303 acoustic guitar from Columbia Music on Columbia Street in New Westminster. I also bought a book titled, 4,400 Guitar Chords. I spent hour after hour studying that book and struggling to learn and play the guitar. There were several arrangements at the back of the book. I swear the arrangement of I’m in the Mood for Love had almost all of the 4,400 chords in it. I had little talent for playing the guitar but I kept at it anyway.

A few days later we played a gig at Marc Derek’s newest place on Granville Street. He had gutted one of the old movie palaces on Granville Street called The Colonial and turned it into a concert hall. One of the first shows there was The Seeds of Time on August 15th.

Lindsay had been experimenting with open tunings on his guitar. One day in rehearsal they plugged his Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar into John’s Leslie speaker and he de-tuned into an open D tuning. Incorporating the full open-tuning and the feedback it created, he wrote a very powerful piece titled appropriately Darr-Darr-Darr because that’s what it sounded like. We opened with it and tried to get the audience up on their feet but they spent the entire set sitting cross legged on the wooden floor. Maybe they were stuck to it because the floor had just been freshly painted and was not quite dry by the time we opened.

After the show, the large crowd poured out onto Granville Street and stood, loitering, on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. A police car pulled over. Two cops got out and began to push people along. People didn’t like being pushed and quite quickly they became angry and the scene turned ugly.

The police arrested a young woman for drinking in public. A paddy wagon and several more police cruisers pulled up. Ron, the speed dealer cum heroin addict friend of ours, attempted to rescue her. While they stuffed the young woman into the paddy wagon Ron and another friend ran out into the intersection at Dunsmuir Street and took on the whole squad. After a short but heroic battle they were subdued and tossed in the wagon. Someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle that smashed into the side of the wagon. The cops retaliated, rushing into the mob and grabbing two people even though they had nothing to do with it. Into the paddy wagon they went as well.

Jeff, Geoff, Lindsay, Steve and Terry were leaving the theatre by the stage door which was around the corner on Dunsmuir Street. They heard the ruckus, came around, looked in the wagon and saw Ron‘s face behind the bars. Jeff tried to reason with the officers but was told to butt out. The wagon took off for the city jail.

Jeff, Geoff, Lindsay, Steve and Terry jumped into the Datsun and tore off after the paddy wagon with a legion of irate hippies marching towards the jail on foot. Everybody knew they would be taken to Police Headquarters at 321 Main Street at Hastings Street.

The car pulled up in front and parked on the street. The mob arrived shortly after on foot. They rushed up the two flights of stairs and through the glass doors into the foyer of the police station. The Sergeant refused to talk to the mob so Jeff, Geoff and their friend, Davy stayed on to negotiate a release while the rest waited in the hall. Lindsay’s father was a Justice of the Peace so Lindsay telephoned him from the payphone on the landing half way down the stairs.

He related the story and the injustice of it all.

“Get out of there now!” screamed Lindsay’s father. “They won’t put up with it!”

The glass doors crashed open and the riot squad marched down the stairs six abreast with batons banging on shields. Lindsay backed down the stairs but Terry and others did not. They were scooped up and incarcerated. The whole works poured out onto the sidewalk where the battle escalated. Three cops had a hold of Geoff and bashed his head on a parking meter before throwing him in the tank. It really wasn’t much of a battle. The Chief read them the riot act and told everyone to go home.

Davy, in a fit of nobility, threatened, “Then take me too.”

They did.

Terry and Davy got off on some technicality but Geoff got thirty days for damaging a parking meter.

On that very weekend, on a farm in upstate New York a phenomenon called Woodstock was spinning gloriously out-of-control. What had begun as a concert venture by two promoters had developed into a city of a half million people; most of whom were half-naked and covered in mud. Many of the world’s most popular bands showed up to play; The Who, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, Joe Cocker and my old friends, Country Joe & The Fish.

Joe McDonald summed up the sentiment of an entire generation of young Americans with his eloquent mantra, Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag:

Gimme an F!

F!

Gimme an U!

U!

Gimme an C!

C!

Gimme an K!

K!

What's that spell ?

FUCK!

What's that spell ?

FUCK!

What's that spell ?

FUCK!

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,

Uncle Sam needs your help again.

He's got himself in a terrible jam

Way down yonder in Vietnam

So put down your books and pick up a gun,

We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam;

And it's five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain't no time to wonder why,

Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on generals, let's move fast;

Your big chance has come at last.

Gotta go out and get those reds —

The only good commie is the one who's dead

And you know that peace can only be won

When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.

And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam;

And it's five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain't no time to wonder why

Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,

Why man, this is war a-go-go.

There's plenty good money to be made

By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,

Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,

They drop it on the Viet Cong.

And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam.

And it's five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain't no time to wonder why

Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on mothers throughout the land,

Pack your boys off to Vietnam.

Come on fathers, don't hesitate,

Send 'em off before it's too late.

Be the first one on your block

To have your boy come home in a box.

And it's one, two, three

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam.

And it's five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain't no time to wonder why,

Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Richie Havens mesmerized the audience with his hypnotic guitar strumming and emotional chanting of the song, Freedom. Joan Baez sent shivers to the core of every single soul as she stood alone on the stage at night in front of five hundred thousand people singing a cappella the spiritual, Swing Low Sweet Chariot. And, never had The Star-Spangled Banner sounded more relevant than Jimi Hendrix’ searing rendition. They were going to need it more now than ever.

We were scheduled to play a date in Edmonton but Geoff was in jail serving his time for storming the police station. It was a big gig at an arena called the Kinsmen Field House. We were broke, as usual, and needed the money so we hatched an idiotic plan to stick Terry out front as our lead singer/mascot. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was the best we could do on an empty stomach.

I was about to take my first ever airplane ride. We arrived at the old Vancouver Municipal Airport on a beautiful, clear day. There, gleaming in the sunshine out on the Tarmac was our shiny four-prop Viscount. The Viscount had forty-three seats but there were only nine passengers in total on board; Lindsay, Steve, John and I plus our stand-in singer Terry, Geoff's former brother-in-law who was also our new soundman Jeff, and three businessmen.

We sat together at the back and the businessmen huddled together at the front. Even with such a small contingent there were still four stewardesses on board to cater to our every need. All four of them spent the entire flight back with us mixing cocktails and flirting like schoolgirls. The poor businessmen went dry. This was in an age before the Women’s Movement had taken over, so 'fly-girls' was still a euphemism for 'party-girls'. These girls bent over backwards to enlarge their reputation. They poured us off the plane in Edmonton happy, satisfied customers. One of them filled my pockets with tiny liquor bottles for later.

The Kinsmen Field House was an enormous hangar-like room with a dirt floor. Edmonton is in northern Alberta, home to cowboys and oil barons, and can get bitterly cold in winter, so the Kinsmen Field House was built so that humans could play soccer in the winter without freezing to death. Unfortunately, they also used it for rock shows. It was cruel punishment for all the bands on the bill including the great local bands, Willy & The Walkers with Willy McCaulder and Graham & The Wafers featuring organist/vocalist Bruce Nessel.

In a normal situation the terrible acoustics would have made us sound like shit but, in this case, it actually helped us because few people could tell that we had no lead singer and generally stunk the place up. The only person who did notice was the promoter, a pretty young hippie/cowgirl with plenty of curly hair and wearing a fringed buckskin jacket. Her name was Sorelle Saidman. She didn’t seem too pissed off and paid us anyway.

After the show, we booked into the Greenbrier Hotel in downtown Edmonton with a newly acquired entourage of partiers in tow. We had two adjoining rooms for the whole group. Almost instantly Jeff had the connecting door open and had instigated a nude party. John was appalled and I still hadn’t acquired a taste for public nudity so we went off and found a booth in the hotel lounge. We sat in there, drinking Blue Mondays until they threw us out.

Twice during the evening we laughed, watching through the lounge window, as the police arrived to quell the noise from our rooms. On the third try, they shut it down. When I got back Jeff, Lindsay, Steve and Terry were passed out naked on the floor with all of the doors open and all of the lights on.

We were all hung over when we flew home the next day; much to the disappointment of the sky waitresses who were hoping to party with us again.

Geoff got sprung and life returned to its usual chaos. We played a week at the Village Bistro. John Hall & His Orchestraopened the show with The Spores coming on for a set before the headline act, The Seeds of Time.

With John on piano and organ and me, his orchestra, on drums we were a drastic departure from the music of The Seeds of Time. We played a blues instrumental titled, Watermellon Man and Sunny by Bobby Hebb and even a version of Blue Rondo a la Turk, the experimental jazz masterpiece from The Dave Brubeck Quartet album titled, Time Out. The piece was radical in 9/8 time. It was blasphemous for me to even attempt to cover drummer Joe Morello’s brilliant work on this tune, counting 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3 all the way through the piece, but I was nothing if not profane.

The Spores, with Geoff on drums, was more of a raw rock trio. Lindsay and Geoff wrote a song titled, My Home Town, which they debuted that night.

We were booked to go right back up to Edmonton and play at the Kingsway Hotel. The Kingsway featured what was considered to be the biggest beer parlour in Canada. We played Friday and Saturday and the place was jammed both nights.

Edmonton was a city with a rich musical scene. There were many great bands like Willy & The Walkers, Stoney Plain(who had just changed their name from Graham & The Wafers), Privilege, The 49th Parallel and Wes Dakus & The Rebels. The city was home to many incredible musicians such as guitarists Pat Coleman and the exquisite Gaye Delorme. Even though Gaye was a world class guitarist he would achieve immortality in the 1980’s for a profanity-laced novelty song he wrote titled, The Rodeo Song. Radio stations had fun playing it with bleeps over all the “fucks”.

With Geoff back we rocked the joint and made a lot of new fans that weekend. We were provided with rooms upstairs. They weren't fancy but there were lots of them. We each had a room to ourselves so we left our doors open to allow the party to extend from room to room.

After the gig on Saturday night Steve met a girl and presented her to the band. Her name was Donna; she was just seventeen. She looked like one of those luscious Vargas Girl drawings that men drooled over in the Playboy Magazines. It wasn’t just her cascading blonde hair and gorgeous face, those big blue eyes and pouting red lips, it wasn’t just her long legs, and fabulous breasts ... she was more; much more. Her most impressive asset was her attitude. Many girls have mastered the 'come fuck me' look, which men are powerless to resist, but Donna went way beyond that. Hers was more like an 'are you worth it?' assessment. She’d size you up in such a way that made you know that she could eat you alive and spit you out if she felt like it and you had no say in the matter. And she did all this with a sex-kitten purr; like a real life Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy.

Donna took us to a late night party at a house in the University district where Geoff put the moves on her. She was impervious to his advances; she only had eyes for Steve. Geoff was unused to rejection. He was about to take another futile shot when he noticed something slide past his foot. He looked down and saw a ten-foot Boa Constrictor slither out from under the sofa. He froze in fear.

“Get me outta here!” he screamed and was led from the house by Jeff never to return.

The snake’s name was Rosie and she turned out to be very sweet. She loved to smoke pot. She curled up behind me on top of the back of the sofa and held her head out in front of me; watching as I puffed on a giant spliff. I was told to blow the smoke on her face and I did. As Rosie inhaled, her head drooped until it rested in my lap like a puppy. With Geoff out of the picture Donna grabbed Steve and they disappeared into a bedroom together.

When we flew back to Vancouver Donna followed. She was smitten with Steve and hitched a ride with two male friends to be with him. The friends turned out to be junkies. They infuriated Donna when their first stop in Vancouver was at a house in Kitsilano where they scored a large quantity of heroin. She was sickened as they made her sit impatiently in the living room of the filthy shack while they both did up. They kept her there as a virtual prisoner for several days as they hit up over and over again.

Her anger turned to frustration and then into fear as her companions floated aimlessly in a junkie high; giving no indication that they would ever let her go. She was a tough broad and finally convinced them to drive her to Steve. She was disgusted by the scene she had been forced to witness. Sadly, it wouldn’t be long before this beautiful young girl would make those guys look like tea-totallers.

She showed up at our doorstep unannounced and jumped into Steve’s arms. The two newly united lovebirds rushed into Steve's room, shut the door and were not seen again for three days. Our house was never the same. During this and future odysseys the house would be rocked to its very foundation.

My own love making efforts next door with Trisha were hardly earth shattering. I was still just as uptight and self-conscious between the sheets as I was on the street. I was a fumbler - I poked around without any purpose. I had no strategy.

One day, I would discover that great sex is derived from intense rapture. One day, I would let go of my inhibitions and let the madness possess me. One day I would learn to embrace my unrestrained lust and succumb to raw, savage, pounding, thrashing, screaming sex. That day was not today.

Trisha had not actually moved in with me. She kept some things in my closet and stayed over many nights but she didn't like the house or my house-mates.

Right from the get-go Trisha disliked Donna. The boys in the house worshiped the ground Donna walked on; everyone was spellbound by her. Trisha was only tolerated by these same guys. It was natural for Trisha to be resentful. Most girls hated Donna. Only strong confident women could stand her. She was too much of a threat.

One of the most popular sports at our house was a competitive bout of repartee. Although Lindsay possessed the greatest intellect and Geoff and Steve had the acid tongue, nobody could beat Donna at this game. Her two favourite retorts were, “Eat my shorts” and “Sit on my face” - there’s no come-back for that. Geoff loved these expressions and slipped them into his own vernacular, but nobody could say it like Donna.

Back when we had lived in Montreal, Lindsay had met a lovely girl named Sandi. She was from Toronto but had been going to school in Montreal when we were there. Lindsay had stayed in touch with her and invited her out to Vancouver. She came west and moved in with him (and with us). Sandi was an olive skinned beauty with dark eyes and an easy laugh. She was intelligent and big-city sophisticated. She brought a touch of elegance into our otherwise unrefined world.

We were still festering over John’s reluctance to embrace the family that we had become. We sat around our kitchen table one night and concluded that John’s thinly veiled façade of living with us was upsetting our household. We decided that we could not tolerate a padlock in our house any longer so Geoff smashed it off with a hammer and put John’s few sticks of furniture out in the parking lot. When John arrived the next day, he saw his stuff out there and became incensed. He quit, and we fired him, and he drove off with his few possessions. John’s coming and going like this would continue for the rest of our lives.

The Seeds of Time had become something of an enterprise by this time. However, almost all of our earnings went back into the band, to buy equipment and to pay for promotional materials. We were also developing a taste for nice hotels and would sometimes spend the entire amount of our gig’s fee on a suite of rooms at a first-class hotel. On rare occasions, after a particularly good run of gigs we would actually pay ourselves a small 'bonus'.

This was one of those occasions. We each received one hundred and eighty dollars. Geoff had been holding John’s cheque and, in the heat of the quarrel, had inadvertently forgotten to hand it over.

Later, sitting around our kitchen table staring at the cheque, we couldn’t decide what to do.

Donna came waltzing past and suggested, “Why don’t we have a party on John?”

Steve and Geoff lit up. Steve hugged Donna and spun her around. “Baby, that’s a half a great idea!”

Geoff telephoned the swankiest restaurant in Vancouver, Hy’s Encore Steak House. This was long before Vancouver became internationally renowned for fabulous restaurants and gourmet cuisine. In those days, if you wanted to mingle with diamonds and mink, Hy’s Encore was your only option.

When our party of ten, comprised of the four remaining band guys plus Donna, Trisha and Sandi, Bill, Terry and Geoff's former brother-in-law Jeff, arrived at the door the maitre’d was aghast. He was quite visibly shaken and recoiled to the safety of his little desk. The manager was called to repel the barbarians before any of the real patrons spotted us. It was, in fact, the owner, Hy Aisenstat himself who, in his wisdom, procured a loaner sports jacket for Bill and personally ushered us to a private room. With a wink, he gave instructions to the staff to take special care of us. Although that probably meant, 'Do not allow any of this rabble to co-mingle with the real patrons', his thoughtful action made life-long fans of each of us.

The banquet room looked like King Henry VIII’s bedroom with heavy dark wood and blood red velvet curtains. We feasted like kings (and queens) on gigantic bloody steaks grilled to perfection washed down with gallons of excellent French wine. We began with Caesar Salads prepared right at our table and finished with incredibly sweet flaming desserts complemented by more fiery drinks; all in copious quantities. Bill, feeling quite the gentleman indeed in his borrowed lime green sport coat, gave the party a real boost by passing around a hash pipe throughout. The most amazing thing of all is that John’s one hundred and eighty dollar 'bonus' paid for the whole dinner although Bill contributed a generous tip. That wouldn’t even buy a bottle of good wine at Hy's today.

Jeff was looking for a place to live after his shack on Welch Street had been demolished so he moved into John’s room. Jeff was an intelligent guy and a man‘s man; the type that could do anything. He took over the management duties from Jim. In doing so he would elevate The Seeds of Time to the next level in the budding music industry in Vancouver. One of the first things he did was up-grade our equipment. The Acoustic amps were great but they were driven by transistors and were clean sounding. Jeff believed that we would sound better with tube driven Marshall Amplifiers. We went into Kelly Deyong’s and traded the Acoustics in on Marshall 'stacks'. Jeff was right; it gave us a grungier dirty rock sound that suited us better.

The other major upgrade was more traumatic. Sub-A-Lub was very sick; suffering from old age before his time. We had used him well and he had served us faithfully. The fact that we were still alive was in part due to the dependability of that loyal friend. After a solemn ceremony Sub-A-Lub was retired to stud. He was replaced by a spanking new Ford Econoline stretched van. It was white, to match the Datsun, and Jeff had had it fitted with amber running lights, white fog lights and additional red lights in the rear. It looked like a mini-semi-truck.

We played a gig at the Garden Auditorium in benefit of Dan McLeod, the owner and editor of the local 'underground' newspaper called The Georgia Straight, who had been arrested again. In the sixties The Straight was a radical rag publishing anti-establishment editorials and far-out cartoons by artists like Robert Crumb. This tended to dunk Dan in perpetual hot-water with the police and provided him with a home-away-from-home at the city jail. Consequently, these benefits happened regularly and The Seeds of Time were always there to bail Dan out.

Since John’s departure, we had continued as a four piece with Geoff sometimes playing guitar. He bought a black Fender Stratocaster. This was a 'pre-CBS' Stat built in the Leo Fender days. It was a beauty. The wholly creative environment that we had hoped to establish at the Burnaby house had indeed occurred although sadly, without John. We played two new compositions at The Gardens.

These songs were written late at night, usually high on heroin. We sat around the card-table that was the centre-piece of our kitchen while Geoff, Lindsay and Steve wrote a piece called, Make Me Immortal. Steve and I were still nineteen and Geoff and Lindsay barely twenty. We lived for the day, for the hour for the minute. I know I wasn’t consciously living the adage, 'Live hard - die young', but I was doing it anyway. Personally, I didn`t have a death wish - I had a life wish. Make Me Immortal was written as a prayer:

I-M-M-O-R-T-A-L

Immortal.

Make me immortal

I’d like to live forever

I don’t want to die

Today - or tomorrow.

Make me immortal

I don’t want to die

I can live forever, if I try.

Make me immortal

I don’t want to be forgotten

‘Cos that would be so rotten

If I were to be forgotten.

Make me immortal

I’d like to be remembered

As the one who made you sigh

As the one who made you cry

As the one who spread your little thighs

Make Me Immortal was borrowed from our swing/rag-time phase in Montreal. It was played in a swing-shuffle feel but, without John’s great piano touch, it came off with a harder rock edge.

The other new song was titled, Mr Dirty and it was written for the old man who lived in our basement. He lived alone in the one room bedroom down there. He was personally filthy and his room was worse. You could smell him all over the house. He drove an ancient motorcycle of First World War vintage. He even wore a leather cap and goggles that made him look like a WWI flying ace. You could see into his hovel though the cracks in the boards that separated him from the rest of the basement. Geoff claimed the old man kept jars of semen on the shelves. It's not surprising that he inspired a song titled, Mr. Dirty.

We begged him to move out but he stubbornly refused. No matter what we did, we could not coerce him to leave. One night we placed our sound system speakers up to the vent that led downstairs and played real loud. That’s when we wrote the song. The music was mostly Lindsay and the lyrics mostly Geoff but Steve jumped in on both. It was a funky heavy-rock feel with a lot of back beat. The lyrics would never win a Pulitzer but they did have a certain charm just the same:

(Blood-curdling scream) - DIRTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Dirty

Livin' in my basement suite

Mr. Dirty

Creeps every girl that he meets

Mr. Dirty

Eats every thing that he meets

Mr. Dirty

Dirty!

Mr. Dirty

Leave you in a cold, cold sweat

Mr. Dirty

Keeps everything he can get

Mr. Dirty

He’s a guy you’ll never forget

Mr. Dirty

Dirty!

Watch out for Mr. Dirty

If you’re walkin’ home from a show

He’ll offer a ride

But don’t step inside

‘Cause he always takes the long way home.

That’s him it’s Mr. Dirty

He’s hangin’ around your school

At recess time, he might give you a dime

He might give you a quarter next time.

Mr. Dirty

Always got his hand in my shorts

Mr. Dirty

Gonna end up in the courts

Mr. Dirty

For thinkin’ all those filthy thoughts

Mr. Dirty

Dirty!

Mr. Dirty

He’s in a cold, cold sweat

Mr. Dirty

Takes anything he can get

Mr. Dirty

He’s a man you’ll never forget

Mr. Dirty

Dirty

Mr. Dirty

Went away one morning and...

Never said goodbye to the band

None of us will ever cry

‘Cause we know he’s satisfied

‘Cause we know he’s satisfied.

Mr. Dirty - Oooooooo, La La la

Mr. Dirty - Oooooooo, La La la

Mr. Dirty - Oooooooo, La La la

Mr. Dirty - Oooooooo, La La la

The song tags along with Geoff scatting dirty lyrics until it breaks down into a quiet, funky, syncopated groove. Geoff would then proceed to tell an obscenely explicit pornographic story that involved a lot of, “dewy thighs”, “dewy flicking tongues” and “dewy donut holes” (he loved to say the word, “dewy“). He also used a lot of picturesque words like, “buttocks” and “stiffen” and phrases like “taut-to-the-touch”. After he had grossed everybody out he would begin to sing softly, “Mr. Dirty -Oooooooo, La La la” over and over building louder and louder until he signaled the band with a scream that made every gut-wrenching scream you have ever heard sound polite by comparison. Upon hearing this scream you would expect to see pieces of lung and larynx coughed up on the stage. Lindsay then sawed off a blistering solo until climax. Mr. Dirty became an instant Seeds of Time classic; a 'must-play' at every gig we ever played after this night.

Like John before her, Trisha did not approve of our use of heroin. It was becoming increasingly depressing at the house. After gigs the band would drive to a house near Fraser Street and Fifth Avenue and wait in the car while Jeff went in to score. I was not using at the time so the arrangement was that they would cop and I’d receive a bottle of Chivas Regal scotch. We would go home and Geoff, Lindsay and Steve would line up in the hallway outside the bathroom while Jeff main-lined them one by one.

It wasn't long before Donna joined the line. She was a lovely girl who followed her heart. All she wanted was to be with the man she loved, to experience what he was experiencing. It was heartbreaking to watch.

Her descent into heroin addiction was as rapid as it was absolute. When it was her turn, she'd kneel in front of Jeff, thrust her chest out and beg, “Please Jeffy, make it a good one.” She learned early on that she could get what she wanted from men by flaunting her assets.

Jeff, unable to resist her, would load her up. She was often lucky the dosage didn't kill her. This wasn't Jeff's fault; he was just trying to be nice. It was tragic to stand by and witness this beautiful girl, on her knees on the bathroom floor, slapping her bruised arm to get a vein up.

Trisha would hide in our room while this went on. I'd settle in the living room with my bottle of scotch and watch as they shuffled in one by one. Then we would argue about which was worse, smack or booze. Sometimes Trisha would join in the argument but it was a losing proposition either way.

After one such night, sometime in mid-morning, way too early for us to be up, we were driving to the Musician’s Union office. The Union had this ridiculous policy that the total fee from each gig had to be paid to the union then they would cut cheques to each of the 'sidemen' for scale and pay the balance to the 'leader' - after deducting dues, benefits, pension and, in our case, fines.

We had to wait in the coffee shop downstairs while they processed our cheques, then collect the cheques, endorse them over to The Seeds Of Time and deposit them in our band bank account so that we could pay all of our expenses. Eventually, we staged a protest by attending an Executive meeting where Geoff stood up on the table and burnt his Union card. They finally recognized that bands were a business and allowed us to simply write the Union a cheque for the dues, benefits and pension and, in our case, fines owing.

I was driving with Geoff riding shotgun, Steve behind him and Lindsay behind me. Elvis’s hit song, Suspicious Minds,was playing on the radio;

We’re caught in a trap

I can’t walk out

Because I love you too much baby

I heard a gurgling sound behind me. All Lindsay had time for was, “I’m gonna be ...” He threw up all over me. Although the heroin hangover seemed to produce buckets of vomit, this was the first (and only) time anyone had puked on me.

With November came the chill of winter. It was unfortunate that Bill chose this time to be forced into hiding. He just disappeared - one minute he was there and the next he was gone. As Bill paid most of the household expenses this proved to be a little troublesome for us. First we ran out of oil and the house was freezing. Then we ran out of food and we had to go forth and forge. We actually siphoned some cash from our next gig to fill up the oil tank and turn the heat back on but we were reluctant to waste any drug and booze money on food.

Steve and Donna endured the humiliation of applying for welfare. After a full day of standing in lines, filling out forms and submitting to endless, embarrassing interrogations, they each received a small cheque. As self-respecting drug addicts (a definite oxymoron) they probably should have bought as much heroin as possible and got wiped for a few days but they didn’t. In a selfless act of charity, they took the whole lot of us to the supermarket and blew the wad on food. There was Donna, looking more like Cinderwench-Cinderella than delectable Barbarella, pushing a buggy up and down the aisles wearing a tattered pink dressing gown. But she did it with such 'attitude' that even the Princess Cinderella herself never looked more beautiful. It’s possible that a few beef roasts and hams found their way under that dressing gown and into the folds of several of our jackets as well. I know we ate like pigs for a week. We even picked up a case of Baby Duck sparkling wine to wash it down.

On November 16th a quarter of a million people staged an anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC. Arlo Guthrie and Peter Paul & Mary spoke to the crowd. Since the death of President Kennedy, President Johnson seemed unwilling or unable to slow the escalation of the war in Viet Nam. Maybe the country hoped that newly elected President Nixon would do a better job.

In the midst of all this confusion and frustration The Beatles released what I believe is their true masterpiece, Abbey Road.The song writing collaboration of John Lennon and Paul McCartney continued to produce classic after classic as they had done since the day they met. Come Together and the entire Side Two of the album were sheer genius. But it was George Harrison who shone the brightest with Something and Here Comes the Sun.

Even though Abbey Road wasn’t the last Beatles album released, it was the last album they recorded. Their last recorded words to us were:

And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make

They made a lot of love!

Nobody really knows for sure who came up with the phrase, 'Make Love Not War'. Some think it was the poet Allen Ginsberg while others claim it was first uttered by scholar and student of dirty jokes, Gershorn Legman at the University of Ohio in 1963 but many of us want to pretend that it was John Lennon. Even if it wasn't, nobody believed it more than him.

Jeff loved to play the piano. He couldn’t play anything by ear but he had been taught to read. He had a pop songbook and would sit at the piano in our dining room, playing for hours. I joined in on guitar and stood beside him struggling to read the chord charts and remember how to play my augmented and major fifth cords. We called ourselves, The Norton Kids.

Luckily for us, Bill returned. Whatever the reason for his sudden departure, it must have been resolved because he just walked in the kitchen door and resumed his place as benefactor of the house.

We had never needed him more. We were so broke, sometimes, when my housemates returned from the store, they were surprised to find merchandise they had not paid for in their pockets.

One afternoon, Steve, Donna, Trisha and I were at the Hudson's Bay store on Kingsway. Steve and I rushed off to find the hardware department. Donna and Trisha, who didn't care for each other, found themselves wandering aimlessly together around the women's fashions floor. Donna stopped to admire a long pink wool coat.

“Ewww,” she cooed. “That's fucking gorgeous.”

“It's lovely,” Trisha agreed halfheartedly.

Donna smiled and whispered to Trisha, “I'm gonna lift it.”

“Oh no,” said Trisha and quickly left the building. When Steve and I arrived back at the car, Trisha was sitting on the hood alone.

“Where's Donna?” Steve asked.

“Oh boys!” a voice sang from behind. Donna came strutting across the parking lot towards us like a runway model wearing the coat. She looked fabulous. Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy was back.

Steve took one adoring look at her and laughed, “I think our work here is done.”

But, the larceny really shook Trisha. She said to me later, “it's not that it's immoral ... It's just wrong.”

We were playing a gig at the University of British Columbia. UBC was all the way across the city from our house in Burnaby but easy routing directly along Marine Drive. As would happen frequently during the gig someone would yell out for “Story Time”. Fans of The Seeds of Time knew that Geoff could, and would, stop the music at any time and embark on a story created on the spot usually starring a promiscuous female character and a licentious adventure involving a lot of “thrusting”, “throbbing”, “probing” and “penetrating” and interspersed with as many repetitions of the word, “dewy” as he could integrate into the mix.

Unfortunately, on this night, he stepped over the gross line when he wove “Doo-Doo” and “Caw-Caw” into the disgusting mess. As revolting as the tale had become, it was still amazing that Geoff was able to weave songs - that he was composing as he went - into the story while accompanying himself on guitar. The rest of us just stood back in repulsed admiration and respect. The audience however, was sickened. Some were booing. Others were angry. Many just left.

A few had come up to the front of the stage and were now imploring Geoff to stop. He continued. They were screaming at him. He continued. Someone threw a hat at him. Finally, he relented. He engaged the angry mob in a debate about whether our performance had been worth the price of admission. To ensure their complete satisfaction, he invited the entire audience to our house for a party. There were as many as four hundred people remaining in the hall but he insisted. Geoff was hard to resist so most of them actually showed up at our house.

Bill bought jugs of cheap red wine and filled the bathtub with gallons of the stuff. The party ended at about four o’clock in the morning when Geoff caught someone urinating into the bath. The Burnaby RCMP had put up road blocks on Marine Drive about half a block on each side so that they could bust any drunk drivers leaving the party. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

In December The Rolling Stones staged an outdoor concert at the Altamont Raceway just outside of San Francisco to celebrate the end of their North American Tour. They got the idea to engage members of the Hell’s Angels to provide security. Security for who has never really been clear. All throughout the day the Angels were in the middle of skirmishes with the audience. During The Stones’ set the violence escalated and a young black man was stabbed to death. Altamont was the end of the Summer of Love.