The Heart Of The San
Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967
From The Pen Bill Bradley
A YouTube film clip of The Jefferson
Airplane performing their classic wa-wa song Someone To Love to give a flavor of the times to this piece.
Scene: Brought to mind by one of the
songs in After Bathing At Baxter’s,
The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.
It wasn’t my
idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the
stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967.
Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class
of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke,
Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my
“family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that
brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill
one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through
the great western blue-pink night, as my old North Adamsville corner boyfriend,
Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry
prankster bus.
I had
brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although more
recently she has been going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea
she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my
back to prove it. It’s just her, well,
thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from
Vassar, that’s a high-end New York college for women, one of the seven sisters,
Ivy League, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we
kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out
for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,”
Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a.
Phil Ballard, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay)
married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with
Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in
me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown the coop on
me.
It was all
Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she
was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always
a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the
myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate
night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at
all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now
that they, the “they” being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a
millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on
the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were
“married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil” and would have now have a proper
bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question.
Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and
hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as
seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his
stride.
Here is the
“skinny.” The Captain knew somebody,
hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind,
connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at
the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain
twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was
more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced
acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely,
from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets.
That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much
about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or
something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.]
So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric Kool-Aid acid
test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of
that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not
to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that
stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain
said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all,
that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.
Saturday
night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Yah, that’s an old Frankie
Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to
say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just
concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of
what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde
beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer
guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost
see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on
the subject, it wasn’t really
see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or
later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful
breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been
“seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and
made no apologies for being so. She also
wore a short mini-skirt that was de
rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing
skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly
complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her
head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling,
starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and
the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang
Sally.
And the
“groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer
flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared
boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a
magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A
strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching
her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from
looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way,
I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement, and
being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around, he
just grabbed what was at hand).
Now back to
the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain
proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster
yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including
the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of Kool-Aid. The Prince and
Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the
Captain proposed to use Kool-Aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.
And they
“saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or
less, just in time for the concert to rev them up. Now what you “see” on an
acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush
existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description,
literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their
“wedding night.” So what is left? Well,
some observations by “father” Far-Out Phil, now a veteran acid-eater, as I
hovered over my new-found “family” to insured that they made a safe
landing.
The first
thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the
female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their
acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some
of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie
“leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental
note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another
couple of hours or so). Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and
also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not
fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal
effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown
into the mix. I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many
guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental
notes of one kind or another. It is only when Butterfly started to “believe”
that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am
Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and
gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the
Columbia Red that I had just coped from some freak.
And where
was Prince Love during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none
other than Lance Peters, who you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other
names, by who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. But don’t
call her Lance Peters this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her
congratulations Kool-Aid cup earlier) she is now Laura Opal in her constant
name-game change run through the alphabet. Prince Love had finally “seen” the
virtues of being with older women like I had learned back in Ames, Iowa time,
an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous
blouse Prince felt electricity running through his veins as they encircled each
other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I
thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to
wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn. Then to find shelter in some magic bus they
thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming
out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon”
tribe’s bus.
No hassle,
no problem, guests always welcome. Yah that is the way it was then. When I
cornered, although cornered may be too strong a word, the Prince later all that he would commit to
was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other
side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is
still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh yah, and
had seen the now de rigueur stairway
to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around her
Phil when the deal went down, no question.
And how did
the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my
ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Prince and Lance, a pissed off
search for me, we went over into a
corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting
ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly
nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in
good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about
ten times. Butterfly though that was the
funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a
joint filled with some of that same Columbia Red that settled her down earlier.
I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way
“home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend
the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand
guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was
not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for
nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when
the point was to slow the circles down.)
Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was
her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that
she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling
pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.
And what of
Butterfly and Prince’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds? They
pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night. They
then went off for what was supposed to be a few days down to Big Sur where
Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere
that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a
“real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Prince Love, now a solo prince, came back
to the bus. It seemed that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,”
although she told the Prince to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and
everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy
and his search for the perfect wave.
Well, we all
knew not everybody was built for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell
Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story, I thought that Prince had better keep his
Olde Saco eyes off Lannie Rose (yes she has changed her name again) or I might
just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville
be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet prince.
No comments:
Post a Comment