In some of my other posts over the last several years I’ve written about some of my adventures in Rock n Roll. I thought I would take a few untold stories and roll em up into one post.

John Lennon

It was the Spring of 1967, I was 15 years old, my friend Lloyd Hamoy and I went to go see Roger Corman’s THE TRIP in Manhattan. We walked around the city and of course decided to smoke a joint in Central Park. We wandered around until we found a secluded spot near Wollman’s skating rink. We sat at a park bench ready to fire up a big one… Panama Red as they called it back then. But, much to our surprise sitting at the base of a statue were two lovers, kissing. The woman was Asian and the man looked like John Lennon. Lloyd and I smoked our “reefer” but all along we argued about whether or not the fellow kissing the Asian woman was Lennon.

“What about Cynthia?”, Lloyd asked.

“But look at his tooth, it’s chipped just like John’s”, I replied.

For what seemed like hours ( though probably just minutes, after all, we were 15 and loaded), we parried back and forth… Was this a Beatle or not.

Finally, I got up the nerve and Lloyd and I approached the amorous couple.

“Excuse me, but are you John Lennon?”, I mumbled.

“No, I’m not”, the man said with an ever so slight British accent.

“See”, Lloyd said.

“Well, I guess I was wrong”, I replied “Let’s get outta here”.

It was only a short while later that we found out about Yoko.

Roy Orbison

As the President of One Pass, a video post facility in SF, I needed to travel to NYC every so often, to meet with Dan Rosen, President of Editel/NY, one of our sister companies. In the mid 80’s boutique hotels were all the rage in NYC and the most chi chi at the time was Morgan’s, located at Madison and 37th Street.

Morgan’s was redesigned by Andree Putman and it was dark, very dark. The walls were painted black, the ceilings too. The Hallways were lit by little hi intensity pin spots. The rooms were tiny and expensive. There was a breakfast room on the third floor that served coffee, croissants and bagels. And there were dark bronze elevator doors that opened to a black hole of an elevator, with, again, a pin spot on the ceiling, creating a small pool of light on a black and grey carpet. Your basic NYC black on black mausoleum.

I awoke early, 6AM (3AM PST) and headed to the breakfast room determined to get my money’s worth… a free bagel and a cup of JOE. Bleary eyed, I walked down the pitch black corridor to the elevator and pressed the call button. A few second passed, the elevator dinged and the bronze doors slowly opened.

In the elevator, pinspot lit, standing solo, in full on black drag, complete with sunglasses was Roy Orbison.

“Why, good morning Mr. Orbison ! “, I stammered.

The doors slowly started to close.

Roy didn’t even flinch and said ” Well, it might be good morning for you son, but it’s good night for me”.

And Roy was gone.

Bob Dylan

In a previous life, I was an audio engineer. I mostly mixed TV sports but every now and again I would be called upon to do shows like HBO specials, The Barbara Walters Show, The Perry Como Show, some concerts etc.

Over the years, I had built a relationship with a fellow named Ed Greene, the leading audio engineer of the 80’s. Ed Greene and Gene Crowe owned a mobile TV 45 foot expand-o truck, which was used for the February 27, 1980 broadcast of the 22nd Grammy Awards show at the Shrine Auditorium in LA. Pierre Cossette was the producer and Marty Pasetta was the director. And yours truly, was an assistant audio shlepper, which at the time paid $125/day for lugging around cables and setting up microphones.

We had a day before to set and rehearse and on the 27th, a few more rehearsals and then we went live over the CBS network to millions of viewers.

Bob Dylan was to perform his hit ” You Gotta Serve Somebody”. The plan was that the band would perform live as opposed to so many of the other performers who would sing to track. Dylan was set to rehearse at about 5 in the afternoon. His roadies brought out the gear and I, under the careful direction of Ed Greene was to set up and place microphones.

There on the stage of the Shrine, as I was placing a Shure SM 56 on Dylan’s Fender Amp, Bob walks over and starts to plug in his Strat.

I’m a HUGE Dylan fan. I named my son Dylan, I’ve seen him 20 times, I taught a course at a major University on Dylan, I have all of his work, I’ve read almost every book ever written about him. I am a Dylan groupie. I had fantasized about meeting him since Highway 61 Revisited.

I gathered myself… scared to death but alive with the thought that my hero, my idol, the Poet Laureate of the 20th Century was just inches away from me.

So, I stood up and looked Dylan straight in the eye and said…

“Sir, I just want to thank you for being the voice and conscience of my generation and for saying the things that we all wish we could have said”.

Dylan pulled his guitar cord out of his Fender, glanced at me from the corner of his eyes and said ” You’re welcome”, and then walked away.

The Rolling Stones

In October of 1981 I was working at One Pass Video as its sound engineer and head of production operations. I was sitting in my office in the China Basin Building when the phone rang. Queenie Taylor of Bill Graham Presents asked if I could put together a crew for a small venue musical event. I asked her who the band was and she said ” No one special”.

We loaded four Ikegami Hl79A cameras, two one inch Sony BHH 500 VTR’s, a small GVG 1200 switcher and a 24 input Yamaha audio console. I threw a crew together and we drove the short distance to the Embarcadero to set up at Bill Graham’s WOLFGANGS (formerly the Old Waldorf).

About 10 of us showed up at 444 Battery Street and loaded the elevator to take the gear up to the second floor venue. It was strange being in a night club early in the day, the smell of rancid beer and cigarette smoke still hung in the air. After several hours of technical set up we were ready for the evening. The small stage had a set of drums, a bass guitar rig, two electric guitar rigs, piano/keyboards and not much more.

When we got back from our dinner, we took our positions, setting audio levels and video. Out of nowhere, the doors flew open and several large dudes walked in and did a security check and swept the premises. I thought to myself… “What the hell?”

Five minutes later, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger bounded onto the stage! Sound Check… and I’m the audio guy. I’m setting levels like a madman… eq’ing like Rasputin…. and, the Stones launched into “Under My Thumb”. Twenty people in the room, no frills, just us and the Rolling Stones.

For four or so hours Mick pranced, Keith smoked and Charlie was like a frickin’ metronome. They played and played for just this small gathering of 20 people… song after song after song.

Under My Thumb
When the Whip Comes Down
Neighbours
Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
(The Temptations cover)
Shattered
Let’s Spend the Night Together
Black Limousine
She’s So Cold
Time Is on My Side
Beast of Burden
Waiting on a Friend
Let It Bleed
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Tops
Tumbling Dice
Hang Fire
Let Me Go
Little T&A
Start Me Up
Miss You
Honky Tonk Women
All Down the Line
Brown Sugar
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Street Fighting Man
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

At about 2AM… they stopped.

They left in a Jumpin Jack flash, the entire crew had not known what had hit them. As we were packing up, Queenie Taylor told us that it was a dress rehearsal for tomorrows show at Candlestick, and oh BTW… she gave us all tickets for the show!

While in college, I had been working as an engineer for a sound reinforcement company named Megaphone, located at 39 Crosby Street in the now very toney section of Manhattan called SoHo. At the time, it should have been called NoGo. There were more junkies on the streets than cars.

I wasn’t a Manhattan native, even though I would always introduce myself as a New Yorker. I was from Queens, and though not quite as bad as Jersey, I was always ashamed that my “Bayside” might be showing.

Manhattan was a mysterious place to me. Having been born in the South Bronx and raised in Queens by two blue collar parents who could barely “rub two nickels together”, I was always fascinated by the pace and the diversity of Manhattan. Every time I needed a job, and I always needed one, I would hope that I could work in “the City”.

My first was for a bike messenger service located on 44th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. I was immediately attracted to them because they were called Quicksilver Messenger Service, named after the great acid rock band from San Francisco.

I would pick up a package from somewhere and then deliver it to someone… on bike. Pretty simple. During the summer of ’68, I noticed a trend, I was delivering a lot of packages between pharmacies and Ad Agencies. I couldn’t help myself, but I started to investigate these drug store runs and peak into the little white bags that had to be delivered to specific people at specific times to specific places.

All the packages contained the same item, a pill jar filled with about 50 “Black Beauties”, methamphetamine sulfate, speed. Well, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. No one would miss one pill from each of these deliveries. The summer of ’68 flew by rather quickly.

In late August of that year, I rode my bike up to the brand new GM building on 59th and 5th to make a final delivery of the summer. I was pretty thin at this point, maybe about 120 pounds, a large portion of which was my hair, but still amped up on my daily regimen of Vitamin S. It was hot, humid and stinky in NY. I grabbed my little white bag, locked up my Schwinn and stepped into the freezing airconditioning of the lobby. My tinted John Lennon granny glasses steamed up as I half floated and stumbled my way to the bank of elevators. I got on. Pushed 36.

summer in the city

On the elevator I could sense that there was someone else standing next to me. In a few seconds my glasses cleared and there was George Harrison. A Beatle. I said nothing. I got off at 36, delivered my package and picked up another one to be sent to yet another Ad Agency on Madison. I was still shaking. Maybe it was the speed, but I think it was George. This new package looked a little different. It was in a brown paper bag and the contents were wrapped in aluminum foil. I had to open it. I knew it was weed. But, it wasn’t… it was a bunch of dried stringy plant like things that looked like mushrooms.

I had heard about this! Magic Mushrooms. I ate a few. I puked a bit.

I saw God.

As I jumped back on my bike, the streets began to undulate, the hot dog vendors looked like clowns and the strains of Steve Miller’s song rang through my head… ” doo doo de doo doo doo, living in the USA… someone gimme a cheese burger”.

Livin in the USA

During my senior year in high school, my friend, Stanley Bassell and I used to get around to most of the great music venues of the time. We practically lived at the Fillmore East. Over time, we got to meet lots of folks that were, “connected”. Stan went on to NY State College at New Paltz, where he minored in rolling joints and majored in co-eds. I believe he belonged to the fraternity Lambda Sigma Delta 25. I would often head upstate from Long Island, where I went to Hofstra University, to hang with Stan and partake in some extracurricular activities. Oftentimes we wound up playing music… Stan was a drummer and I was, well, Mick Jaggerstein. Sometimes there were long jams with some really great musicians. Two guys that really knew how to play the blues, were these two albino brothers from Beaumont Texas. They had just signed a record deal with Columbia after being showcased at Steve Paul’s Scene in NYC. They had taken a place up in Stattsburg NY and asked Stan and I to tour with them as their sound guys.

As exciting as that sounded, there was this little pesky issue called the Draft. I had a “2S” student deferment, and had I not gone to college, would have been shipped off to Saigon ( or just as bad, Toronto). So, while I couldn’t tour with them, Stan and I did get away from time to time, weekends and vacations, to tour with Johnny and Edgar Winter.

Christmas of 1969 took us on an incredible journey. We were booked to play the Miami International Pop Festival with acts like Mother Lode, Sweetwater, Canned Heat, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Vanilla Fudge and the Amboy Dukes. The promoters four walled a motel, the Miami Airport Inn, and everyone that played, stayed there for four days. I recall one jam in Bob “the Bear” Hites’ room. The Bear was the lead singer in Canned Heat and they were doing a version of “Goin Up To The Country” with Johnny Winter and Jerry Garcia on guitars, Phil Lesh on bass, Janis singing and Butterfield playing harp.

Canned Heat

Later that day, I was holding the elevator for the Winter Brothers, when a very diminutive fellow and a Giant entered the Otis. The little dude was ornery, demanding I let the lift go up. I explained that my musicians had some trouble seeing, as they were albino. The little guy took a swipe at me, and me being from NYC, punched back. A scuffle ensued until the Giant easily separated us. Later I was to find out that the tough was non other than Augustus Owsley Stanley, the Dead’s chemist and brilliant and eclectic crafts-person who eventually became best-known under the name of ‘Owsley’- the paradigmatic LSD “cook”, a magician-like figure.

And the Giant…. Ken Kesey, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Later that day, I found myself hanging out in the lounge and got into a conversation with a strange dude, a guitar player and leader of the band The Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent. Ted tried to convince me to leave school and come on the road with him and the Dukes. The “Motor City Madman” truly was, and I was having none of it.

Now, firmly ensconced in academia, “2S” deferment in hand, living on campus in Hempstead Long Island and having started the Hofstra Concert Committee, I was ready to venture back into the mystery and adventures that could only lie in the cavernous streets of “the city”. In other words, I needed a job. Given my “resume” ( bike messenger, drug runner, sound mixer, bad lead singer), I found gainful employ at Megaphone Company, a sound reinforcement firm that toured with rock bands. I started as a “roadie” but quickly moved up the ranks to monitor mixer and then to mixer. I worked for bands like Tony Williams Lifetime ( w John McLaughlin and Jack Bruce), Spirit, Dreams, Black Sabbath, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, The Allman Brothers Band, The Grateful Dead, Poco.

But there was one tour that confounded me. I considered myself musically adept and well versed. But when this band went on stage, I had no idea what they were going to play. Oftentimes the show would consist of one tune, an hour of, what sounded to me, like cacophony. We traveled in a Greyhound like bus throughout the Northeast and as far south as Washington DC. The bus carried six musicians, lots of gear and two sound mixers. We played small clubs as well as Auditoriums.

One such date was in DC at the DAR Constitution Hall ( the DAR stands for the Daughters of the American Revolution, a lineage-based membership organization for women who are descended from a person involved in United States’ independence). The DAR was considered by many to be the kinder, gentler, female version of the KKK. There was the famous incident where the DAR refused to allow the famous African American contralto, Marion Anderson to perform. Needless to say, in 1971, the situation was rather tense.

We pulled into our hotel. Out of the bus stepped Gary Bartz (alto), Jack DeJohnette (drums), Michael Henderson (bass), Airto Moreira (percussion), Keith Jarret (piano), Whitey Davis (sound), me and the Prince of Darkness, Miles Davis (trumpet/wah wah). Miles was dressed in leather pants, leather jacket and a pair of purple bug eyed sunglasses. On his feet, he wore a pair of yellow leather platform boots with lucite heels.

He and Whitey strolled up to the hotel desk and in Miles low, throaty, raspy cackle ( he had supposedly argued with someone after having a polyps removed and his voice was never quite the same) said. ” The shitty room is for Whitey Davis and the Presidential Suite is for Blacky Davis”.

I had the pleasure of being the guardian of Miles’ two trumpets, one green lacquer and one orange. That eve, just before we were set to play, several DAR board members wanted to meet “this Miles Davis”. I wondered, given the DAR’s reputation, if they knew anything about Miles. I followed Miles to a room in Constitution Hall and there were these three blue haired WASPy septuagenarians with faces that looked like Mt. Rushmore. And there was Miles in all his peacock glory, sleek, beautiful and black. The meeting was brief. One woman made a remark that pissed Miles off. We left.

During the show that night, Miles kept calling me on to the stage to “talk” to me. It was hard enough to hear a normal voice over the din of the band, but with Miles rasp, almost impossible. Finally, I got what he was saying, “My Wah Wah is busted”. I finally replaced the pedal and assumed all was cool. I settled into my, “What the hell are they playing” mode. But within a few minutes, Miles was signaling me once again.

I snuck out onto the stage, and Miles grabbed my head and put his lips to my ear and said ” I’m hungry”.

“What ?”, I screamed back.

“I’m hungry”, he croaked.

This went on for a bit. Finally, I figured out what he was saying.

“What do you want ?”, I yelled.

” Spaghetti….. no meat”, Davis rasped.

And then, he grabbed my head again. Yet this time, I could hear him perfectly as he softly whispered into my ear…. ” but mushrooms is cool”.

I had to agree.

Call it Forrest Gump or Chauncey Gardner disease, but there has been something strange in my life where I just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

One such time happened back in April 1968. I was a junior at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York.

It was a strange time, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King and the NYC teachers strike. Yet, there was hope and love and comraderie amongst those of us that flashed peace signs to total strangers, because we knew that they too were against an unjust war.

And there was music…. everywhere. The Stones, The Beatles, The Airplane, The Dead, Cream, Motown, Stax Volt, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, Dylan.

And Jimi Hendrix. There was nothing else like him, and to me, no one has even come close since. The most gifted musician on the planet with a message of peace and ascension. Beautiful, Black, hip, soulful with a sound I had never heard. He was an Avatar of God.

I had always played in bands as a kid. I was a NYC Mick Jagger wanna be;
the white kid who just knew he could sing the blues. And did I ever try. From bands named the “Ups and Downs” (slight drug reference), to “Farley Bluff” (nonsense John Lennon talk), I played at hundreds of parochial school dances ( where I routinely got my ass kicked because I was Jewish), Bar Mitzvahs (where I routinely had a sip of J&B and made out with one of the girls) and an occasional school yard hop (which routinely turned into a drunken brawl).

I continued my musician ways for many years, but at one point thought that VFX would be less stressful. Hah!

I bet High School today isn’t very different from High School back then. Kids were classified into types. There were the Stoners/Hippies, the Hitters (the kids with Elvis Presley hair, that used to pummel the Hippies). There were the Musicians, the Collegiates ( the kids who drank beer, wore penny loafers and Madras shirts), the Jocks ( the Football team). And then there were the Intellectual /Politicos. Ok, maybe we were different than todays kids.

I was classified as a Musician/Politico. Most of my friends were the same which is why I guess they call it, “clicks”. Musician/Politicos were interesting, especially back in the late 60’s as we were generally color blind. If you were a player and knew your way around a I,IV,V progression, we didn’t care if you were orange. In fact, I believe there was this one kid who was…. but he played alto like Cannonball Adderly, so we didn’t really care.

I had a friend named Larry. He was a fine bass player, African American from St. Albans. St. Albans was where the upper class Black community lived in Queens back then. His neighbors were Thelonius Monk and Louis Armstrong. I hung out quite a bit with Larry but one thing always used to piss me off about him. He always bragged about celebrities that he “knew”. Maybe he has since become a talent agent for CAA ? For several months, Larry had been saying that he was really tight with Jimi Hendrix. Hah!

On a cold early April morning, I got off the Q17a bus in front of the diner on Francis Lewis Blvd and Utopia Pkwy and started my three block sojourn to my first class, Physics. Dressed in my usual Levis, Python boots, fringed cowboy jacket, peacock feather earring and hair looking like Roger Daltrey, I ran into Larry.

“Hey man, wanna go see Hendrix record in the city today”, he said.

Larry had been pulling my chain for months about Jimi and I had just about enough of his bravado. I also had a Physics test that morning.

“Sure”, I said, “let’s go”.

We hopped on to the Q17a and rode it to the subway station on 169th street in Jamaica. We caught the F train to 42nd Street and got off. All this time I’m thinking…. “Damn, I got this little lyin’ mutha”.

At about 10 AM, we approached a non-descript building at 321 West 44th Street. Larry rang the intercom, a female voice rang out…. “Yes?” . Larry said, “Hey, it’s Larry for Jimi”. The buzzer let us in. OH MY GOD! We walked past a very lovely women that waved us into Studio A and there, was Noel Reddings rig, Mitch Mitchells drum kit and… Jimi’s Strat and his Marshall amps… Damn.

I was 16, and the biggest Hendrix fan ever, and here I was at 10AM on a Tuesday morning sitting in the same room with the instruments that recorded FOXY LADY.

By the time the clock struck 2PM, I was sorta over it. I had waited four hours to meet Hendrix and all I got, was to sit and stare at a bunch of gear. I needed to get home as my Dad would be returning from his job. He was an air brake maintenance dude for the NYC Subway System, union all the way. My Mom, another civil servant for the Tri State Transportation Commission, would be home by 6. She took the subway as she didn’t know how to drive nor could we afford more than one Rambler American junker.

I started to leave and said my goodbyes to Larry going through all the jive handshake motions that one did with a “brotha” back in ’68. Suddenly the door flew back and in walked Gary Kellgren, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer and Jimi.

Guess I wasn’t leaving.

Introductions were made and to this day, 43 years later, I remember the feel of Jimi’s gargantuan hand as we first shook. Needless to say, I was beside myself. Jimi was shy, quiet, introspective and almost beatific. I guess I expected the guy with the flaming guitar, writhing around on the stage at Monterrey like some uncaged Panther. But out of the hot white light of the Supertrooper spotlights, Hendrix was the pure white light of tranquility and joy.

I lost track of all time and space. Jimi asked what I was listening to and at the time it was a lot of blues. Muddy, Howlin Wolf, Paul Butterfield, Robert Johnson. He asked Eddie Kramer, the recording engineer to put up a track called “Red House” for me.

Red House

It was and still is the greatest recorded blues solo I’ve ever experienced. After watching Jimi lay down bass lines on “Gypsy Eyes”, because Noel Redding had not shown up till later, he asked me if I wanted to play on a track. Yikes!

We took a small break and chatted about some porn film that was playing on 42nd Street, a send up of that years hit “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” called “Titty Titty Gang Bang”…. Jimi was wondering if we should go see it after the session.

When we returned to the studio, two Neumann mics were set up on stands, headphones hanging over the boom arms. Jimi handed me a cowbell, and I thought to myself, I can play this thing. Hendrix said ” Ok, I’m gonna count this down, then I’m gonna take these headphones and create feedback and when I nod at you, start hittin’ this cowbell”.

The tape rolled for a rehearsal and that was the first time I heard the track, “Stone Free” .

Stone Free

We started again, Jimi got his feedback and I smacked that cowbell. The rest became a blur. When the track was finally over, Kellgren punched a talkback and said, “Dinner!”

Dinner? What time was it? Oh no, it was 8PM. My Mom and Dad had been home for quite awhile, they must be freaking out. They probably called the cops. My Mom had Emphysema for years ( she would die only four years later from lung cancer) and I later found out, that she was so upset, she had an attack.

This time there were no high fives, I said my adieus and hi-tailed it to the F train. I jumped on the train and made it to the bus “in record flat”. It was now about 9PM and there was only one other person on the Q17a, a long haired hippy type, who, when he saw me, flashed me the peace sign. I smiled and flashed back, acknowledging our “cultural connection”. He came over and sat down next to me and said ” Hey man, what’s happenin’ ?” I proceeded to tell him my story about Jimi and “Stone Free”.

He looked at me, glassey eyed, obviously stoned and said ” Bullshit…. asshole”, and got off at 188th Street.

When I finally arrived home, there was hell to pay. I was grounded for three months and frankly I deserved it…. And, I’d do it again, gladly!

Years later, in 2009, I had been developing a script with some writers called “Voodoo Child”, a biopic of Hendrix. I had seen that Eddie Kramer, the great producer and recording engineer was showing some of his Hendrix photos at a gallery in LA. I sent my assistant to talk to him and invite him to my house so that we could chat about the script. Interestingly enough, Eddie came by and we talked for a few hours. He was now 67, charming, erudite and a strange combination of a New Yorker and a Brit. Just as he was leaving, I asked him about that session in April of ’68. I wanted to know if that was indeed my cowbell on the released track of “Stone Free”. Eddie, shook my hand firmly and said, “Scott there were a lot of tracks cut for that record and frankly I don’t recall”. I stopped him just as he got in his car and said, “But you do remember a 16 year old kid with Roger Daltrey hair at the Record Plant that day, don’t you?”

And he said, “Frankly, I don’t”.