November 9, 1969: Rolling Stones, Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA (late show)

A scan of the cover of the bootleg Rolling Stones LP Liver Than You'll Ever Be, on Trademark of Quality Records

The Grateful Dead were a remarkable band in a remarkable time, and one indicator of that was their propensity for playing a part in interesting events that had little to do with them directly. For example, the Dead played an interesting role in the history of bootleg recordings, one that largely goes unnoticed. Its primary effect on the Dead, however, was to make it standard for venues to search incoming patrons for recording equipment--ironic for the first band that to ultimately encourage audience taping some years later.

An audience recording of the Rolling Stones performance at the Late Show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on Sunday, November 9, 1969 was bootlegged and released as an album called Liver Than You'll Ever Be. This album was such a sensation that it was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine, and its very likely that the Stones' live tour album Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out was released to counteract consumer demand for the bootleg. There had been successful bootlegs before, mostly of Bob Dylan albums, but they had either been studio or professional live recordings, and the record companies (and Bob Dylan) felt that improved security could prevent those tapes from falling into the hands of bootleggers. Liver Than You'll Ever Be revealed that people would pay money to listen to an audience recording of a live rock concert, raising the specter that profitable record company practices could be disenfranchised by some cowboys with a reel-to-reel and a few good microphones.

The mysterious bootleggers had recorded five shows on the California leg of the Stones tour (in San Diego, Los Angeles and Oakland), but the live sound of the late show in Oakland was far superior. While it may have taken a few shows for the Stones to find their groove, one other fact distinguished itself about the late show: the Rolling Stones had played the show with their own system upgraded by the Grateful Dead's equipment.

Bootleg LPs
The history of bootleg lps is an important counter-narrative in the history of rock music of the 60s and beyond. While bootleg lps ultimately fell prey to various nefarious business interests--they were illegal, after all--they initially served an important role in kicking some closed doors open. Prior to the commercialization of cassettes, any interesting recordings of popular bands could hardly be circulated, as few people had (or would deal with) reel-to-reel tape recorders. Bootleg albums answered the demands for more music by the most popular artists, and forced record companies to at least keep the pipeline full of music, even if their self-dealing business practices remained intact.

The shadowy history of bootlegs is well covered in the fascinating book Bootleg: The Secret History Of The Other Recording Industry (St. Martin's Press, 1995), by rock's foremost archaeologist, Clinton Heylin . The early bootleggers, whom Heylin interviewed (they use pseudonyms) had motives similar to pioneering Deadheads, primarily interested in getting the music out to the fans by whatever means were available. Heylin's book is unique and fascinating, and well worth reading for anyone remotely  interested in the subject. The first important bootleg was a 1969 Bob Dylan record called Great White Wonder, featuring tracks from what are now known as The Basement Tapes. The idea that Bob Dylan, rock's greatest songwriter, had an entire album of exceptional songs already recorded--albeit in rough form--suggested to fans that record companies were hiding something, restricting the flow of music like diamond merchandisers, in order to stimulate sales. The mysterious, white covered double lp, lacking any credits or information, was itself bootlegged numerous times, and was reputed to have sold an incredible 500,000 copies, although that is surely exaggerated and no one really knows.

Great White Wonder had been followed by various other Dylan bootlegs, most famously a professional recording of Bob Dylan and The Hawks at Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 17, 1966. For various reasons (that Heylin explains), the bootleggers chose to let people believe it was the performance at London's Royal Albert Hall. This album, "released" under various names like Royal Albert Hall, In 1966 There Was and Play F*ckin' Loud, revealed that Dylan And The Hawks were one of the greatest live rock acts ever, and yet the performances had remained under wraps for years. I myself heard that album in 1973, and it stunned my teenage self to realize that what I thought to be Dylan's best recording was unreleased. Yet both of these albums were not recorded by civilians: Dylan and The Hawks had recorded the Basement Tapes themselves, and professional engineers had recorded them at Manchester. Still, Royal Albert Hall had shown that people wanted to hear live recordings, for all their ragged imperfections.

The Rolling Stones 1969 American Tour
In the late 60s, the the troika perched atop rock's pyramid was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. All three groups had stopped touring in 1966, except for occasional special performances. Since 1966, the live rock concert business had adopted the model of San Francisco's Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms, and rock concerts had not only become Big Business but Serious Art and Major Events. When The Rolling Stones announced in the Summer of 1969 that they would be touring the United States in the Fall of 1969, this was far and away the biggest tour in the very short history of modern rock music. The only possible comparison would have been the Blind Faith tour of Summer 1969, but the frenzy over the Stones dwarfed even them. The Rolling Stones current album was the amazing Beggar's Banquet, making it clear to even the most casual listeners that with songs like "Sympathy For The Devil" and "Street Fighting Man," the Stones were a more powerful musical force than ever.

The rock business had changed dramatically since the Stones had last toured America in 1966. Also, there was little precedent for a giant circus like the Rolling Stones, since few bands exclusively played large arenas. Since the Stones needed experienced road crew, one of their tour managers was a veteran San Francisco manager named Bill Belmont. Belmont had managed a San Francisco group called The Wildflower, had been road manager for Country Joe And The Fish and had worked for Bill Graham's Millard Agency, on whose behalf he had gone on tour with The Grateful Dead. Belmont knew all the equipment men in the Bay Area (they weren't called "roadies" yet). Thus it came to pass that two of the relatively small Rolling Stones crew in 1969 were Grateful Dead regulars Ramrod and Rex Jackson (per Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally).

Sunday, November 9, 1969, Oakland Coliseum Arena: Rolling Stones/Ike & Tina Turner/B.B. King/Terry Reid

The story of the bootleggers and the subsequent recording and release of the Liver Than You'll Ever Be is told in fascinating detail by Heylin, and the key details of the Stones album are recapped on the web. Suffice to say, no one stopped the tapers because preventing audience taping was not a concern. Deadheads will be interested to hear that the key taper recalls  

What I used was a Senheiser 805 'shotgun' microphone and a Uher 4000 reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was real small, 7 1/2 inch per second 5" reels.

The part of the story that interest me comes from the early show at the Coliseum. The Oakland show was only the third night of the Stones tour. The first show had been Friday, November 7 in Fort Collins, CO. Clearly, that show was intended as a safe "out of town" opener before the big debut at the Forum in Los Angeles on Saturday, November 8, where the Stones would play both an early and late show. A lot had changed in the rock and roll concert world since the Stones had last toured. According to Dennis McNally, on the plane to Colorado, Belmont had to explain to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that their plan to play half an hour was no longer acceptable, as an hour was the minimum that crowds expected, and Jagger and Richards tacked on  a few acoustic numbers to fill out the set (p. 340).

The first show in Oakland was only the Stones' third night and fourth show on the tour. During the early show, the sound reinforcement system blew out, and Keith in particular was very unhappy with the poor live sound. According to Joel Selvin, in between shows Ramrod and Rex Jackson suggested that they go back to the Dead's headquarters in Novato and get their equipment, battle tested and Owsley tuned to perform exceptionally under adverse conditions. They raced across two bridges to get the equipment, returning in time for the Stones set on the late show. While the expert taping of the show made the recording great, there's a reason that the live sound for the late show was so good, and that was that the Dead's sound equipment plugged holes in the Stones rig.

Jerry Garcia and the rest of the Dead were at the Coliseum show, and they would have all enthusiastically assented to loaning out their equipment. To some extent, Garcia and Weir had formed the Warlocks in an effort to emulate The Rolling Stones. When the Stones had played San Francisco on their 1966 tour, the Jefferson Airplane had opened the show, and the Airplane had snuck Garcia backstage as a member of their crew so that he could attend the show. The Dead had played the New Old Fillmore on November 7 and 8, but they had November 9 off, and I don't doubt that they were all backstage.

It's a nice vignette: Garcia and the band backstage, more like fans than musicians, no doubt flattered and pleased that their own equipment was better than that of the mighty Stones. Grateful Dead studio engineer Betty Cantor recalls (via David Gans):

They blew up all their equipment at the first show. They had all this Ampeg equipment, and it just went Fffftt! They were in a panic, so Ramrod and Jackson raced to our warehouse and brought down a bunch of our Fender amps for them, and the next show we sat up onstage while they played, and it sounded amazing... The first time Keith played through Jerry's amp, he turned around and looked at the amp, and his mouth dropped open. 'Whoa!' He couldn't believe the power and clarity.

Of course, Ampeg rushed new equipment to the Stones immediately, lest they get any ideas about changing vendors.

Liver Than You'll Ever Be
The Liver Than You'll Ever Be album was released just a month later, prior to Christmas 1969. The tour had finished on November 30 in West Palm Beach, FL, and then the mess of Altamont on December 6 had blasted the tour into a stratospheric event that stood in contrast to that Summer's idyllic Woodstock.  As most record stores were somewhat independent in those days, the album apparently wasn't too hard to get in major cities. The album received a glowing review from Greil Marcus in the January 1970 Rolling Stone, and the clamor for the record caused it to be redistributed and to some extent re-bootlegged (Heylin has all the details).

The record industry, and particularly Allan Klein, who controlled the Stones catalog, were completely panicked. The idea that a civilian could bring taping equipment into an area and make an album that people liked to listen to as much as an "official" recording put the company's whole business model at risk. Deadheads today know how great a good audience recording of a show can sound, but to most listeners this was a complete revelation. To add to Klein's panic, the Stones were playing songs live from their forthcoming album (Let It Bleed), and purchasers of Liver Than You'll Ever Be were getting to hear some songs ("Midnight Rambler," "Live With Me" and "Gimme Shelter") before their official release, and that too violated industry orthodoxy.

The result? After various kinds of posturing and panic, the record industry focused on banning recording equipment from rock arenas. The men behind the legendary bootleg label Trademark Of Quality, who were intimately connected in expanding the reach of Liver Than You'll Ever Be across the country, take personal responsibility for the ritual at rock concert venues where security staff searched everyone for illicit tape recorders. The recording industry may have overestimated sales of bootlegs, but they recognized a threat to their monopoly, and the industry's efforts to choke off bootlegs served its purpose until the commercialization of the Internet.

I don't know about other cities, but when I attended rock shows in the 1970s, the BGP staff ritually searched everyone, looking for liquor and tape recorders, but not drugs. Liquor I understood--drunken idiots do not make for a safe or fun concert--but the tape thing made me scratch my head. I bought more records than anyone I knew, so how come my interest in live tapes was a threat? None of my semi-normal friends considered dodgy sounding live tapes a reasonable substitute for a proper album, so what was being threatened?

What taping threatened was the record industry business model, which controlled the release of recordings. Liver Than You'll Ever Be had shown the intense interest consumers would have in purchasing well recorded concerts that sounded good in the first place, released when they were still current and with blemishes and all largely intact. Nothing could be more threatening, and the Dead more than any other band went to extraordinary lengths to define another business model altogether. Maybe if Rex and Ramrod hadn't gone over to Novato to get the Dead's equipment, Liver Than You'll Ever Be wouldn't have been a gripping document that got reviewed in Rolling Stone, and all our taper friends could have carried their Sony D5s and mics into shows in their backpacks all those years.

November 7-8-9-10, 1969: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Grateful Dead/Linn County Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA

The cover to Quicksilver Messenger Service's Capitol album Happy Trails (March 1969)

Live albums are often the records that cement a band's reputation. A band that has been around for a little while has figured out how to play their best songs, and a live album usually offers a chance to include their best songs while providing new material. There's enough room for changed arrangements to make it a new album for old fans while providing a nice introduction for new fans. It's also an excuse to play some cover versions without seeming bereft of new material. Often, however, the most memorable live albums present a very different picture than the actual band itself.

From mid-1969 onwards, one of the staples of FM radio, college dormitories and late night grooving was the Happy Trails album by Quicksilver Messenger Service, released on Capitol Records in about March 1969.  This was Quicksilver's second album, and save for a jokey version of the title track--Roy Rogers' theme song--it was all recorded live at the Fillmore East and Fillmore West on consecutive weekends in November 1968. San Francisco "acid-rock" was popular in the 1960s, but it wasn't universally acclaimed. The Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and The Fish and Big Brother and The Holding Company were all kind of acquired tastes. As for the Grateful Dead, while their adherents are dedicated beyond those of other fans, those fans in particular had a well-deserved reputation for driving everybody else nuts.

Quicksilver Messenger Service seemed to be the exception to the rule. While all psychedelic rockers had put Quicksilver at the top of the tree from the beginning, even fans and critics who were uneasy about Grace or Jerry were quick to acknowledge Quicksilver's ability to be "psychedelic" while still keeping their groove on. Happy Trails was most famous for two tracks, both written by Chicago rocker Bo Diddley, a hero from a previous decade. Somehow, Quicksilver took Bo's "shave-and-haircut-two-bits" rhythm and slowed it down to create room for some magical exploration. A lengthy version of "Mona" was only topped by the 20-minute version of "Who Do You Love," which took up all of side one. Gary Duncan's guitar and vocals were true to Bo's tale of sexual longing, and Duncan, bassist David Freiberg and drummer Greg Elmore kept the pulse going, wherever the music went. John Cipollina added his magical vibrato and feedback that gave the songs an unearthly twist, and the interplay between Duncan and Cipollina's guitars was as good as rock music could be in late 1968.

Great as Happy Trails was and is, the reality of Quicksilver live in late 1968 was somewhat different than the album would make it appear. This post will look at where Quicksilver Messenger Service stood on November 8, 1968, when they appeared at the Fillmore West. It's unknown to me precisely which pieces of the November 1 and 2 Fillmore East and November 7 thru 10 Fillmore West shows, but they were all part of the ingredients of the Happy Trails album. And a good thing, too--the classic four piece Quicksilver broke up a few weeks later, and although they reformed, they never returned to the configuration that made them legendary. So the first two weeks of November were really the end of a great band, fortunately preserved by the magic of recording tape.

Quicksilver Messenger Service 1966-68
Quicksilver Messenger Service was formed in San Francisco in late 1965, aspiring hippie musicians whose other bands had been decimated by drug busts or the draft. The original group was

• John Cipollina-lead guitar
• Jim Murray-guitar, harmonica, vocals
• Gary Duncan-guitar, bass, vocals
• David Frieberg-bass, vocals
• Greg Elmore-drums

Quicksilver were charter members of the San Francisco underground, and they were relatively experienced musicians, so they stood out compared to the general run of converted folkies. By the end of 1966, they were already headlining the Fillmore and making a living, pretty remarkable for a band with no whiff of a record contract, much less an actual record. Early tapes that circulate (such as on Wolfgang's Vault) show us that many of the pieces of the Quicksilver recipe were already in place: the push-and-pull rhythms, the dueling guitars, the jolting shiver of Cipollina's whammy bar.

Quicksilver had a shrewd manager, a former Chicago labor organizer named Ron Polte, and unlike some City bands Quicksilver held out until they could get a good contract. Quicksilver finally signed with Capitol in Fall, 1967, and soon after that Jim Murray departed, apparently afraid of committing himself to the required effort. The remaining quartet started working on their debut album, long after contemporaries like the Airplane and The Dead had already released theirs. The self-titled debut album took a couple of tries, so it wasn't released until May 1968. It was a fine album, but there were only seven songs, and only three were originals.

No matter. FM rock radio had started in San Francisco on KMPX in February, 1967, and by early 1968 most major cities had an FM station playing rock music 24/7. The Quicksilver Messenger Service album got played by djs all over the country. Popular tracks were the band's reworking of Hamilton Camp's "Pride Of Man," with great ringing guitar from Cippolina, or the awesome take on Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," called "Gold And Silver" (the band called it "Acapulco Gold And Silver," but that was apparently too risque). Quicksilver started to tour the country in the middle of 1968, and their best album tracks were being played in every city. True rock stardom seemed just around the bend.

The back cover to Happy Trails

Quicksilver Messenger Service, November 1968
By the end of 1968, Quicksilver Messenger Service was receiving glowing reviews throughout the country. Great instrumentals like "Gold And Silver" were mixed in with extended versions of classic R&B covers like "Mona" or 'Back Door Man." Even fans who were not convinced by the "San Francisco Sound" thought that Quicksilver were the best of the lot. And as for the people who loved the Dead, the Airplane and Big Brother already, Quicksilver seemed to be as good as it got, with the dueling guitars of Cipollina and Duncan riding on top of Freiberg and Elmore's steady beat. It was weird and spacey, like the Fillmore was supposed to be, but with some real Chicago-style drive. Quicksilver's late 1968 sound was immortalized on the Happy Trails album, released in March 1969, much of it recorded live, albeit edited together from different shows.

Quicksilver Messenger Service was indeed San Francisco's best live band by the time they got to the Fillmore West to play a four night stand from Thursday thru Sunday, November 7-10, co-headlining with their buddies the Grateful Dead. Thus it's no surprise that Happy Trails is a 60s rock classic. The only problem was, Quicksilver Messenger Service was pretty much finished as a band. The four members had played together none stop for three years, with no break, and the pressure of road, recording and the usual temptations of stardom had completely stalled any new creative juices. As a result, the band just played the same twelve songs or so night after night.

Now, Quicksilver played those dozen songs really, really well. Since much of their touring was now outside of Northern California, fans hearing the Quick tear up "Pride Of Man" and "Smokestack Lightning" for the first time must have been floored. But for San Francisco fans, who'd been hearing the same arrangements of the same songs since 1966, it was the same old stuff. Sure, Quicksilver didn't play things over note for note, but they weren't that different anymore. The band hadn't a new song since the end of the previous year, and they hadn't even added a new cover version since then. Wolfgang's Vault has some early '67 tapes from the old Fillmore, and there are all sorts of new pieces they are working on, all of which seemed to get dropped.

By November 1968, Quicksilver had played their concert set so many times it wasn't new anymore. They were musician enough to know it, and they broke up the band shortly after the Fillmore concerts, as they had a few more dates. Strictly speaking, what happened was that Gary Duncan quit the band, but that left the group high and dry. So the November 1968 Fillmore West concerts were the last stand of one of the great 60s rock bands, who had captured the San Francisco ballroom sound to perfection, and walked away while it was still great. Sic Transit Gloria Pyschedelia.

Aftermath
The original iteration of Quicksilver Messenger Service gave up at the end of 1968, playing New Year's Eve at Winterland with the Grateful Dead, after which Gary Duncan quit the band. At that point, Quicksilver only existed as a name, since Cipollina, Freiberg and Elmore didn't really constitute an entire band. Capitol released Happy Trails in March of '69, however, and it got massive play on FM radio all over the country. The remaining trio got Nicky Hopkins on board, and borrowed a few songs from their friends and made the unsatisfying Shady Grove album. At the end of 1969, Duncan returned, along with his friend Dino Valenti. Valenti was a real character, but at least he had songs, so the 1970 version of Quick was the quartet plus Valenti on vocals and Hopkins on piano.

The afterglow of Happy Trails made Quicksilver a successful concert attraction for years to come. But Valenti's nasally vocals weren't to everyone's taste, and the flowery elegance of the 1968 quartet was never equaled, so QMS declined over the next few years and finally broke up. In fact, they had peaked long before they had broken up the first time, but at least a reasonable facsimile had been preserved before they were gone.

November 7, 1965: Dick Clark's Caravan Of Stars, Municipal Auditorium, Nashville, TN (Paul Revere/The Byrds/We Five)

Mr. Tambourine Man-The Byrds, 1965, Columbia Records

Although this blog plans to explore the history of the modern rock concert after 1966 in all its permutations, it's worth taking a moment to step back and see what prehistoric rock concerts were like. We think of a rock concert as a loud event that tries to present musical artists in their best and most exciting light, in a unique and authentic performance that is different than any other, even on the same tour. It wasn't always like that.

In 1965, one of the principal rock concert attractions was "Dick Clark's Caravan Of Stars." Clark, host of ABC-TVs American Bandstand, would tour America with a busload of rock musicians. It was a Greyhound Bus, too, not some elite motor coach. They mostly played lesser venues in cities far from the major musical capitals. This Fall 1965 version of the Caravan included Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Byrds, The We Five, Bo Diddley, The Results, Dale Wright and The Men Of Action and Soul, Inc. A few local acts probably filled out the bill.

Every band probably did 10-20 minutes. Songs were short in those days, so even the headliners could probably get in 7 or 8, if they did a medley or something. Dick Clark and/or some local Nashville DJ's probably provided some between song patter, just like AM radio. The crowd was probably mostly under 18, probably way under 18 for the most part.

None of the bands would have brought their own equipment, save for electric guitars and the like. They would have been plugged into a "house" sound system, probably about three amplifiers. The amps were probably rented, too, so musicians could hardly make a decision about whether they preferred Fender or Sunn. The vocals were probably run through the auditorium sound system, the same one they used for basketball games or beauty pageants. There would have been no means or even concept that the vocals needed to be "mixed" with the amplified guitars. There wouldn't have been any onstage monitors, so a musician on the right or left side of the stage had to guess what else was going on. Perhaps there was one microphone for the drums (run through the PA), but often as not the drummer simply had to play as loud as he could, with no amplification at all.

For a group as popular as the Byrds or Paul Revere and The Raiders, the feeble sound system may not have mattered, since it was de riguer for girls to scream throughout the entire show. In many ways, a 1965 rock show was little different than the circus, with a parade of acts briefly flashing their wares before being moved off for the next batch of animals. It's easy to laugh now at the seriousness of Fillmore musicians, feet planted, staring fixedly at their hands as they hammer away on their guitars, but it was all in reaction to performances like Dick Clark's Caravan Of Stars.

Nothing is really known to me specifically about the Nashville Caravan show, but it was probably pretty much the same as all the others. They had already played Louisville, KY (Nov 5) and Chicago (6), and would go on to play Rome, GA (8), Murfreesboro, TN (9), Florence, AL (10) and then 17 more shows, ending in White Plains, NY. All told, the Caravan played 23 shows in 24 days. For this post I can only do a brief overview of some of the bands on Dick Clark's Caravan Of Stars, to give a whiff of what rock concerts were like before the world changed.

Paul Revere And The Raiders, the headline act, were originally from Boise, ID, and first became popular in the Pacific Northwest. They played a sort of hard-driving mix of rock and rhythm and blues. Their name was supposed to inspire fans with the idea that the Raiders were "warning"  American teens about the British Invasion, led by the Beatles and Roling Stones. By 1965, the Raiders appeared almost every weekday on a Dick Clark TV show, Where The Action Is, miming their hits and other songs.

Although Paul Revere and The Raiders were hugely popular due to TV, and were extremely corny in that they wore pseudo-Revolutionary War garb with Tri-Corner hats, they were actually a real kick-ass band both live and in the studio. Rock history has dismissed them as a TV concoction who did dance steps while they played (harder than it sounds) and wore silly costumes, but songs like "Kicks" and "Hungry" were pop classics. They were produced by Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day.

The Byrds were also produced by Terry Melcher, and they were on Columbia along with the Riaders. They had recently hit it big with "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn Turn Turn" and they heralded the coming folk-rock boom, which has aged much better than tri-corner hats. The Byrds did not like riding on the Greyhoud Bus with the other bands, since they wanted to smoke pot, so they rented an RV and followed the bus. David Crosby and Chris Hillman drove, while Roger McGuinn rigged up a tape player to blast Coltrane and Ravi Shankar as they rolled across the land.

The We Five had just had a big hit with "You Were On My Mind." The group had nice folk-rock harmonies, featuring singer Beverly Bivens and Mike Stewart (John Stewart's brother), and arranged by Bob Jones. They were all good musicians, but most of the We Five faded away from the professional music scene after the band broke up in 1967, except for Jones, who became Mike Bloomfield's drummer (not a typo) and continues to record and perform today.

Bo Diddley (1928-2008) had been a big star in the 1950s and had faded some, but bands like the Rolling Stones and The Animals had revived his career, among the first of many African American musicians who would be indebted to the British appreciation for American musical roots.

The rest of the acts were just filler. According to Chris Hjort's exceptional chronology of The Byrds, So You Want To Be A Rock "N" Roll Star (Jawbone Books 2008), The Results featured two female singers from Clark's Cincinatti office.

In the 1950s and 60s, and even into the early 70s, buses full of musicians toured the country, grinding out hits to fidgety teenagers, mostly inaudible and guaranteed to be presented as trivial. Rock music meant something else to people than just entertainment, and rock music in person could be a powerful event, like the symphony or John Coltrane, not like Barnum & Bailey, and trivial "teen" events didn't do them justice. Events like Dick Clark's Caravan Of Stars were ananchronisms by 1966, and few people remember them now, and rightly so. Another world was waiting to appear, and it would appear a few months later.

Coda
Paul Revere and The Raiders had hits until 1971 (who can forget "Indian Reservation?"), but after some ups and downs they continue to perform today. The Byrds lasted until 1973, but their influence went far beyond their record sales, with both David Crosby as a member of CSNY and the Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album opening the door to the Eagles and country-rock in general. The We Five are unfairly forgotten, but that's what happens to bands who stay off the oldies circuit. Ex-guitarist-now-drummer Bob Jones is back in Hawaii, however, and he's still laying it down funky and playing it clean. Bo Diddley kept on rocking until the very end, immortalized with the phrase "Bo Diddley beat."

Anyone with additional knowledge, corrections, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) about this show is encouraged to Comment or email me.

November 6-7-8, 1969: Led Zeppelin/Roland Kirk/Isaac Hayes/Wolf Gang, Winterland, San Francisco, CA

An ad for Bill Graham-promoted shows in October and November 1969

The history of the modern rock concert as we know it today actually began on February 4, 1966, when Bill Graham and Chet Helms put on a Jefferson Airplane concert at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. The show was modeled on an event called "The Trips Festival", held two weeks earlier at another San Francisco auditorium, Longshoreman's Hall. Graham and others had held rock shows at the Fillmore prior to February 4, but that weekend was the one where rock music presented itself as public art on sensory overload. Prior to the Fillmore, "Art" was quiet, like jazz or classical music, and "entertainment" was loud, like the circus or rock music. After the Fillmore, rock was art, but rock was an art that assaulted your senses, with loud music, flashing lights and few distinctions between performer and audience.

Since that February night in 1966 there have been thousands and thousands of rock concerts, all over the world, and it would be impossible even to list them all, much less talk about each of them. A list of categories or a ranking would try even the most patient of readers, so I am adopting a different approach to telling the history of rock concerts as they actually happened. Each post will be about a different rock concert, a different moment in time, and I will let the cumulative effect of all the shows piece together the history of rock concerts since 1966. The story will never be finished, but that's what makes it a worthwhile tale. Over time, as readers participate, hopefully readers with their own tales to tell, the story will grow richer and broader.

November 6, 1969
Led Zeppelin/Roland Kirk/Isaac Hayes/Wolf Gang
Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, CA

When people write about how rock concerts "aren't what they used to be," they often cite this November 6-8 weekend in San Francisco, when Led Zeppelin headlined a 5400-capacity arena over jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk and soul legend Isaac Hayes. It's true that there aren't concerts like this anymore, but there's also a pretty good case to be made that they weren't like this before, either. True, although Bill Graham had moved his operation from the Fillmore Auditorium (at 1805 Geary Ave) to the larger Fillmore West (at 1545 Market Street), he still made a point of having diverse triple bills. In this case, Led Zeppelin had become so big that the concerts were moved to Winterland (on Post and Steiner), just two blocks from the old Fillmore, and the largest of the regular rock venues in San Francisco. Since Led Zeppelin was going to pack the joint anyway, Graham booked possibly his most diverse bill ever, with high profile jazzman Roland Kirk and soul legend Isaac Hayes, some years before his memorable hit with the "Theme From Shaft." It's a stunning enough bill to think about from today's perspective, but here I intend to look at it in it's original context.

Winterland, Post and Steiner Streets, San Francisco, CA
Winterland was an ice skating arena built in 1928. It was renamed "Winterland" in the 1940s. Winterland's big event in the post-WW2 era was regular extended runs of the Ice Capades and the Ice Follies. These events continued into the 1970s, even when the hall became Bill Graham's primary rock venue. All along, however, the arena had been used for concerts and other performances. Since it was two blocks from the Fillmore Auditorium, whenever Bill Graham had a 60s show that was too big for the 1500-capacity Fillmore, he moved it across Geary Blvd to Winterland. Some of the most legendary of Graham's Fillmore bills actually took place at Winterland. Even when Graham moved a mile away to the Fillmore West, he still took his biggest shows to Winterland, and in late 1969 Led Zeppelin was a very big deal indeed.

One very big difference between 60s rock concerts and rock concerts today was the order of the bands. At the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, the first two modern rock venues, and many of their various progeny throughout the nation, the headliner did not only come on last. Or, put another way, the headliner played two sets, but the bands "on the poster" went on twice, going around the bill so that the opening act would follow the headliner for the fourth set of the evening. The headliner generally played the third and sixth sets of the evening. Isaac Hayes is great and all, but it must have been pretty daunting to come on after Led Zeppelin blasted the house for their first set.

Often on weekends, Graham would add a fourth band to the mix, and they would play a single opening set, giving people who had come early something to watch. Since Winterland had "festival seating," if you wanted any of the seats around the edges of the floor, or you wanted to get up close, you had to get there early. The opening act was usually a local band, but sometimes it was a new band associated with the management or record company of the headliner.Thus the normal weekend configuration for this show would have been

• Set 1-Wolf Gang
• Set 2-Isaac Hayes
• Set 3-Rahsaan Roland Kirk
• Set 4-Led Zeppelin
• Set 5-Isaac Hayes
• Set 6-Rahsaan Roland Kirk
• Set 7-Led Zeppelin

Although most patrons came early and stayed late, this scheduling allowed people who had to leave early, such as teenagers, or who could only arrive late, such as working people, to still see every act on the bill. As people left, the BGP staff would sell a few more tickets, so the show remained packed the entire time. Winterland had no seats or chairs on the floor, just the "festival seating" that characterized the Fillmore from the beginning. For rock shows, there were seats around the edges of the floor and seats in the balcony, but well over half the audience would be on their feet, so the place would rock. Winterland was a cement dump, but it rocked like crazy. If a band wasn't good at Winterland, they weren't good. If a band was good, they were better at Winterland. If they were great, Winterland was where legends were made.

The Bands
Led Zeppelin's first album had been released in January, 1969, and they were an instant sensation. FM radio put most of the tracks on heavy rotation before the album was even released, so when Zeppelin toured North America in January of '69 they were popular even before the album was released in some cities. Zeppelin had been booked as second on the bill, on the basis of Jimmy Page's history as guitarist for the Yardbirds, but they often dominated the proceedings, blowing away the headliners in city after city. On their first tour through San Francisco, Led Zeppelin had opened for Country Joe and The Fish for four nights (January 9-12, 1969). Although CJF played very well (a cd was released on Vanguard in 1994), Zeppelin had been the sensation, and their album was barely available in local stores.

Led Zeppelin had come back to headline the Fillmore West in April (April 24-27, 1969), but by then they were even bigger. By the time the Fall of '69, the band had released their second album, and Led Zeppelin II was even more powerful than their debut. Bill Graham booked them for thee nights in Winterland, since Winterland's 5400 capacity was more than twice that of Fillmore West. By showtime, Zeppelin could have sold out much bigger places than even Winterland, but the show had probably been booked before LZII was released, and it was hard to believe that they would top their first album, but they did. As a result, it hardly mattered who were booked with Zeppelin, since the shows would sell out anyway.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-77) was a blind multi-instrumentalist jazz musician. He was a successful sideman in the 1960s who stepped out as the decade wore on. He had amazing breath control, using a "circular breathing" technique, so he could play three saxophones at once and play a true chord, or hold notes indefinitely. Although a conventional hard bopper in some ways, he brought a variety of influences to bear in his music, and his versatility made him stand out. Some people felt that the circular breathing and other effects were just gimmicks, and his music doesn't seem as far out now as it did then. Nonetheless his jazz was accessible without being weak at the knees, and his breathing techniques allowed him to play more dramatically than other jazzers, so he was a good choice for a jazzman at a big rock show.

The cover to Isaac Hayes' 1969 Stax album Hot Buttered Soul

Isaac Hayes (1942-2008) had been a Stax producer from way back, responsible for producing many classics with Sam & Dave and others. In the late 1960s, he started producing himself as an artist, emphasizing a kind of orchestral soul that merged various styles that had not been used together. Hayes emphasized his deep bass voice, and he shaved his head to add to the effect. Although his biggest hit did not come until 1971's "Theme From Shaft," that was a good idea of the type of music he was playing. Hayes' 1969 album was his double-lp, Hot Buttered Soul, featuring a lengthy version of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" with an eight minute spoken intro in Hayes' immortal bass voice.

Hayes had co-written songs like "Soul Man", so all the English musicians had known all about Hayes forever, and I don't doubt that the members of Led Zeppelin were watching raptly from the side of the stage during many of his sets. I have to think that would have been particularly true the first night.

Wolf Gang was added to the bill at the last minute, a typical approach to a sold out show. I know nothing about them. I assure you, that means they were incredibly obscure.

Bonzo Dog Band
The original posters for the show featured Led Zeppelin, Roland Kirk and the Bonzo Dog Band. The Bonzo Dog Band, formed in 1966 as the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, were a band of truly lunatic English satirists. They had a legendary stage show that did not translate well to big venues, but they were one of the few truly inspired satirical rock groups, whose ideas did not grow old. Not to minimize their weirdness, but one of their showstoppers was a faux blues song called "Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?" Like most legends, the band never made a dime. Their most lasting legacy, oddly, was a brief appearance in the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour movie, performing their song "Death Cab For Cutie." Among many other things, lead singer Vivian Stanshall narrated Mike Oldield's Tubular Bells, and pianist Neil Innes was the de facto music director for Monty Python, and he also played "Ron Nasty" in The Rutles movie (All You Need Is Cash). The Bonzos canceled, however, and seem to have been replaced by Isaac Hayes.

November 6, 1969
The brilliantly curated Led Zeppelin site has a platform for collecting memories for each show. Someone who attended the November 6 show recalls--somewhat vaguely, he concedes--that Roland Kirk did not play that night. That would explain why the obscure Wolf Gang was added to the bill at the last second. I assume Kirk played the other two nights, but I don't know for sure. The attendee does recall, with some confusion, that "everyone played two sets," confusing because it's so atypical of concertgoing today. The set list for the evening seems to be

Good Times Bad Times (intro) ~ Communication Breakdown, I Can't Quit You Baby, Heartbreaker, Dazed and Confused, White Summer / Black Mountainside, What Is and What Should Never Be, Moby Dick, How Many More Times (medley incl. Boogie Chillen', Hideaway, Bottle Up 'n Go, "Lemon Song"), C'Mon Everybody, Something Else.

I don't know where the set break might have been. Keep in mind that many Led Zeppelin numbers were quite extended, so do not confuse the short set list with short sets. I do feel sorry for Wolf Gang, whoever they were, having to play the fourth set of the evening, probably at about 11:00 oclock, after Led Zeppelin in their prime had just jolted Winterland's cement walls.

Coda
Led Zeppelin's star continued to rise, and very soon afterwards, the idea of seeing them in a 5400-seat venue would have only been a dream, much less with Isaac Hayes as an opener. Hayes, after a long musical career, became famous as the voice of "Chef" on the TV show South Park. Kirk died in 1977. Wolf Gang remains unknown to this day.

Anyone with additional knowledge, corrections, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) about this show is encouraged to Comment or email me.

Additional Information
Led Zeppelin.com Timeline