A silly Facebook meme asked what famous musicians we’ve met. There were so many, I couldn’t choose. I liked Allegra Broughton’s (Solid Air) idea of telling the backstories of how we met. Much more interesting than a vanilla list.
After I posted a partial list, someone asked me how come I’d met so many musicians, I said mostly it came down to time and place. Many nearly famous rock musicians played at our high school assemblies and political rallies (Class of 1970—we made the 6 o’clock news when we shut down the Marin County draft board). From the Tubes, Moby Grape, Talking Heads, Country Joe to John Cipollina. So we thought hobnobbing with musicians was normal.
After the Summer of Love, when utopia began to sour, and society as we knew it had the DTs, the rock musicians and hangers-on began to flee the Haight in San Francisco for Marin County, they invaded our tiny little valley. We all had to learn to live with each other, which was an uneasy compromise. Old redneck school met hippiedom. It was not love at first sight. And I was not at all starstruck. If anything, I was angry that our valley had been invaded.
The influx of new people stretched and tore the warp and weft of our bucolic valley. And when Tam school district took away our buses (too expensive, they said), we had to hitchhike in order to get to school. We demonstrated, we walked to and from school—but it was 17 miles each way! I was exhausted. I took up hitchhiking. And the only folks that would stop to pick us up were the rock musicians. Never the ranchers who even knew us. No solidarity there.
I grew up in west Marin so I met many of the musicians while I was hitchhiking home to Forest Knolls. I thumbed rides with Van Morrison, Jesse Colin Young, Sons of Champlin (our main lid connection), Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and of course, Janis—many of them lived on my road. Carlos Santana was always good for a ride. Janice never stopped for us, but then she only had a two-seater Porsche. She always braked for young men hitchhiking.
Linda Ronstadt, Grace Slick, most of Jefferson Airplane, Maria Muldaur all lived in nearby hamlets at one time or another. When Jefferson Airplane moved to Woodacre, they hung a model biplane that was featured on one of their albums from an oak tree.
I met many, if not all of the Grateful Dead—both living and dead, Micky Hart was a neighbor both in Forest Knolls, and later in Forestville—we boarded his girlfriend’s horse. Later, poor Jerry Garcia was in rehab at Forest Farm Camp, renamed Serenity Farm, so we saw him dawdling down the hill to the little grocery store in Forest Knolls to get his daily fix of Häagen-Dazs, or Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream, right before he died.
Bobby Darin was a very good friend of my mom’s. I tried to play If I were a Carpenter for him on my Palamino Pony guitar. He was not impressed, I was 12, but he showed me an E minor progression chord I was having trouble with. I met Pete, Mike & Peggy Seeger at several venues. I must’ve been radiant with joy because after one concert in Grass Valley, Mike Seeger came up to me and gave me a huge bear hug, and wept on my shoulder. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott used to hang out in downtown Forest Knolls. He liked watching all the girls on horseback. I was one of them.
Just wow!
