Riot On Sunset Strip

Domenic Priore

Description

“The Byrds were happenin’. Bob Dylan was happenin’. And it was the most beautiful time in my life …” Arthur Lee, Love

“If you’ve ever seen American Graffiti, the Strip used to be like that …” Stephen Stills, Buffalo Springfield

On the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, an electrifying scene appeared out of nowhere, exploded into creativity, and then, just as suddenly, vanished. Riot on Sunset Strip captures the excitement of this great artistic awakening and serves as a startling evocation of the social and artistic revolution that was the 60s.

From the moment The Byrds debuted at Ciro’s on March 26th 1965—with Bob Dylan joining them on stage—right up to the demonstrations of November 1966, Sunset Strip nightclubs nurtured and broke The Doors, Love, Buffalo Springfield (featuring Neil Young and Stephen Stills), Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, The Turtles, The Mamas & The Papas, The Standells, The Electric Prunes, and so many more.

With a foreword by Arthur Lee, period maps by Shag, and a brand new epilogue, this book tells the story of the astonishing time when rock’n’roll displaced movies at the center of the action in Hollywood.

Sujets

• Musique
• Culture musicale
• Histoire de la musique
• Criticism
• History
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 10 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908279910
• Langue: English

Extrait

Riot on Sunset Strip
Rock’n’roll’s last stand in Hollywood
Domenic Priore

A Jawbone ebook
Revised second edition 2015

Jawbone Press
3.1D Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com

Volume copyright © 2015 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Domenic Priore. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

Edited by Tom Seabrook
Cover design by Mark Case
Contents

Foreword by Arthur Lee
Introduction Making it on the strip by Jerry Hopkins

Chapter one Going to a go go
Chapter two That's the Hollywood nightlife
Chapter three The roots of Los Angeles rock’n’roll
Chapter four Progenitors of the broader social consciousness
Chapter five Sometimes good guys don’t wear white
Chapter six Surfink a go go: pop art in 1960s LA
Chapter seven Far out

Illustrations

Chapter eight A giant amoeba
Chapter nine Folk rock is a beautiful thing
Chapter ten Some other kinds of bands
Chapter eleven TV a go go and the battle of the bands
Chapter twelve There’s battle lines bein’ drawn
Chapter thirteen Aftermath

Epilogue For what it's worth
The scene featuring original maps of rock’n’roll Hollywood c. 1965–66 by Shag
Notes and sources
Acknowledgements
Foreword
by Arthur Lee
“ Hey Folks, this is Arthur Lee. I’m the one who kicked the door open for all these guys like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Bill Graham, The Grateful Dead, The Doors—all these want-to-be rock stars that you are so familiar with. This guy Domenic wants me to start his story off, so here goes. ”
The Byrds were happenin’. Bob Dylan was happenin’. And it was the most beautiful time in my life. It has not always been purse first and ass last in my book. We shared, we cared, and we tried to represent peace and love. It’s too bad that people that are caught up in calling people bitches and mfers weren’t there to see what life can really be like. I look and listen to these hip-hop and so-called rap artists. Some are very talented, but all most of them do is preach hate. Love On Earth Must Be.
The Strip was like a home away from home to me. After the gigs I usually didn’t have a place to stay, but the people in those days could always find a place for me. I’d go to a party after shows and I was welcomed by all, especially white people. When Martin Luther King Jr was walking down the street hand in hand in Montgomery, Alabama, and Tennessee, trying to tell people it’s too bad you’re judged by the color of your skin rather than substance, I was already ahead of the game; I was putting it to shame.
The people were like: “If I got it, you got it.” And if I got it, here it is, come and get it. It was all about sharing. But if I was a regular nine-to-five negro instead of walking around with one shoe on and one shoe off, I’m sure I wouldn’t got the recognition that a person being black would get. You got to take a chance to get a chance in this world, and I took a chance. And guess what I got? A chance.
The music was about getting along. The music is the key, but God is above that. I call him Love, I use his name, but mostly I’m a human being, just like you. The flesh is weak, but life goes on. The music was the inspiration for the music that I hear today. There was the birth of folk-rock: that’s what I listened to. I’m glad I was there to help shape the music that I hear today.
I was there to bust the door open for other black entertainers: I came from South LA, where blacks and whites were joined together. There were no Crips, no Bloods. I came to Hollywood to send LOVE.
And Love I got.

Arthur Lee,
Los Angeles,
August 2004
Introduction
Making it on the Strip
by Jerry Hopkins of the Los Angeles Free Press
I have a theory about the Sunset Strip. I say it is not real. It is plastic. I say the Strip is manufactured in Japan and shipped here in small parts, then it is reassembled by a committee of pot smokers.
If you are not convinced I will tell you about the time I watch a lady named Szou dance all by herself at the Trip wearing a Gypsy Boots T-shirt for a dress. Or the time a friend of mine walks into a lady’s apartment and she is sitting cross-legged on the floor pasting feathers on a picture of The Rolling Stones.
I can also tell you about a concert I go to and I see janitors clean up after, and they find six pair of little girl’s panties under a layer of jelly beans. And another time I see folks lined up for a block outside Barney’s Beanery, it is past midnight and these people are standing in line to see an art exhibit.
Do you believe this? Not me, I don’t.
Almost every day I see something like this I don’t believe. I see people like Vito, who is a sculptor and a father-like figure for the teenyboppers and who also is the husband of the lady in the Gypsy Boots T-shirt. I see Kim Fowley, who is a singer and who does Mick Jagger type things with his fingers when he dances.
Others I see include Earl Leaf, who carries a camera everywhere and who is the world’s oldest teenager, and Teri Garr, who is an actress and a dancer, in her Hollywood pad is a big poster from a 1930s movie and she likes to wear antique shades and a T-shirt that says “Chiquita Brand Bananas.”
There is also Wallace Berman, who is a talented artist and who has worn his hair very long for almost 20 years now, and a pretty brunette lady she judges how happy she is by how many Top 40 record stars she balls the last month or so. Phil Spector is around, too, and so is ‘Wild Man’ Fisher, a songwriter who jumps up and down a lot.
Of course there are groovy people like Roger McGuinn and Zal Yanovsky. Roger is wearing those Byrd glasses so long now his eyes are rectangular, and Zolly is the fellow with The Lovin’ Spoonful. His face is made of rubber and his feet when he is playing and singing they seem to be going off in different directions to leave the rest of him hanging there.
Places I see these people usually are the Trip, the Fred C. Dobbs’, Canter’s, Bido Lito’s, Ben Frank’s, and Barney’s Beanery.
Sometimes I go to the Whisky A Go Go, which Time magazine might say is where the action WAS and which might be back ‘in’ any time now. Every now and then I stop in at the Fifth Estate to see a movie, or just go to Barry Friedman’s pad, which is Barbara Burns’s old place and is a small house with a sunken bathtub in the middle of the living room. Barry is a fire-eater with a circus when I meet him three years ago. Now he is producing records and organizing new groups.
If you will forgive me a moment I sound like Time magazine again, this is where it is happening and these are some of the people it is happening to. The important thing is the music and to dance. It is like the Peanuts cartoon that has Snoopy bouncing up and down and he says: “To dance is to live.” To dance, and to stand around sharing secrets and digging each other.
Next few weeks I will tell you some true stories about these people. Oscar Levant, who is a hipster a little removed from this group, says you strip away the phony tinsel from Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath. I say you strip away the phony plastic and you find real vinyl.
A couple of nights ago I am with Artie Kornfeld, who is one of The Changin’ Times. He comes out of The Trip and he looks up and down at things. He says to his partner Steve Duboff: “I get this feeling it is not real. I get this feeling somebody is going to say ‘strike the set’ and it will all disappear somehow.”
Not a chance, Artie. There is another shipment due in from Japan day after tomorrow.
Chapter one
Going to a go go
“ Discotheque music may be interpreted as the pulsebeat of today’s youth. These social dances are a revolt against tradition and the restrictions of authority; resulting movements are expressions of youthful desires for freedom. Throughout the history of social dance, young social dancers have won the right to dance the ‘in’ dances of their day and to consider their versions the right ones. The discotheque dances of the 1960s are part of our American heritage and belong in a serious study of American social dance. ” —John G. Youmans, Social Dance
On Sunset Strip in 1965 and 1966, a thriving, celebratory scene appeared out of nowhere, exploded in a dazzling array of visceral creativity, and then, just as suddenly, vanished. So much incredible music, art, and social revolution came from one place in one time that it’s difficult to grasp how it all happened so fast. The fruits of LA’s teen megalopolis, and the remnants it left behind, transformed the mid 1960s Sunset Strip into a fascinating artistic Mecca. During this moment, something actually displaced movies as the center of action in Hollywood: rock’n’roll.
This new LA nightlife comprised a heady mix of modernist design, pop art, and beat aesthetics, interlaced with elements of rock’n’roll from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. Teens could interact freely and creatively with budding youth icons in clubs that had previously been the exclusive domain of the rich and famous of the 1930s and 40s movie industry. Economics were now fluid, new ideas rampant, ephemera colored the atmosphere, and society itself seemed extremely changeable.
This was great news for Sunset Strip’s artistic community, which began to collaborate with other forces: television, radio, independent cinema, and fresh forms of consumerism beginning to hit the newly minted teen market, symbiotically altering mass media in surprising ways. In 1964, the musical pendulum swung from New York City to this fresh, idealistic locale on the West Coast, with The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles—whose headquarters in the USA was the Capitol Tower on Vine Street—all having