Hells Angels - Altamont the Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the inside story of rocks darkest day

R ock Scully had passed through Heathrow Airport in London many times before. Growing up as the stepson of a respected international scholar and journalist, Scully had spent years living abroad, attending private schools and universities in Europe. He was not especially alarmed to be greeted in the almost friendly, official tone of the British passport officer.

Mr. Scully? Right this way, sir.

In October 1969, six weeks after Woodstock, it had become increasingly common to see visitors to England arrive wearing long hair and hippie garb, but Scullythe twenty-four-year-old manager of the Grateful Dead, ringleader of the most resolute gang of San Francisco freaks, house band to the dawning of the LSD apocalypse and pioneer explorers of inner spacewas a prince among California hippies and looked it. Scully appeared like nothing so much as Rasputin, his scarecrow frame topped with scraggly dark hair and an unkempt wispy beard. He had taken so much LSD, his pupils were little more than molten brown orbs floating in buttermilk. He was dressed head to toe in denim, his feet encased in exquisite hand-tooled cowboy boots. He had the odd feeling he had been expected.

Rock had arrived with Frankie Weir, the formidable girlfriend of Dead guitarist Bobby Weir, close enough to him to have assumed his last name, who was headed to London to take a job with Derek Taylor, press secretary for The Beatles and Apple Records. It was only on the flight to England that Rock realized that his ticket, which had been arranged for him by Lenny Hart, the father of Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who had recently taken over some management responsibilities in regard to the Deads business affairs, was one-way. That struck him as odd, but so did a lot of things, and he put it out of his mind. Rock had their ticket stubs in his pocket.

Rock was coming to London to show the Brits how real San Francisco hippies threw free concerts in the park. He was to meet with a production company called Blackhill Enterprises, which only three months before had presented a huge free concert in Londons Hyde Park with the Rolling Stones. The company had invited Scully to meet with them to discuss similar possible concerts with the Dead and Jefferson Airplane, the other leading San Francisco hippie rock band. The Dead and the Airplane were closely associated, and Scully had gone to the airport straight from a meeting at the Airplane mansion in San Francisco to discuss the prospect of the London concerts. In addition to talking business, Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner had handed Rock a small brown vial filled with pure Merck pharmaceutical cocaine. Scully tucked the vial in his pants pocket and headed for London.

The passport official took Rock upstairs and showed him to a small room in Heathrow where two customs officers waited. One of the agents had a newspaper clipping with a headline about the Grateful Dead planning an LSD fest in Hyde Park. They started to paw through Rocks luggage. The first thing that came to their attention was Rocks mojo, the eagle feather and bear claw and other Native American artifacts that he routinely traveled with. He had also loaded up on turquoise jewelry and bracelets that he knew the English would love. But when they picked up the Polaroid film canister and shook it, dozens of tiny purple pills fell out and rolled all over the floor.

It was the finest LSD in the world, Owsley Purple, manufactured by Augustus Owsley Stanley III himself, longtime benefactor, resident audio genius, and elixir mixer to the court of the Grateful Dead, the first private party in the world to synthesize the mind-altering compound. More worried about the marijuana in his luggage, Rock had practically forgotten about the LSD. It wasnt a lot of dosesmaybe fifty or sixty. The small pills resembled the tiny jacks of heroin dispensed to addicts in England.

Whats this? Morphine? said the customs agent.

The two men whisked Rock away by his arms into an interrogation room and he was quickly stripped to his boxer shorts. The younger man started thoroughly going through Rocks pants, while the older agent played with the bear claw and the feather, fascinated by the exotic Americana. Then he pulled out another bottle of pills, Rocks Entero-Vioform, diarrhea medicine. The older agent recognized the prescription. Do you have a problem? he asked.

Yes, I do, said Scully, and I actually need to go to the bathroomright now.

He reached out and snatched his pants, clutched his stomach, and was led out of the room by the younger agent to a small bathroom. The agent let Rock inside, who closed and locked the door behind him and retrieved the vial of cocaine from the pants watch pocket. With one massive snort, he inhaled the contents.

He pulled out Frankies ticket stub, tore it into pieces, and flushed it down the toilet. Without that, there was no way the authorities could connect them. He rinsed the empty brown vial in the sink and put it back in his pants pocket. Outside, the younger agent waited to take him to yet another room where now the police wanted to talk with him. They sat him down and started asking questions, but Scully couldnt speak. The cocaine had completely frozen his larynx. The best he could manage were some distressed, garbled squawks.

They arrested Rock for importing a controlled substance and took him to the Feltham police station, a small jail in a remote London borough adjacent to Heathrow largely used for airport arrests, and as a result a tidy, welcoming neighborhood establishment that did not truck with the usual criminal element but attracted a higher-class clientele. They served Rock tea and left his cell door open, even took him with them when they went on their rounds. He passed the weekend pleasantly enough in custody.

Frankie Weir went to town and worked the phones, beginning a long trail of calls. She raised bail from Lenny Holzer, a New York City scenester who was living in London at the Dorchester Hotel and had first met Rock years before when the Dead played the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. Frankie also called Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and Sam Cutler of Blackhill Enterprises, the rogue concert producer whod invited Rock over in the first place. In turn, Cutler contacted Chesley Millikin, who was running Epic Records in England at the time and consulting with Rock about landing a record deal for the Dead with mighty CBS Records. Millikin then phoned home to Marin County, California, and spoke with Rocks new girlfriend, Nicki Rudolph, who flew to the rescue. With money suddenly needed for Rocks legal defense, Nicki arrived in England the next day, four and a half months pregnant, her bra filled with thousands of hits of acid. The English had little or no access to this quality product, and the California contraband disappeared in one smooth transaction.

On Monday, with Holzers money in his pocket, Millikin picked up Cutler in his well-worn Bentley and drove to the police station to fetch Rock, smoking a joint and chatting about Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones guitarist who had drowned in his swimming pool that July, only a few days after being fired from the band. They took Rock by Keith Richardss place on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea to pick up keys to a flat Millikin had arranged for Rock, a giant Victorian home nearby with a grand staircase in the middle, sometimes inhabited by members of the Pink Floyd crew and shared by a pair of blonde Scandinavian hookers. But when Richards learned that Rock had left high-grade California marijuana in his unclaimed luggage back at Heathrow, he insisted that Rock go pick it up immediately.