Hill - San Francisco and the long 60s

SAN FRANCISCO AND THE LONG 60s

For Elena Dn and Onwy Sin,
my half-American beauties

SAN FRANCISCO AND THE LONG 60s

Sarah Hill

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

History will show, I believe, that the San Francisco dance renaissance played a key role... in the socio-cultural and political revolution in which we are involved.

[Ralph Gleason, Perspectives: San Francisco and the Stars,
Rolling Stone 14, July 20, 1968, p. 10.]

San Francisco started out as a Spanish mission. But when they discovered gold, people came from every corner of the world, one at a time. Therefore San Francisco is the only place I know of that was built on the individual. Maybe that is its core secret. What makes it so different from everywhere else?

[Marc Arno]

But the practical question remains: why San Francisco? When the studios, the companies, and the heavy music traditions are all plugged in and anchored in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, why a comparatively tiny town on a bay? The answer... is something like this: We dont dig recording as much as playing live music; we dont need or want to sign ourselves away to a record label unless and until were ready; and fuck tradition.

[Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Going Strong In Spite of Bad-Mouthing,
Rolling Stone 20, October 26, 1968, p. 1.]

CONTENTS

The Short 60s :

The Long 60s :

First on my list of people to thank is my friend Vicki Leeds, who graciously opened her address book and put me in touch with some wonderful people she knew on the scene in the Haight back in the 1960s. Even the people she didnt introduce me to seemed to know her anyway. Hers is one in a long list of names of Haight folk whose words are included in these pages, but there were many others who do not appear here. I would like to thank all of my hippie interviewees once again for sharing their memories with me.

Research for this project was made possible by generous grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Cardiff University. The Music and Letters Trust provided financial assistance for the reproduction of some of the photographs in these pages. For their local assistance I would like to thank the staff at the Newspapers & Microforms Library and at the Bancroft Library, both University of California, Berkeley; Kyra Jablonsky and Supriya Wronkiewicz at the Museum of Performance and Design, San Francisco; and Jonathan Manton at the Stanford University Archive of Recorded Sound.

For their many acts of kindness I am indebted to my colleagues at Cardiff University, most particularly Ken Gloag, Amanda Villepastour, Keith Chapin, David Beard, and Clair Rowden. My colleagues in the Severn Pop Network have provided necessary perspective, and I must thank Lee Marshall, Justin Williams, and Katherine Williams for their always timely advice. Finally, my deepest thanks to my colleagues on the editorial board of Popular Music . Though I do not wish to single any one of them out, I must mention Allan Moore, Dai Griffiths and Nanette De Jong for the many and varied ways that they have helped me during the writing of this book.

For the right chats at the right times I would like to thank Fred Lieberman, Patrick McGuinness, Sara Cohen, Tia De Nora, Philip Bohlman, Simon Frith, Joe Bennett, David Shumway, Tom Irvine, Tim Perkis, Tim Hughes, Dave Oprava, and especially the late Dave Sanjek. For their comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript my thanks go to Drew Buchman, Alexandra Apolloni, Ian Inglis, and the two anonymous reviewers. Further away, Nicholas Meriwether at the Grateful Dead Archive has been remarkably generous with his time and expertise. For entirely nonacademic reasons I offer my love and thanks to Claire Connolly, Paul ODonovan, Kaite OReilly, Phillip Zarrilli, and Gerald Tyler. Finally, a very special thanks to my editor at Bloomsbury, Ally-Jane Grossan, for shepherding this book these last twelve months.