Somebody to Love? (14 page)

I spent the day of our performance at the hotel in a quiet, kind of thoughtful state. Everybody else was playing pool and getting fucked up, but adopting my usual habit before a performance, I'd chosen to go inside myself, making a mental list. Where were we about to perform? How long would the set last? What did I need to do about the accessories on my dress? If I sat, would the shells break or the feathers get crushed? How did I want to present myself, and how did I fit into the ceremony? Should I try to be one thing or another? Or should I just leave it all alone? I knew one thing for sure: I wanted to look like a strong but fluid representation from the Coast, so I wasn't about to get so fucked up that I looked like a freaked-out slob.

Woodstock: haggard but happy, Janis and me. (Time, Inc., collection)

There was no more road access to the concert site because of the relentless rain, so a helicopter flew us from the hotel to the platform. We soared down over a field of muddy but smiling faces a little before 9:00
p.m.
That was when we were supposed to perform, and I felt magic in the blue-black night as we got out of the helicopter and placed our feet on the stage. But due to transportation and scheduling fuck-ups, we didn't go on until sunrise.

Seated for nine hours in a darkness broken only by the towering white beams of spotlights that flowed downward from the sky, I was a part of a congregation of musicians from the tribes of a temporarily undivided state. No bathrooms—my body, seemingly obeying a higher order, shut down and I had no need. No chairs—we gathered on the floor of the gigantic stage to watch and be watched without the heavy cover of imperatives. After arranging ourselves in an arc around the center stage, engaged in a nondenominational rite, food seemed to come from nowhere. We partook from each other's stash of fruit, cheese, wine, marijuana, coke, acid, water, and conversation.

Were we, the bands, there to invoke the spirits? The gods? Were we pagan? No labeling was necessary. We were all shamans of equal power, channeling an unknown energy, seeking fluidity. I felt like a princess in a benign court—one without thrones or crowns. I could see “royalty” in every direction. The audience was just more of “us.” The performers were just more of “us.”

We seemed to take turns representing each other—sometimes someone else slept for my tired body. A friend danced when I could only stand, and I spoke when someone else felt like it was time to listen. My focus shifted all night long; sometimes it was on the stage, at other times it was on the audience. At still other times, it was somewhere else altogether that was impossible to describe. So much of Woodstock's appeal was the chance to simply come together and touch what we knew had already taken birth. It was something that had formed from the energy of the invisible collective consciousness. It was shades of Huxley, Leary, the surrealists, Gertrude Stein, Kafka—the inexhaustible list of artists who'd encouraged multiple levels of observation. It was
our
turn. We were ready to breathe, ready to celebrate change.

Woodstock was especially intense for Crosby, Stills and Nash, who up until that time had only played together twice. This was their first large-scale performance as a group, and they were determined to get it right. As it turned out, they were
so
good, it was amazing, and I was jealous of their preparation. They'd obviously rehearsed their harmonies to perfection. They demonstrated a kind of professional blend I'd hoped Airplane would develop.

And then there was Jimi Hendrix's rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He played it as a cry, solely with his guitar, using no words. With no anger on his face, no sign of annoyance or of sympathy, he played the national anthem as it had never been played before, expressing
all
of the aspects. He offered not just the traditional “my country, right or wrong” rendition, but something else that showed us—via screaming, sliding notes—the truth about our beautiful but fucked-up nation. It was an interpretation none of us would ever forget.

Strangely odd and at the same time ordinary images of those days remain in my head: Jackie Kaukonen, Jorma's sister-in-law, playing poker with Janis Joplin and Keith Moon; The Band all dressed in black, walking single file to their rooms, looking like Amish grandfathers; The Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, and Ravi Shankar at the front desk waiting for their room keys; Dale Franklin, Bill Graham's secretary from the Fillmore East, standing in the lobby with a clipboard directing “traffic.”

I really believed the whole world would look like that in about sixteen years—the different skin colors weaving in and out of the tapestry, the unrestricted language and lack of cultural animosity, and the beautiful power of our main language: rock and roll. The blend of African American, Native American, Scottish folk, East Indian, Irish, Spanish, and even classical music all folded into German-Japanese electronic technology to produce art for everybody, our endless anthems celebrating the differences and similarities of the new global family.

At 6:00
a.m.
, I stepped up to the mike. “All right, friends. You have heard the heavy groups. Now you will see morning maniac music. Believe me, yeah. It's a new dawn. Good morning, People.”

We started our set with “Volunteers.” For the moment, the rain had stopped, and it was the dawn of one more new day and the dawn of a fascinating point in history. I looked out at a mass of half a million children covered in wet mud, some celebrating, some sleeping, some making love with each other, oblivious to the people around them. Plastic sheeting protected clothing and bodies, paper bags sheltered heads. A few guys danced, tossing around their muddy, long hair, but no matter what anyone was doing, we were all focused on the same thing.

I hardly remember singing, and I'm sure it wasn't my best performance. I'd been up all night, my eyelids were at half-mast, but it hardly mattered because good and bad had disappeared for four days and nights. The audience was completely appreciative, no demanding attitudes with their applause, total acceptance when one group stopped and another began. There was no competition. We were all just there, grateful to be a part of all of it: the beauty, the misery, the exhaustion, the exhilaration, the mud, and the glory of dawn.

Did the gigantic dream work? It not only worked, it remains a magnificent symbol of an era. The musical execution of most of the bands was far from perfect, but the spirit was so powerful, it overrode all technical considerations.

We are all accustomed to big outdoor concerts these days; they've become a part of our culture. But not so in 1969. Woodstock, the first of its kind, represented the split between what we had come from in the fifties and what we were becoming in the sixties. Today, the mere name “Woodstock” immediately conjures an image of a specific point in time where social theory became practice, where for four days and nights in the spirit of acceptance, celebration, and profound ritual, wherever we were, we were all different—and we were all the same.

23

Altamont

M
onterey, then Woodstock. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the hot flash of festivals—Altamont.

Pageants, especially those that rouse the passions, often take the form of ritual: they're repeated again and again. That was part of the problem with Altamont—trying to repeat Woodstock. Too many aspects of the Woodstock “ceremony” were circumstantial and therefore impossible to reenact.

During our performance at Altamont I forgot to wear my contact lenses—maybe I just didn't want to see it. The concept was a gigantic Grateful Dead/Airplane/Rolling Stones San Francisco–style concert in the park. But from the earliest planning stages—and leading up to the death of a man in the audience—this event was doomed. In transitioning from idea to practice, it became a series of last-minute downgrades, all pointing to disaster.

When the concept was first emerging, Paul Kantner and I went to Mick Jagger's house in London to discuss when, where, and how. I'd never met Mick, but the reputation of his group's excesses preceded him. I knew that he and his band were really out of control, much more wild than our group was, and in the taxi with Paul on my way over there I was pretty uncomfortable.

“What's the matter, Grace?” Paul asked.

“It's Mick. What if everybody's shooting heroin and screwing knotholes in the wall or something and I have to sit there and act cool?”

I was afraid we'd be walking into a roomful of foppish junkies engaged in unnatural acts with elegantly dressed ninety-pound groupies, loaded on drugs I'd never heard of. Paul didn't pay me much attention, and by the time we rang the doorbell, I was practically hyperventilating. But good old Mick revealed a different side to his persona; he opened the door in an expensive business suit. I exhaled as soon as I stepped inside. The place was immaculate; Mick had magnificent Oriental rugs covering hardwood floors with Louis XIV furniture and expensive artwork hanging on the walls. He was like a kid dressing up in his rich daddy's accessories. He offered us no dope, just tea. There were no groupies, either. Or unnatural acts. Or fooling around. It was all business.

We sipped tea and discussed the concert idea for about an hour and the whole meeting was so crisp and professional, it totally blew me away. It turned out Mick had gone to business college, and apparently, when he told you he'd be talking business, that's
all
he did. He was one of a small group of rock stars—Frank Zappa and Kiss's Gene Simmons were also members of the club—who never got irreparably jerked around financially, because he paid close attention to what the managers and record companies were doing when it was time to shuffle the deck.

A smart businessman.

The entertainers who
didn't
bother to figure out the sleight-of-hand tricks played by the suits are now hiring pro bono lawyers to try to get back the royalties and perks that slipped away while they were “sniffing up” their assets. Incidentally, if it weren't for Skip Johnson—Starship's lighting director, my future husband of eighteen years, and still my good friend—I'd probably be joining the rest of them in a breadline somewhere, wondering what happened to all the money that flew out the window. Skip closely watched the managers, lawyers, accountants, and record companies, and he spoke up when I missed the errors because I was too busy having “fun.” He had the uncanny ability to get ripped at night and show up at the office the next day. Like Mick, he could say thank you to the compliments and still read the fine print.

After hearing Mick's thoughts on how a concert of this kind might be set up, Paul and I reassured Mick that “our people” would stay in touch with “his people.” And we left feeling like we'd just had a meeting with a very young art patron, rather than the crown prince of British hedonism. We thought,
Hey, if Mick is this together, maybe this thing can work.

Wrong.

We'd wanted to hold the concert in Golden Gate Park, but two days before it was supposed to happen, the city of San Francisco said no to the park permit. Sears Point raceway was the next option, but the owners wanted one hundred thousand dollars in escrow from The Stones. Understandably, Jagger said no. Finally, we found Altamont. Located about forty minutes outside San Francisco, Altamont was an ugly, brown, flat, open expanse of land with no tree cover and no personality. Definitely not a pastoral setting. And obtaining a permit for even that was a hassle. We finally got it, but as Paul later reminded me, “We took Altamont out of desperation.”

The concert was scheduled on what turned out to be a weird, gray-red dusty day in the muggy dead-grass flatland in the middle of nowhere. The sun never came out. Granted, it rained through most of Woodstock, but this dullness was worse than rain. I wore a pair of blue pants and a blue jacket—nothing striking, no princess posing. This time, I settled for looking like just another guy in the band because the anticipation of another glorious event had been flattened by the constant hassles.

Flying in from Florida after doing a gig the night before, we'd had no sleep, so we were far more concerned with keeping our energy up long enough to make it through our set than with how we looked. There were a couple of trailers near the stage serving as overloaded holding pens for any and all bands, crew, managers, and Hell's Angels, who were acting as security. With a mass of people shuffling around, trying to organize either themselves or some aspect of the production, the atmosphere was closer to traffic at rush hour than an outdoor celebration.

I later told an interviewer, “Woodstock was unruly, but Altamont was reigning chaos.” The Hell's Angels were roaring drunk and ready to ignite even before the concert started. Jefferson Airplane went on second, after The Flying Burrito Brothers, and in the middle of the set, my contact-lens-less eyes could see a blurry scramble over on stage left where Marty usually stood. I walked to the drum riser to ask Spencer what was going on, but he just kept playing with a terrified look on his face. Then I walked toward Marty, but he wasn't there. After jumping off the stage to help some poor guy who was being pummeled by the Hell's Angels, he'd apparently made a big mistake by yelling “Fuck you!” at one of the bikers.