August 1, 1969: Family Dog, Playland

STRIKE FLASHES ON HIP SCENE

What is touted as the world's first psychedelic strike will flash upon the hip scene tomorrow night.
Something called the Lightshow Guild will hit the bricks at the Family Dog Dance Hall on the Great Highway.
The Guild, a loose but lively collection of artists who accompany rock music with far-out flashing light patterns, is demanding higher wages from two of the nation's top producers of contemporary concerts - Chet Helms of the Family Dog and Bill Graham of Fillmore West.
Lightshow men said a team of light artists now gets only about $150 a night for performance, while rock musician bands may get several thousand dollars. They are asking for a minimum of $300 a night, or $800 for four nights running.
The strike is scheduled to begin tomorrow night at the Family Dog, then move on to Fillmore West Tuesday night.
The Guild promised that the strike will be "wild," with light projections flashed on the outside instead of the inside of the dance hall.

(from the San Francisco Examiner, 31 July 1969)

* * * 

LIGHTS OUT

The Light Artists Guild, organized two months ago and representing more than sixty Bay Area light shows, will picket the Family Dog this weekend and the Fillmore West starting Tuesday. From 7 p.m. till closing, strikers will carry flowers, candles, flashlights, strobes, and electric yoyos. A generator and flat-bed truck will supply power for outside projections.
The strike was called at a tumultuous Guild meeting last Tuesday night by an overwhelming majority (all but one). The strikers' first and most important demand is recognition of the Guild as a bargaining agent by the ballrooms. At present neither Chet Helms nor Bill Graham will extend recognition or discuss terms with the Guild's elected negotiating committee. The committee . . . is ready to meet with Chet or Bill at any time, but the picket lines will stay until a settlement is reached.
The other demands are for minimum billing requirements in all forms of advertising, and for minimum wages. At present a good light show might get $150 for a one-night performance (actually less than that per night when pro-rated for two or three nights). The Guild wants a one-night minimum of $200 from the Dog and $300 from the Fillmore.
A light show is one of the most expensive of art forms, requiring an investment of anywhere from five to fifteen thousand dollars. Materials alone - bulbs, dyes, gels, film stock - are used up at a rate of $25 an hour. By contrast many shows manage to earn only $1 an hour per man at present wage rates.
The Guild has requested performers and audiences to boycott the halls until the strike is settled. On Wednesday the strikers sought - but failed to get - sanction from the San Francisco Labor Council. Sanction would have required members of the musicians' union to honor the Guild's picket lines.
Nevertheless Jerry Abrams reported at a Guild meeting Wednesday that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead would refuse to cross the picket line, and that other members of the Dead were being contacted on an individual basis. (The Dead had been scheduled to play the Family Dog this weekend.) Support for the strikers has also been voiced by Tom Donahue, Roland Young and other djs at KSAN and KSJO, the Berkeley Tribe and Good Times, and the hip rank-and-file of Local 261.
At present the strike seems likely to hit the Family Dog hardest. The Dog is in serious financial difficulties to begin with, and had counted on this weekend's appearance by the Grateful Dead to help recoup losses. Chet Helms, reached at his home, expressed no outrage and only mild regret over the strike. Chet explained his reluctance to recognize the Guild as a wish not "to deal with organizations but with individuals or families." Chet's books are always open, and he is "willing and prepared to publish figures to show what goes into the Dog." The light show, he feels, is a part - but not an irreplaceable part - of the total construct, and that the Family Dog has been moving into a more theatrical direction in any event.
Bill Graham could not be reached for comment by press time.

(by Verne & Bill, from the San Francisco Good Times, 31 July 1969) 

* * *

STRIKE AT FAMILY DOG SPORTS A LIGHT TOUCH

There’s a song on the air these days called “Both Sides Now,” which would be a fitting theme for a scheduled light show strike tonight at the Family Dog Dance Hall, 660 Great Highway.
Members of the striking Light Artists Guild plan to do their light thing on the outside of the building, while inside the Grateful Dead will throb their beat to the psychedelic lighting of the non-striking Glare light group from Palo Alto.
Customers will be faced with the decision of which show to dig and undoubtedly some will try to pick up on them from both sides now.
Although the Berkeley Barb hassle set some precedent for hip labor disputes, the wrangling at the Family Dog – which is expected to carry over to the Fillmore West on Tuesday – seems to be filled with more love than acrimony.
Mrs. Jerrie Cummings, secretary to Family Dog manager Chet Helms, is actually looking forward to tonight’s picket line:
“I think it will be kind of fun.”
And as to the members of the Light Artists Guild, Mrs. Cummings said:
“We don’t want to fight with the light artists. They’re our friends. We love them. If they need some electricity, we might run some out to them.”

(by John Hurst, from the San Francisco Examiner, 1 August 1969)

* * * 

LIGHTS OUT AT S.F. BALLROOMS

It will be lights out tonight for the Family Dog Ballroom on the Great Highway.
The Light Artists Guild, representing more than 60 bay area light shows, will strike the Family Dog on Friday with picket lines around the ballroom.
What the sounds will be like (if any) is at this moment anybody's guess. Gerry Garcia, lead guitarist for the Grateful Dead - which is scheduled to play the Dog this weekend - has stated that he will not cross the Guild picketline.
If other rock groups follow Gerry's lead, both the Dog and Fillmore West will be shutdown by next weekend.
The Guild will strike the Fillmore West next Tuesday, after a Guild member finishes this weekend's previously-contracted performance.
Reaction to the strike from Fillmore proprietor Bill Graham was quick and caustic. "These scumbags have the audacity to threaten me with a picketline," he said.
Graham told the Tribe that the light show was not a draw factor and that he would fill up his ballroom just as easily without the light artists.
He said that the Guild had threatened both rock groups and other light shows before they asked to negotiate with him.
"We are not here to put them in business," Graham said, "but to support their craft. And we will determine on what level we support their endeavor."
The Guild states that both Graham and Dog head Chet Helm have refused to talk to the Guild as an organization - that they will only talk to the individual light shows.
The Light Artists Guild began to get themselves together about two months ago in an attempt to "further the light show as an art form," as one member put it. While the members emphasize that they are not strictly a union, they can function in traditional union ways.
Last Monday night, the Guild voted overwhelmingly to use one union tactic, the strike, if the ballrooms refused to recognize the Guild as spokesmen for the bay area artists.
They will announce the strike at a press conference Friday morning and ask rock groups and ballroom patrons to respect their picket line.
In general, the Guild is seeking "greater recognition of the light art." They claim that with the minimal wages that are now being paid, the light art, the most expensive of all the art forms in the cultural revolution, is being crippled in its development.
Light shows are being paid the same wages they were paid three years ago, which is only about a third as much as an unknown rock group gets for gigging the same ballroom.
"Like rock groups, we want our art to be self-supporting," one Guild member said. "The light show is an integral part of the rock environment; we are writing art history, but we want to expand and embellish the art."
With each group averaging about five members, the present rate of $100 per night barely covers the cost of projectors, film, oils, cameras, and bulbs.
The Guild is seeking $600 for 3 nights work at the Family Dog and $650 for the same time at the Fillmore. (The difference is based on the difference in the two ballrooms' capacities.)
The Guild's third demand is that light artists be given at least 35% of the billing in all advertisements for a concert.
So far, the Guild is only beginning to receive response from local rock groups. Both Country Joe and the Fish and Gerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead have promised to honor the picket line.
The Tribe asked Garcia if he could be in trouble for violating his contract at the Dog this weekend by refusing to cross the picket line.
"It doesn't have anything to do with unions or picket lines," he said. "I know where the Guild is at and I know how much they need to do their thing. I would prefer to play, but I won't cross their picket line."
Those who are of the subculture and who are fed up with the Establishment's exploitation of its arts, feel the same as Gerry.
As one Guild member stated, "For the first time artists have sat together in the same room and have forgotten their petty competition."
The Berkeley Tribe is one example of people getting together and refusing to let the Man make them competitors. The Light Guild is another example of the same thing. The rock groups are next.
As one Guild spokesman stated, "Man, this is going to spread."

(by Tari, from the Berkeley Tribe, 1 August 1969) 

* * *

PICKET LINE SPLITS GRATEFUL DEAD

The Grateful Dead, a group legendary in the San Francisco rock world, last night ignored pickets sent to the Family Dog at Ocean Beach by striking members of the Light Artists Guild.
Known by fans simply as "The Dead," the group played without its leader, Jerry Garcia, who refused to cross the picket line circling on the sidewalk in front of the dance hall at 660 Great Highway near Playland at the Beach.
Spokesman for the light show artists, Jerry Abrams, operator of Head lights, outlined the three demands put forward by the newly formed guild:
- A minimum salary of $600 per weekend.
- Recognition of the new guild.
- Better billing for light artists.
For squares who have never attended a rock concert, the artists provide the swirling psychedelic colored lights that accompany the music.
The strikers also staged a light show outside the Dog dance hall, bouncing the beams off the awning over the front door. Coffee and doughnuts were served, flowers and leaflets handed out to passersby, and generally a feeling of amicability prevailed.
In fact the general manager of the Family Dog, Chet Helms, provided the electricity for the strikers' light show.
Helms said it was an unhappy day when he could no longer "talk to individuals" but had to bargain with "third parties and groups."
"There are only so many potatoes," Helms said. "What we need to do is get together the whole community who draw sustenance from the Dog and draw up a new wage scale."
The Grateful Dead took a step in that direction by offering to take a wage cut in order to sweeten the salaries of the light technicians.
But so far, no meeting has been arranged.
Helms said that he is $20,000 in the hole on his seven week old enterprise.

(from the San Francisco Examiner, 2 August 1969)

* * * 

LIGHT STRIKE

Chet Helms spent Friday night in dialogue with the people.
In fact, Chet Helms has spent most Friday nights for the past three years talking for hours with the people, but usually not on the street. This Friday was different from all other nights because, for most of it, there were more people outside his Playland dance hall than inside.
The big attraction (and obstacle) was 50 pickets from the Light Artist's Guild who sometimes blocked the doorway. They handed out a leaflet which Helms claimed, bitterly, was full of lies; chanted; and harassed those who were undecided about spending $3 to see whether the Grateful Dead would or wouldn't appear.
The Dead (minus Jerry Garcia) and Albert Collins did appear, along with the Ballet Afro-Haiti, but fewer than 700 paid to see them.
Outside, Helms rapped with everyone who wanted to talk to him. "I spent five years on the streets, came out of a meth thing, and went into music with the Family Dog because I wanted to change America. What I'm seeing here on the street tonight is the worst thing that I've seen since I began..."
Helms grabbed a sign from a picket, which read, "The name of the game is Glare." "Look at this, it makes me sick, demeaning another man's work. Glare did the lights tonight because they wanted to, no one forced them..."
The dialogue went on and on.
"You talk like a 1930's businessman, anything to keep the store open, as long as it's the workers who pay."
"It's you who put the thing in 1930's terms, talking about exploitation and bread when the name of the game here is to draw. My books are open. We're $20,000 into operating this hall, I still owe $50,000 from the Avalon, and our current debt here is $7,000. I was counting on the Dead to pull us out - we'd have 1500 inside and 2000 waiting to get in on a normal Friday. I haven't been paid in four weeks myself."
"Why aren't we getting enough to live on - where's the money going?" light show members repeatedly asked Helms.
"The name of the game is draw, man, and as soon as you can show me in any way how that can be changed..."
"The name of the game should be share!"
"Sure it should, but it isn't, and how are you helping to share anything by economically destroying this dance hall? I don't want light shows, I want friends. I want an example of behavior for a million kids all over America. I have enough theater in me to do any kind of environment I want without your light shows, but what we really pay for outside ourselves is the music. What's starving us is Big Jefferson Airplane, Big Grateful Dead, they draw and they get the bread they ask for..."
"But light shows are art, man, just because people don't scream for more that doesn't mean they don't dig it. You make every light show here project on a big screen and then you pay $110 to rent the screen and only $50 to the light show!"
"That's the same lie you guys tell on your leaflet. The group tonight, Glare, dropped out of the Light Artist's Guild and then offered to work for nothing, but they're getting $300 for the weekend. $50 is all I have to pay for an auditioning group, but I'm paying $300, and I usually pay more on a weekend, a lot of bread for something we could do without, particularly when we're hurting financially. And then you say you made repeated efforts to negotiate or something like that, but no one even called me after our first meeting except a few people who said they didn't speak for the negotiators - that's better than Graham got, anyway, no one called him at all, he just got a letter announcing the demands and a strike for next Tuesday!"

There are, obviously, two very different issues at stake in the light artist's strike, both of which have important roots in the growth of San Francisco hip culture.
First, who needs light shows - are they any good, and can they develop as an art form alongside the runaway commercialism of the rock industry?
And second, are the economics of running rock concerts insane merely because a lot of weak people (and some manipulative, strong ones) have gotten on the merry-go-round of sales capitalism? Or do public concert performances no longer represent anything relevant to the hip community and therefore those who still attend them are paying for a Broadway-type operation?
Tom Wolfe, writing about the infant era of head culture, described what light shows once were, and what they want to be now:
"For months Kesey had been trying to work out...the fantasy...of the Dome. This was going to be a great geodesic dome on top of a cylindrical shaft. It would look like a great mushroom. Many levels. People would climb a stairway up the cylinder...and the dome would have a great foam rubber floor they could lie down on. Sunk down in the foam rubber, below floor level, would be movie projectors, video-tape projectors, light projectors. All over the place, up in the dome, everywhere, would be speakers, microphones, tape machines, live, replay, variable lag. People could take LSD or speed or smoke grass and lie back and experience what they would, enclosed and submerged in a planet of lights and sounds such as the universe never knew. Lights, movies, video tapes of themselves, flashing and swirling over them come from the beams of searchlights from the floor from between their bodies. The sounds rolling around in the globe like a typhoon. Movies and tapes of the past, tapes and video tapes, broadcasts and pictures of the present, tapes and humanoid sounds of the future - but all brought together now - here and now - Kairos - into the dilated cerebral cortex..."
Such a trip can end several ways.
It can become the plasticized nightmare of a New York psychoanalytic chamber where too many fucked up people with too much money take off their clothes, pay and leave.
Or it can really work, with the cooperation of people who have environmental vision, a genius for what creates unity and what is human rather than humanoid, "submerged in a planet of lights and sounds such as the universe never knew" but related to the universe, protected and expanded in a drug culture neither selfish nor ignorant.
Or it can become a symbolic appendage of the strongest force within the impetus for that new environment - in this case, the music, which has become portable, cheap, and expert.

What has happened to light shows in San Francisco artistically is what has happened to concerts in San Francisco. People once had a choice of three or four or five ballrooms, at less than half the price of records. There was grass and acid, smiles from strangers, communal streets nearby where one could live, dancing at the dances, and the newness, high or straight, of light and form - whirls, strobes, black light, strange movies.
Check out the Fillmore West one of these nights for nice highs, smiles, a walk home, a place to dance - and see if the light, still pretty and sometimes even inspired, makes up for what's not there.
Bill Graham, despite his repulsive image of Hollywood hucksterism - "concern" for "artists" born of an inability to relate to their art; impatience with public behavior; paternalism; inaccessibility; irascibility - is not the villain of the scene. He's in the grinder with the rest. Although more obviously capable of supporting a $600 per weekend light show than Helms, still not out of the financial woods. He can't really turn a profit at the Carousel most of the time, because of the same big, evil bands.
But the big, evil bands aren't so evil, either. The Dead are reportedly at least $50,000 in debt; other name groups show reliable figures of great financial losses. Equipment, lawyers, friends, travel, houses, toys...it all goes, even for bands pulling $10,000 a weekend.
"The name of the game is draw," as Helms said over and over last Friday. Until a hundred thousand people make a habit of visiting Playland Family Dog, Helms can't risk leaving the star band system for competent, lesser-known groups. Nothing is structured that way: rents, insurance, payroll, investment returns, everything is geared to make the money make money, and the people, unless they hang on to money's ride, scramble forever.
This, then, is really why the light shows are up against it. Unfortunately, their demands seem too money-oriented and their tactics were poor - not contacting Graham except too late and by letter, and fucking up Helms when he's in bad trouble. With these things and their sloppy Guild structure, the light people seem to be combining the worst traits of bread-and-butter unionism and rebel culture indignation.
If there were positive aspects to the demands, some sense of what light show art might become, some relevance to the community, the light show strike might be supported as the first opening in the cancerous culture boil which the rock music scene has become. Instead, it looks like it will be just another brief gleam on the hip horizon, suitable for cute pictures in the Chronicle.

(by Lawrence Bensky, from Dock of the Bay, 5 August 1969)

* * *

OUT ON THE EDGE [excerpt]

"We're out on the edge...hangin on, tryin to live, but tryin to live just a little bit better."
- Chet Helms

It was like, you know, the whole wild, free feelin that was the spirit of America drifting ever west, to the farthest edge of the frontier, till the frontier was no more and we were just hangin on to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
And there we were, in a coney island dance hall, all these hairy freaks who had come together in a community crisis, to see if we, and our common vision, could hold together: Chet Helms and the Family Dog, Jerry Abrams and the Light Artists Guild, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, the Messiah and his World Crusade, Teddy Bear and his Thirteenth Tribe, Ron Poulte of the Wild West Show, Mike Bloomfield, the Good Times, the Berkeley Tribe, and Bill Graham even.
[ . . . ] The curtain of ocean mist rises on - The Family Dog on the Great Highway.
It's Friday night down in Playland, but there's only 300 people inside the Family Dog, hoping to hear the Grateful Dead, who are late as usual. On the street outside the Light Artists Guild has set up a psychedelic picket line, with light show, conga drums, coffee and food.
"If the Dead crosses the line," declares Jerry Abrams at the stage door, "as far as I'm concerned the rock trip in this city is down the drain. We would never cross a musician's line."
The San Francisco light shows, 67 of them, all the major shows except the Brotherhood of Lights (which has a corner on the Fillmore - and intends to keep it) have come together to work for the development of their art form, and their economic survival.
The Guild voted to strike the two San Francisco ballrooms in order to gain recognition for the Guild, equal billing with the bands, and a minimum pay scale.
Chet is out on the street too, maintaining that "I want to deal only with individuals. I don't think I could ever reach an agreement with an organization. I would give my right teeth, man, never to have to deal with another agent or middleman." And here, the lanky, gently-bopping Helms, who looks like he stole his long silky blond hair from the head of the baby jesus, straightens his shoulders and flips into a crisp baritone, mimicking a businessman: "Now please look here, Mr. Helms, it's like this..."
If Jerry Abrams is anything, he ain't a businessman. He ain't the world's greatest organizer either. By throwing a picket line around the Family Dog, the Guild made a serious mistake. The Dog has been losing $4000 a week since it opened on the Great Highway June 13. The Guild's asking for a minimum of $300 a week. Chet has been paying $400 a week on the average.
"I could use some money too," Helms relates. "I haven't been paid in 4 weeks. I still have a $50,000 personal liability from the Avalon. Very simply, we put the place together with 6 grand, and we've been given another 12 grand by our investors. I was counting on this weekend with the Grateful Dead to get a paycheck." If the Dead ever turns a profit, Helms will get 30% to feed his Family.
Inside the ballroom Friday night, Glare light show from Palo Alto is shedding light on the situation for 300 bills, but was turning the money back to Helms.
Why didn't Glare join the Guild, or at least honor the picket line?"It's kind of insane," Richard of Glare says. "Chet Helms doesn't have any money. We want to help save the Family Dog. The Guild is a good idea, but if the Family Dog falls down, so does everybody else."
On the dance floor below, the feeling was summed up by one chick who comments: "We got to stand together, brother, it's as simple as that. I came to hear the Grateful Dead - if they didn't play then I wouldn't cross the line."
When the Dead finally arrived, we all trucked out to their Metro van, 50 yards from the pounding surf, lit the peace pipe, and began to rap. It became clear that all of us are "out on the edge, hangin on, trying to live."
Even the Dead are $50,000 in debt. "The way I experienced this strike," Helms explained a few days later, "was like a run on the bank. It feels like a precursor, you know, of what's going to happen around the country. They're looking at us to see not only what we can do about us, but what they can learn from us.
"We started out with the forms that were given, business forms, union forms, but for 3 years the whole fuckin world has been looking at us for new solutions."
"If we work together collectively," Jerry Garcia of the Dead offered, "we can all extend our forms. Right now the bands get more money than anybody else, and that's not righteous."
"At one time," said Helms, "people would come to the Fillmore just because it was happening. They didn't know exactly what it was, but knew it was exciting. Then the record companies came in, put $50,000 on it, sealed it, packaged it, and said here is what it is.
"I think essentially people don't come to see this band or this light show - people come to have a good time. Billing is the linear structure we have to leave behind. I mean the draw game, man, where this group is best, this group next best, and so on, you dig?
"I think, though, that light shows, you know, in their relative importance to the whole thing have come down over the past few years, you dig? It isn't necessary to say any more, lights by - "
The Dead did not play Friday. But a temporary settlement was reached Saturday afternoon, so that the Family Dog could be open that night.
Saturday night on the Great Highway [August 2] was one of the best gigs since opening night [June 13], when the Airplane played. With the strike over, the Dead, Albert Collins and the far-out Afro-Haitian Ballet played to a full house. The scene there gave off comfortable vibes.
Bill Graham, at the meeting the following Tuesday, would rail on about his "rights" as a businessman, and his right to run the Fillmore exactly according to his whims, as the individual with the bread. "Why do we have light shows?" Graham would ask. "Why do we have apples in the cafeteria? Because I like them. The man with the dollars, and not the man with the art form, has the negotiating point."
All well and legal. Yes, Bill Graham, the Fillmore is your personal trip, and [the] fact that it may be our trip too don't bother you. Maybe that's why I never go there, because I always feel the heavy presence of somebody's personal money trip.
But at the Family Dog Saturday night, I felt as free and comfortable as I would in a friend's home. "We're all locked into games - the Family Dog, the Grateful Dead," as Chet Helms said. "When are we something happening [sic], but it doesn't have to be called the Family Dog - it can be The Common or whatever."
[ . . . ]
[The rest of the article narrates in detail the Tues, Aug. 4 meeting between Helms, Graham, and the Light Artists Guild.] 

(by Art Johnson, from the Berkeley Tribe, 8 August 1969)

Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com

* * *

'LIGHT' STRIKE SUSPENDED
Rock Concert Talks Continue

The strike by the newly-formed Light Artists Guild against the Family Dog ballroom took a turn toward conciliation with meetings set for this afternoon.
Jerry Abrams, spokesman for the guild, said an interim agreement has been reached with ballroom manager Chet Helms to end the strike while talks take place.
The light artists, who provide the swirling psychedelic lights for rock band-concerts, picketed the Family Dog ballroom on the Great Highway near Playland Friday night, but reached [an] interim accord the following day.
Under the terms of the agreement, the strike at the Family Dog will be suspended until Thursday noon, and in return the guild is recognized as the official bargaining agent for the light artists.
According to Abrams, negotiations will center on the possibility of a "percentage deal" whereby the proceeds from the concerts would be "more equitably divided."
As it is, the bands get a guaranteed wage, while the light shows and other staff members split up whatever is left.
Representatives of the leading bands are scheduled to attend the 1 p.m. meeting at the ballroom.
Meanwhile, Abrams said, the guild plans to go ahead with plans to picket Bill Graham's Fillmore West tomorrow night.
The Fillmore is featuring a non-guild light show, The Brotherhood of Light. Robert Pullum, manager for the group, said he "would be glad to walk across the picket line."
"I don't think they're going about this the right way," Pullum said. "The market is too small. All of those who signed with the guild are going to find themselves without jobs."

(from the San Francisco Examiner, 4 August 1969)

* * * 

PERSONALITY POWER

The great rip-off is now in the open. Heavy vibes, heavy actions, set the tone for this past week.

Last Tuesday Jerry Abrams of the Light Artists’ Guild announced a strike against the Family Dog and the Fillmore West. On Friday night the pickets appeared in front of the Dog with conga drums, signs, projectors, strobes, people, and much excitement.

The scene was absurdly festive to begin with. Dog staffers passed out carnations; Michael Christopher served a tray of macrobiotic bread to projectionists working from the roof of a van. Power for the light show was supplied partly by a generator, partly by an extension cord from the Dog.

Earlier that day, Chet Helms had cast the I Ching to learn the outcome of the strike. The answer was Peace moving into Taming Power of the Great, two very favorable hexagrams. The moving line, however, was critical: “The wall falls back into the moat. Use no army now. Make your commands known within your own town. Perseverance brings humiliation.” The judgement turned out to be sound advice for both sides.

The reading of the I Ching convinced Chet not to resist. They would just have to wait out the evening. The hour of doom was at hand, in the words of the I Ching. Or, “It’s fate,” as Michael Christopher put it.

The strike (boycott, really) was successful from the start. By 9:30 there were still only 200 people in the Dog…14 people and 2 cops on the patio. Top attendance at any time never exceeded 500, on a night that should have drawn 1500 or more. Finally Chet appeared outside to plead with the picketers. If the Guild was trying to close the Dog, they had nearly succeeded.

The present ballroom concept – Bill Graham’s game called draw – has ruined the San Francisco scene. Chet’s version of the situation is called Concentration Camp. We’re all inside: people who run the Dog, light artists, musicians, audiences, all dependent on one bag of potatoes that comes in once a week. Somehow we must distribute a few potatoes to as many people as possible without letting anyone starve.

Rumors and declarations abounded. The Grateful Dead would not show up…their equipment was set up and they were on their way…everyone would play except Jerry Garcia…Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart were gigging at the Bear’s Lair in Berkeley and would arrive late.

At 11:20 Rock Scully arrived and offered to mediate the dispute. Rock began a heavy rap with Chet and some Guild members. Ideas for restructuring the concept of the game were batted around. How do you beat a scene predicated on the idea that the bigger the name of the band, the bigger the draw? How do you cope with what has become a sardine-can environment? How can you bring back the fun?

By 11:30 the crowd inside was still under 500. The Dead were scheduled to go on at midnight. Chet: “What are we going to do?” Rock: “Let’s have a fucking good time!”

Jerry Abrams to Bill Kreutzmann, outside: “I talked to Jerry Garcia, and he told me he wouldn’t cross our picket line. And you told me that if Jerry doesn’t play, you won’t either.” Bill Kreutzmann: “I’d rather play music than argue with out. [sic] I like to play music.”

The Dead – minus Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart – went on at midnight. Jerry Abrams complained bitterly, “That’s bullshit. Those are our brothers. They should have played outside, we have a generator out here. We offered them the use of our generator and electricity and they refused to do it. We feel that our brothers have betrayed us.”

At 12:30 Jerry and Mickey arrived from Berkeley, and a heavy confrontation shaped up in front of the stage entrance. There currently is a rumor going around that Jerry Abrams physically prevented Garcia from entering, that’s not true. According to Bluto (that’s the name lettered on the T-shirt Garcia wore Saturday), Abrams only stood in front of him. Bluto: “You guys are saying we can’t play.” Abrams: “We’re saying we wish you wouldn’t play.” Bluto: “Why are you doing this, man? Chester don’t have no fuckin’ money.”

The Dead stopped their set and joined the scene outside. A heated argument erupted between Jerry Abrams, John McIntyre, and Phil Lesh. Some pickets and members of the negotiating committee tried to move Abrams away from the door so that Bluto could make an end run any time.

Dog staffers showed up and the argument went on for nearly half an hour. Garcia: “Let’s talk inside. Let’s get Chet and talk.” Abrams: “We vowed not to go inside. Let’s talk right here.” Mickey Hart: “Let’s go up on stage and say what we have to say.”

Around 1 the crisis session moved into the Dead’s silver metro truck, where Bluto passed around some superweed as a peace token. Twenty representatives of the Dog, the Dead, and the Guild got totally ripped. In the dope-rap that followed, people got into a group mind-thing and discovered they all shared the same problems. Chet owes $50,000 in personal debts left over from the Avalon, and the relocated Dog is already seven grand in the hole. The Dead owe $60,000, probably from recording and equipment expenses. There are over sixty light shows and only two major outlets…and one of them is sewed up. Where do we go from here?

Jerry Garcia: “I’m speaking first and last as a contracted union musician. Also we’ve got a big family and we’re broke. Next, Chet is a good friend who is also broke, and I know the artists in the Guild are also broke. What I’m thinking about, just for tonight, is that there are a bunch of people inside whom I feel responsible for too. We’ve got to decide something here and let them know about it.”

Chet: “We’re not unresponsive to light shows, and in fact we’re responsible for putting them where they are.” Chet rapped some more about concentration camps and potatoes, and finally proposed a settlement: a sliding pay-scale, some kind of recognition of the Guild as a family, and equal billing for everybody.

IN THE TRUCK

The Guild hassled over Chet’s proposal for a while. As closing time approached, the pressure increased. At 1:23 AM one of the equipment men let loose a cherry bomb under the truck. BLAM! “Jackson wants his truck back!” “Let’s go INSIDE.” “But we haven’t got down to the issues yet.”

Bluto and Mickey never did make it inside that night. The light show people caucused near the beach. Inside the Dog, a few of the Dead jammed with two flutists from the audience and a conga drummer off the beach. Fewer than 100 people heard them. It just wasn’t the Dead.

Finally a negotiating session was called for Saturday at 1 PM for bands, light shows, all interested members of the community.

SATURDAY’S MEETING

The common, as Chet suggested calling [it], convened Saturday, after a Guild meeting that morning to discuss Chet’s offer. It got off the ground around 2:30 with Chet and Rock laying down the rap. The Dog is dying. Because of the strike there’s not enough bread to pay the Dead their $5,000 guarantee for the weekend. Chet had invited his investors to what he’d hoped would be a packed house, but the strike blew all that.

Chander Locklin [Laughlin] (formerly Travis T. Hip) spoke in favor of the Guild as a national entity because of the need to get one up on promoters elsewhere in the country, not on Bill Graham and Chet Helms. Messiah Allan deplored the commercial interests displayed by the strikers, and preached his vision of a world commune. Nick Gravenites suggested that if the light shows wanted a percentage, they should be willing to accept a percentage of Chet’s debts.

Jerry Abrams: We’ve come to realize that we’re all in the same bag and we’re all broke. Chet: The light shows have gotten the short end of the stick as far as pay and billing goes, but the blame belongs to everyone in the community. The issue is still that slogan of Graham’s; The Name of the Game is Draw. Mike Bloomfield: Does the Guild feel that musicians are getting too much bread? Because they’re not, the industry cops it all.

An interim agreement was finally reached shortly after 5 PM. Abrams: “Let’s work on a settlement. I promise you we won’t strike tonight.” Rock Scully: “Hare Krishna!” The final handshake came at 6:30, and Chet and Jerry embraced.

The main point of contention still to be settled was whether the Guild had the right to set minimums for any light shows, even for shows not in the Guild. Chet absolutely refused to concede that point, and the negotiations were continued to next week.

TUESDAY’S MEETING

The entire community was invited back to the Dog Tuesday for what was hoped would be the last negotiating session. Chet opened the meeting by casting (Union) moving into Work On What Has Been Spoiled (Decay). The book laid it right down; it was all there. “…Water flows to unite with water… So too should human society hold together through a community of interests that allows each individual to feel himself a member of the whole.” Also, “Decisiveness and energy must take the place of inertia and indifference…in order that the ending may be followed by a new beginning.”

There were several moving lines, one perhaps a reference to Bill Graham, who was present. “We are often among people who do not belong to our own sphere…”

Chet finished reading from the I Ching and started his rap once more on potatoes. He was not the only one to repeat himself that afternoon. Bill interrupted: Chet is not being realistic. Chet runs a groovy trip, but it’s not businesslike. The only way that Chet can survive is with a state or government subsidy.

Chet: Why not a community subsidy?

Bill: I will never share my profit with anyone in the community. Go out and pay your own dues. If you want to support your art, get a gig on the side. As long as I control the show, no one will ever tell me how to run it or what to do with my money. I have a house in Pacific Heights and an $8,000 Mercedes-Benz, and it’s mine, I Earned it.

Graham was intransigent on the subject of pay and billing for the Guild, because he feels that light shows are not a draw (i.e. money-making) factor. “When I choose to support you on the basis of artistic merit alone, it is my choice alone. I decide whether I want apples or flowers or posters or light shows each week. I sign the checks.”

As for recognition of the Guild, Graham insisted that he could not recognize an organization for which he had no respect whatsoever. And he had no respect for the Guild because the Guild had no respect for him. As evidence of their disrespect, Graham mentioned received a tactless letter stating what the Guild minimums would be at the Fillmore, before he had even been contacted by anyone from the negotiating committee. Abrams admitted that some of the Guild tactics had been impolitic, but that the shows had been trying to talk to Bill for two and a half years and had gotten nowhere.

Graham and some members of the community got into a personal trip and started a mutual exchange of anger and frustration. Each side displayed a fundamental inability to accept the other’s trip. “You will never step on me, you will never disrespect me, because you haven’t got the balls.” Graham invited anyone to do as well as he had, simply by opening across the street and out-drawing him. But then, “You have neither the guts nor the ability to change the world.”

Graham – obviously tired and overwrought – suddenly announced in an emotion-charged voice that he would not relocate the Fillmore West in San Francisco when the Carousel Ballroom closes on December 31. “I’ve taken this shit from you for four years, and I’m not going to take any more. I’m through with this town.”

From the moment of this statement on, it was obvious that the strike was dead. As long as the Fillmore remained open, Graham would never give in to any of the strikers’ demands. One thing about Bill Graham is that he is always up front about what is on his mind. Perhaps some who heard his “retirement speech” refused to take it at face value. Perhaps they considered it only a gesture for sympathy. For whatever reason, people refused to stop sniping at Graham long after it became clear that he and the rest of the Common had nothing in common.

Steve Gasking, who conducts his mystic/religious lecture/classes Monday nights at the Dog, hammered home the final attack. “You can’t ask for both our money and our love. You’ve got our money, so you can’t have our love. You are a good manager, a good promoter, but still you’ve fucked over many heads with your emotional trips.”

Graham’s response was, “I APOLOGIZE, MOTHERFUCKER, THAT I’M A HUMAN BEING. I fucking apologize. Emotional, you’re fucking right. FUCK YOU. You stupid prick. Do you know what emotions are? Stand up and have emotions! Get up and work, get up and sing, get up and act. You think I’m an actor? You’re full of shit, man, I have more fucking emotions and balls than you’ll ever see. You want to challenge me in any way about emotions? You slimy little man…YOU SLIMY…LITTLE…MAN. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. Don’t get peaceful with me. Don’t you TOUCH me.”

It was all over after Graham split. Jerry Abrams got up and delivered the consensus opinion: “I think the strike is off.” Yet despite (or because of) Bill Graham’s walkout, those who remained felt a tentative stirring of optimism, a sense of regeneration of communal spirit.

A new community settlement of Guild’s strike against the Dog will be worked out on Thursday. The Dog may die, but the Family lives. We’re all in it together. Nobody won the strike, because we’re all losers. Our victory becomes real only if we can prove that Bill Graham was wrong, that we can survive together as a community. Let’s get it on.

(by Verne/Bill, from Good Times, 7 August 1969)

Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com

* * *

BILL GRAHAM EXPLODES: "QUITTING SAN FRANCISCO"

As has been his manner for more than three years, Bill Graham was a lonely and angry figure August 4th when he announced that he was finished with San Francisco as a dance/concert operator, effective December 31st, when new owners take over the Fillmore West building. Graham made his surprise announcement — he'd been reported looking for a new location for his operation — in front of more than 100 artists, musicians, and other persons gathered at the Family Dog to discuss the then-still-flickering light-show strike.
The announcement, made haltingly through a voiced choked and shaken by emotion, followed a lengthy, acrimonious lecture in which the pugilistic ballroom master hammered out a theme of "the reality of being a businessman," the rights of an individual. Time and time again he insisted: "I will never have anyone tell me to what level I support an art, what I must pay a light show." But Graham, long-ago ostracized from the hip community as a profiteer and the target of as much abuse as respect, had much more wrath to vent.
"This town has never stopped rapping an honest businessman for four fucking years," he said, brooding. "I leave here very sad ... I may be copping out, but your attitudes have driven me to my decision."
But Graham really blew his gnarled top only after Steve Gaskin, a resident communications lecturer at the Family Dog, stood up and told him: "When you started, you had to make a choice between love and money. You've got our money, so you can't have our love ... You've used dramatics today to fuck over a lot of heads with your emotional trips."
Graham's reply (as tape-recorded by the Good Times newspaper): "I APOLOGIZE, MOTHER FUCKER, THAT I'M A HUMAN BEING. I fucking apologize. Emotional — you're fucking right. Fuck you, you stupid prick! Do you know what emotions are? Stand up and have emotions. Get up and work. Get up and sing. Get up and act. You think I'm an actor? You're full of shit, man, I have more fucking balls than you'll ever see. You want to challenge me in any way about emotions? You slimy little man ... YOU SLIMY ... LITTLE ... MAN. (To the crowd): Fuck you. FUCK YOU! (To a musician trying to calm him) Don't get peaceful with me. Don't you TOUCH me!"
With those words, Graham barreled out of the room, followed by a paled Time magazine writer working on a profile of the man.
Contacted last week, a still-petulant Graham at first refused to talk with Rolling Stone, citing the publication as "one of the other reasons I'm getting out." But he went on to confirm his abandonment of ballroom operations here. He is expected to maintain Fillmore East in New York, his Millard agency, the still-fledging Fillmore record label, and his residence in San Francisco.
"We're not good, we're not bad," he said, "but I think this city will know what it's lost by the first week of 1970."

Before his violent walkout at the Family Dog the focus of discussion (that word used loosely) had been the light show strike, called by the 500-member Light Artists Guild to force Graham and Chet Helms to raise wages. A picket line had been set up Friday, August 1st, at the beachsite Dog house, and another was planned for the uptown Fillmore West the following Tuesday — the day of Graham's explosion.
Chet Helms had reacted to the strike line with predictably open gestures of brotherhood — provision of electricity for a coffee percolator and for a Guild light show projected on the Dog's outside wall; flowers for the pickets, and an invitation to negotiate. The lines were down by late Friday night, and light heads agreed to meet with Chet, on his terms: a "common" gathering including not only light artists, but the community as well. That's why Graham, along with Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead, David and Linda LaFlamme of It's a Beautiful Day, and numerous other scene-makers were at the convocation.
Helms, the mystic/Texan who has tried, in the past two months, to move his operation away from the big–name band and dance/concert hall concept towards a free-form environmental theater, opened the meeting by casting the I Ching. The hexagrams spelled out the need for unity. The judgment: "Holding together brings good fortune. What is required is that we all unite ... around a central figure." Graham, seated with head hunched over, looked bored.
Then Helms, always considered the altruistic figurehead of the San Francisco music scene where Graham was the I-came, I-saw, I-conquered figure, laid the basic question across: "How is the community going to relate to (1) Mr. Bill Graham and to (2) Chet Helms?" For himself, he proposed recognition of the fact that the Dog had been losing money since its Avalon Ballroom days. "Money is tight in America, and we get the feeling we're disconnected from that scene," he said. "We're not. We're at the bottom of the totem pole and we're feeling the run on the bank first."
Helms proposed the need for "some new models" for "distributing the few potatoes available" — perhaps a percentage-rate for all artists — musicians as well as light shows — at the Family Dog. But he wasn't speaking for Bill Graham. Graham made that obvious.
First, he smilingly brushed off Helms as "not a realistic person in terms of business." That set his theme. "You cannot tell the world, 'Look at what we're doing, it's right, you must come here.' You can only suggest. Chet runs this place on a dream, a nice one, but he's having financial problems because although he understands the problems of the business, he has refused to meet them."
Then he turned to challenge the rest of the meeting. "You do not tell me what to do. If you don't like the way I conduct my business, why the fuck don't you get off your asses and do it? Where the fuck does the artist come to say 'you the businessman must support us' when I personally think the light shows are not producing an income for me? The only way you can do this is to kill me and step over me."
Graham indirectly explained his choleric tone when he dove into a self-defensive spiel about his honesty and about the dues he paid before hitting onto the ballroom idea in late fall of 1965.
Finally nearing the nitty-gritty of his expostulation, he faced long-time archenemy and Light Artists Guild member Jerry Abrams, stating: "I'll challenge the Light Guild to tell me if their approach to the strike was the ethical approach." The Guild, before contacting either Helms or Graham personally, sent a blunt notice of new light show rates, signed "Ma." Then Graham got wind of a picket line being planned for the Fillmore — still before any personal contact with the Guild — and from that point on, Graham "lost respect" and any communications with the Guild – all of this aside from his insistence on the right to negotiate prices for acts on an individual basis.
His "I'm through with this town" statement came after a bitter, heated exchange with Abrams — Abrams defending the Guild's approaching of various bands to gauge potential strike support and apologizing for the "tactless" letter; Abrams slamming Graham for "refusing negotiations over the last three years;" Graham insisting on the "reality" of the Guild's obvious disrespect for him and his operation. Graham made it painfully clear that now he would never hire a Guild show at any rate. And Helms hardly had enough money to buy a bag of potatoes each week.
Helms pushed in the final pin. "Friday night finished the Family Dog as a business," he said. (On Friday, standing outside his building looking glumly at the pickets, he had stated his theory about the few potatoes around to be distributed. "And if we can't get together and decide who eats, I don't see where we've arrived at in three years." Now, he said, Family Dog would give up the struggle to cover its $50,000 of debts. The new commitment, he says, is "to extend the form artistically," with a new mode of business and finances.)
"The dream burst Friday," he continued to the assembly. "I have a proposal to make at our next meeting Thursday. But if there's a picket line at the Fillmore West tonight, I won't bother to come up with a proposal, and Family Dog won't operate this weekend."
Within minutes, one Guild member, from the Garden of Delights, withdrew his support for the strike. Finally a beleaguered Abrams, trying to hide defeat behind various voices hailing "a new community" rising out of the shambles, then unofficially drew a curtain over strike plans. The reasons: Helms' statement and Bill's stubbornness. "We are we and he is he," Abrams understated.

The actual strike lasted only about four hours, and all three booked acts — Albert Collins, Afro-Haiti Dancers, and Grateful Dead — honored their contracts with Helms. Only Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart of the Dead — reportedly physically detained at the door by Abrams — didn't cross the line. Inside, a small crowd saw lights worked by a Peninsula group called Glare, a strike–supporting Guild member until "we were turned off by the attitude at a strike meeting — we were falling back into the Establishment trip." Glare offered to do the work this weekend for free, after seeing Helms' profitless loss statements, and spokesman John Darcy further stated: "This is the only new art form left in this City. Graham has prostituted it, but Chet's doing all he can for it."
It was a matter of relating with (1) Bill Graham and (2) Chet Helms.

(by Ben Fong-Torres, from Rolling Stone, 6 September 1969)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/bill-graham-explodes-quitting-san-francisco-19690906