Category Archives: Today in history

Hugh Romney Arrives

Hugh Romney Arrives

August 7, 1969
Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Hugh Romney Wavy Gravy Arrives

Hugh Romney Arrives

Not Your Ordinary Clown

According to his site, “Wavy Gravy is not your ordinary clown. He certainly has had a long run since his earlier days as a poet and stand-up comic, improvisational theater artist, psychedelic bus caravan luminary, and rock concert MC, and often jokes: “if you don’t have a sense of humor, it just isn’t funny anymore.” 

A week away

Woodstock Ventures had made the move from Wallkill, NY in Orange County to Bethel, NY in Sullivan County. Plans already in place for the festival wherever it was continued apace.

One of those plans was, of course, for food. Ventures had hired Food for Love to provide food, but it had also hired members of the Hog Farm to do general set up and provide food as well.

Some members drove in a Further-type bus from New Mexico to Bethel. Others took the chartered flight Woodstock Ventures paid for from Albuquerque (Al-buh-quirky) to JFK in NYC.

The Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts that today sits on and around the festival’s field rented from Max Yasgur  displays the manifest from that flight. The #1 name is Hugh Romney.

Hugh Romney

33-year-old Hugh Nanton Romney arrived at JFK on August 7, 1969 after a reportedly mythical flight. It was, according to Tom Wolfe in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Romney who came up with the idea of putting LSD in Kool-Aid at the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Test parties in 1965. Apparently someone in the Hog Farm used that same recipe for the flight.

Hog Farm

The Hog Farm was the commune that Romney and his wife Bonnie Beecher was at the center of. It originated in Los Angeles, but after an eviction, relocated to a hog farm in  in Tujunga, California. The deal was labor in exchange for free rent.

In 1969, the commune was in  Llano, New Mexico. Thus the flight from Albuquerque.

Hugh Romney Arrives

The Activist Clown

Hugh Romney was a political activist and authorities often beat and mistreated demonstrators. Romney thought that if he dressed as a clown, authorities would be less likely to hit him. It worked.

Sometimes.

Arrival

When Hugh Romney and his fellow commune-ists disembarked, the NY media were there.  They asked him a question that he had to ad lib an answer to because he didn’t know, as the media asked, how he intended to be part of the festival’s security?

Romney said he would have a “Please Force.” Media followed up: how would he be that? “Cream pies and seltzer bottles.”

The obvious answer for a clown.

Hugh Romney Arrives

While most people speaking of Woodstock and those who became known from their participation in it refer to Romney as Wavy Gravy, he was not known by that moniker. Yet.

If one watches the Woodstock movie, you’ll hear him referred to as Hugh several times during the film. It was Hugh Romney who spoke to the media at JFK. It was Hugh Romney who told the festival crowd about “…breakfast in bed for 400,000.”

Wavy Gravy

It was not until the Texas International Pop Festival in Lewisville, TX two weeks later that after a conversation with him, BB King reportedly referred to Romney as Wavy Gravy.

A name like that stuck to a character like Romney.

Hugh Romney Wavy Gravy Arrives
Wavy Gravy at the City Winery in 2014 speaking about his life and times (photo by J Shelley)
Hugh Romney Arrives

Nowadays

His site shows that Wavy is very much an active person giving lectures and participating in music events as well as being a big part of the annual summer Camp Winnarainbow Kids Camp.

Quite the classic clown.

Hugh Romney Arrives

John Lennon Opines Jesus

John Lennon Opines Jesus

July 29, 1966

August 1966 interview about his March opinion 
John Lennon Opines Jesus

Looking for trouble

By 1966, it could seem that the whole world  knew who Beatles were and that most of the world liked their music and them, too. Of course there were many who did not like the Beatles’s music nor the Beatles themselves. Critics made wise cracks about them needing a haircut, looking like girls,  their looks in general.

Rock and Roll was just a teenager and there were plenty of people who were suspicious of the music and anyone associated with it. The Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s still echoed in the early 60s, the Soviet Union was still our arch nemesis, and the re-invigorated civil rights movement threatened the status quo, however unjust that status quo was.

Parents warned their teenagers, “If you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.” Teenagers knew, “If you want to find a reason to dislike my music, you’ll find a reason.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Maureen Cleave

Journalists knew that a Beatle interview was money in the bank.  Maureen Cleave, of the London Evening Standard, ran a series of interviews called “How does a Beatle Live?”

On  March 4, 1966, Maureen Cleave interviewed John Lennon for the series.

During the interview, Lennon, who had been reading about various religions said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

The article appeared and that was that.   No outrage by the British.
John Lennon Opines Jesus

US reaction

Tony Barrow was the Beatles press officer. He offered the rights to all four interviews to US teen magazine, Datebook.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

On July 29, 1966 the article appeared with a headline featuring the Lennon Christianity quote, which was only a small part of the entire interview.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

It became national news on August 4. A NY Times article lead sentence read: “Dozens of radio stations throughout the United States are banning music by the Beatles because of a statement by one of the rock ‘n’ roll singers that his group is more popular than Jesus.

The article’s last sentence read: “Several radio stations scheduled bonfires for the burning of Beatle records and pictures.

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Some support

The US negative reaction was not universal. A Kentucky radio station declared that it would give the Beatles’ music airplay to show its “contempt for hypocrisy personified”, and the Jesuit magazine America wrote: “Lennon was simply stating what many a Christian educator would readily admit.”

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Aftermath

The Beatles toured that summer, but it was their last. While the Christianity comment alone did not cause that cessation, it was a part of it.

And in 2008, the Vatican issued the following statement: “The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation, mainly in the United States, after many years sounds only like a ‘boast’ by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success, after growing up in the legend of Elvis and rock and roll. The fact remains that 38 years after breaking up, the songs of the Lennon-McCartney brand have shown an extraordinary resistance to the passage of time, becoming a source of inspiration for more than one generation of pop musicians.” [BBC article]

John Lennon Opines Jesus

Straight Theater San Francisco

Straight Theater San Francisco

1702 Haight Street, San Francisco

Straight Theater San Francisco

Straight Theater San Francisco

Rock Venues

Rock shows were not unusual by 1967, but rock venues still were. The notion that someone could open an establishment solely for the presentation of rock and roll events was risky.

The beginning of such venues centered in San Francisco: the Matrix, the Avalon, and most famous of all were Bill Graham’s Fillmores: the Fillmore Auditorium (later “moved” to become the Fillmore West). And of course there was Graham’s equally famous NYC venue, the Fillmore East. The challenge of keeping such venues maintained as well as profitable forced Graham out of those venues within years of their opening.

Straight Theater San Francisco

Haight Theatre

The Haight Theater was originally, as were so many rock establishments, a movie theater.

Straight Theater San Francisco

With the influx of “hippies” into the Haight neighborhood by the mid-60s, it made sense to convert the failing building into a rock venue. Such an enterprise required permits which the city of San Francisco was reluctant to issue. The idea of having a “dance studio” with live music cleverly skirted the legal issues.

Straight Theater San Francisco

Straight Theater

And so the Straight Theater(1702 Haight Street at Cole) came into being in mid-1967 competing with the established Avelon and Fillmore.

After weeks of renovation, it’s private christening was on June 15, 1967. From Lost Live Dead: The “Straight Theater Christening” was a private event–thus not requiring a permit–to celebrate the opening of the Straight. …The two acts performing at the event were Oakland’s Wildflower and a neighborhood band, the Grateful Dead (it was that kind of neighborhood).

The night… was particularly momentous. The hugely anticipated Monterey Pop Festival would begin on the next evening (Friday June 16), in which numerous local San Francisco underground bands, most without even records, would share the stage with major acts from Los Angeles, New York and London. The Who were playing the Fillmore of June 16 and 17, and heading down to Monterey for their Sunday (June 18) show. Most of the famous Haight Ashbury bands still lived in the Haight, for the most part, so the Straight Theater Christening was apparently the coolest of the cool parties, and in some ways the last night before Monterey Pop irrevocably expanded the San Francisco scene beyond the City’s borders.

Straight Theater San Francisco

July 21, 1967

The Straight’s official opening night featured Quicksilver Messenger Service, Mount Rushmore, Salvation Army Banned, Mother Earth, and The Dossier with Lights by Reginald

According to the Deadlists Project site, the Dead played the Straight three times: two nights later July 23, 1967 and on September 29 & 30 that same year. They had apparently also used the site as a rehearsal hall, being so close to “home.” Surprisingly for the Dead, the only recording is a Neal Cassady “Rap Jam” from the July 23 show exists.

With fits and hesitations and reboots, the Starlight Theater continued with music and supplementing with movies and dance lessons. Many “big names” played including Steve Miller, Lightning Hopkins, Quicksilver Messenger Service, John Fahey, The Charlatans, Santana Blues Band, Charlie Musselwhite, and the James Cotton Blues Band

Big Brother and the Holding Company, Sons of Champlin, Congress of Wonders, Curley Cooke’s Hurdy Gurdy Band, Indian Head Band, Ace of Cups, and Phoenix (with Lights by Straight Lightning) all played on an 24 April 1968 show to help save the Straight, but only for a year.

Straight Theater San Francisco

Denouement and demolition

Straight Theater
The Straight Theater in 1978. Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

The Straight Theater’s last show was on April 5, 1969 [Sons of Champlin, Passion, Marvin Gardens, The Angels Own Band Chorus, Bicycle, Asoke Fakir, Morning Glory, Congress of Wonders, Rush, Last Mile, Glass Mountain] and on August 13, 1979 the building was demolished.

Here is a video interview with three former workers at the Straight Theatre with lots of information about the Straight’s birth.

Straight Theater San Francisco