Most of the songs were in the British style because most of the guys were hung up on being like the Dave Clark Five, The Beatles or Herman's Hermits. To keep me happy, they included a couple of rhythm and blues songs, because I was always arguing for material that was deeper, more emotional, and more closely tied to the black roots of American rock music. I was determined to play some day in the birthplace of the music I loved.
And, I kept thinking of Sonja, who had gone back to Redlands to finish school. We wrote to each other, sometimes as many as three letters a week. On paper, our romance was flourishing.
By August 1965, the band was in sight of our American goal. Literally in sight. We were playing in a honky-tonk called the Aloha Club in Tijuana, close enough to the United States to see it.
Accustomed to prestige and respect in the small world of Mexico City rock music, we had to fight for a place in the border town where our popularity in the capital was simply dismissed as irrelevant. We had to work harder than we had ever dreamed, and for far tougher audiences than we had ever faced.
TJ was boot camp for Mexican rock musicians. This was where we paid our dues. Whorehouses and honky-tonks ran all night. At the famous Blue Fox, the strippers stripped all the way and just about had sex with drunken sailors right there on the tables. There were great bands and good musicians all over the place and you had to kick ass with audiences full of American sailors and Marines or catch the next bus home. Those tough guys from the San Diego and Long Beach bases were no Mexico City college crowd. They weren't impressed by cheesy covers of American records. They knew the good stuff when they heard it or headed for another bar if they didn't, and the bar owner always noticed if the musicians couldn't hold the crowd.
We got $12 each for playing 12 sets a night from 5 P.M. to 5 A.M., six nights a week, alternating with one other band. We had a couple of stiff drinks as the sun came up, slept 'til 3 in the afternoon in a hotel where mutant cockroaches could eat right through the metal tube to get at the toothpaste, then had a cup of coffee and went back on stage.
Few musicians could survive this grind, but from this crucible came the small group of Mexicans who leaped over the border like me, Santana, and jazz bassist Abraham Laboreal.
The bright spot was that Sonja was close enough to come down on a bus from Redlands on some weekends. Even though she spent many hours with me in bed, she would still go home every Sunday a virgin.
After two months in TJ, we were ready to make our big move. Tony's father was a Mexican Air Force officer who had been part of the Mexican squadron that fought alongside the Americans against the Japanese in World War II. So one day, Tony crossed the border to see one of his father's old American war buddies, a California oilfield worker named Fritz.
Tony came back with a phenomenal gift. Fritz had loaned him a car, a beautiful white Chevy Impala convertible with a red interior.
We piled it up with our instruments and told the American border guards we were going to a picnic in San Diego that afternoon. As we blasted up Interstate 5 to Hollywood, we cranked up the radio and sang Fats Domino's "Ain't That A Shame," leaving San Diego in our rearview mirror.
We went straight to the Sunset Strip, the land of our dreams with the famous clubs: The Trip, The Sea Witch, The Whiskey A Go Go, and Gazzari's. The musical and cultural revolution of the ë60s was shifting into high gear. We could feel it. We could see it in the hippies on the Strip, a revolutionary energy. And we were there, walking on the golden streets of Mount Olympus; we were going to be part of it.
We managed to wangle an appointment at the William Morris Agency, one of the best in show business. Jon Novi did the talking, while the rest of us stood behind him, contributing our few words of English like "hello," "yes" and "good-bye."
We were shown into a plush office and asked to play our records for a handsome, buttoned-down, corporate-looking agent named Skip Taylor.
"You guys are great. You remind me of Ramsey Lewis." Our hearts soared.
"But I don't know where I can put you," he continued. "The places I work with will never hire you, a group of underage foreigners with no working papers. Not a chance."
Our English was good enough to understand "not a chance."
"But there's a guy you ought to see named Howard Wolf."
I thought that was the last I'd see of Skip Taylor, but a few months later he became the manager of a brand new band called Canned Heat. (The same would be true of Howard Wolf years later).
Our lives were destined to be closely linked for decades, although it would be three years after I joined Canned Heat that Skip and I remembered that we actually met before the band existed, when a troupe of naive but ambitious Mexican teenagers popped up in his William Morris office.
Before we had a chance to contact Wolf, we got a break. Jon Novi went to see a friend of his father's and came back to our motel with a big smile on his face. "My father's friend has a job for us. Let's get our stuff in the car. We've got a job tonight in Beverly Hills."
We could hardly believe it. Beverly Hills. Palm trees. Movie stars. We were really impressed and a little insecure.
Don't sweat it," Jon said. "The Americans liked us at the Aloha in TJ; they'll like us in Beverly Hills too."
I suppose it would be a better story if we wound up in the only low-class dive in Beverly Hills, but we didn't. We got out of the Impala at the Daisy, an expensive private club in what looked like some millionaire's mansion. I'm still not sure how it happened, but we landed our first gig in the United States at the pinnacle of chic.
As we came out for our first set, I did a double take of the audience. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were there. Later on, we saw Charlton Heston. It seemed like every woman in the club was gorgeous and dressed in a style, I guess could be called, rich hippie, all silk and swirls and golden chains.
I mumbled to Jon: "Right man. Just like the Aloha. Lots of whores and Marines here tonight." We all laughed. We were wound up tight, but good tight, as we started to play. We figured we looked sharp as hell in our red silk tuxedos.
They loved us. They applauded like crazy. I was pounding away on The Beach Boys' classic "Fun, Fun Fun" and thinking, "We did it. We are fucking here! They were wrong back home. You can join them in the land of the dioses. We are good enough. Hell, they absolutely love us."
All we had to do was keep quiet about our lack of working papers and our age. None of us were 18 years old, far too young to be allowed in the club, much less work there.
The exposure at the Daisy not only brought us fans but invitations to play other clubs, good ones like PJ's, of Trini Lopez fame, and the Lazy X, where Ike and Tina Turner and Bobby Bland were also playing.
When some of the club owners found out about our age and our lack of working papers, they gave us only half what they would have paid an American band, figuring we couldn't complain. They were right. We couldn't. But we didn't care. It was America, it was magic. It was home to every rocker in the world. We were on our way.
It was not unusual for people to come up and tell us: "You guys sound just like the records." We played Beach Boys, Beatles and Righteous Brothers songs. It was pretty amazing--this Mexican band all dressed up in their corny red silk tuxedos, straight out of the border honky-tonks, sounding like American and English stars.
At the Troubador one night, a bald guy in his 60s, chomping a cigar, stopped us as we were getting ready to leave. In a thick Italian accent, he said his name was Lou Ransella. He seemed to know a lot about us.
"I don't care if you guys don't have work permits. And I don't care if you're minors. You're a great group and I'm going to get you jobs. Don't worry about anything. Just don't get in trouble. Don't say anything to anybody. Otherwise they'll put you in a wagon and send you back and you don't want that. You're going to make it."
We returned the borrowed Impala and Lou bought us a used Ford Falcon wagon. He said we could repay him from