For a long while I sat staring at the inside cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with John, Paul, George and Ringo staring back at me. They spoke to me; I could hear their voices in my mind. They assured me that everything was alright, that the universe was indeed unfolding as it should. But, as they offered their wise words of peace and love and drugs, I hallucinated The Fab Four leaping around behind them. They had just arrived at JFK in New York, February 7, 1964 and were conducting their first press conference. They were dressed in their matching black suits with skinny ties. There were a hundred microphones in front of them and Pan-Am logos were hanging behind them.
Those Beatles were being charmingly zany in the background as the Sgt. Pepper's spiritual Beatles sat smiling an all-knowing, all-encompassing smile in their electric satin uniforms.
When press conference John was asked, “how do you find America?” he answered, “turn left at Greenland.”
When a reporter asked George, “what do you call that haircut?” he said, “Arthur.”
Sgt. Pepper's John gave me a wink and a shrug as if to mock himself. I heard him say, “we were just four lads from Liverpool and now there's all this.”
Later that evening I sat with our George - Greenwell - as he strummed his guitar quietly in the midst of the madness. He was really tripping and was struggling emotionally to keep it together. He told me that he wanted to go home. Mr. Brown had had a strong influence on him and he wanted to go back to his friends in The Coastmen. I knew that this was the right thing for him to do but wondered if we could ever find a guitarist as good as him.
The Calgary Police burst in. Neighbours had called them to complain about the hippie infestation. The cops were in a foul mood. They told us that our host did not live at this house and in fact was a drifter who had broken in while the real owners were away. I looked around at what was left of the house. Discarded furniture was left upside down and broken, lamps were smashed into pieces; empty bottles lay scattered on the floor. Ashtrays, overflowing with cigarette butts, spilled their contents into the thick, plush carpets all over the house. There wasn’t a drop of alcohol left in the bar or a crumb of food in the cupboards. It was as if the house had been devoured by locusts (or musicians).
The police rounded us up and herded us into the Tilden van. As dawn broke over the prairie they escorted us to the city limits with explicit instructions to, “Get out of Calgary and never come back.” I slept all the way home to Vancouver.
I crawled into my own bed in my own room at home. The sheets were soft and smelled so fresh, cleaned in a way that only moms can do. It felt foreign to be so cozy. I’d slept on the ground for five weeks, eaten peanut butter with sand and bugs and travelled thousands of uncomfortable miles stuffed into a hot van with seven other lunatics. I missed it already.
George did succumb to his emotions and left us to rejoin The Coastmen. It was the end of August. Geoff, Steve, John and I responded by dropping acid and trying to figure out what Bobby Gentry and Billy Joe MacAllister were throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge. We lost interest and ended up at Teen City at the PNE.
Lindsay Mitchell and the remaining Marksmen had continued as a four-piece and renamed themselves Paisley Rain. They were playing the main stage. As we watched them play I wondered if Geoff regretted leaving these guys. I looked over at him. He was talking up a couple of chicks, paying no attention to his old band.
After Paisley Rain, we were assaulted by a trio sensation called Segment 41. They consisted of drums, bass and a guitarist/vocalist named Al. Apparently, Al had an unpronounceable Ukrainian last name so everybody called him 'Horowitz'. He hit the stage like Jagger, Ray Davies and Roger Daltrey all rolled into one, with a flashy Gibson Firebird guitar slung down below his knees, and put on a rock & roll spectacle like I had never seen before. He was amazing; dancing, strutting, primping, leaping in the air and landing doing the splits while pumping his arm in a Pete Townshendwindmill fashion. He was short with a mop of thick brown hair. He had an impish smile, laughing eyes and a charm that was undeniable. My heart pounded as I thought what it would be like to have Horowitz in The Seeds of Time.
Steve was impressed too but we were distracted when a friend of John’s named Jean begged us to go to a party with her in North Burnaby. We were peaking and easily drawn away.
The party was in North Burnaby, an area evidently immune to the passage of time. It was still 1957 there. When I walked into the house all I saw was greasy waterfalls and beehives. It reeked of hairspray. My drug warped mind believed that I had become trapped on the set of the Marlon Brando movie, The Wild One. Gene Vincent's, Be Bop A Lula was playing in the background.
I was trying to keep from freaking out. Then I ran into the Glue Guy.
The Glue Guy staggered into me, holding a brown paper bag up to his face. It was filled with airplane glue. He was breathing the fumes up his nose and into his lungs. This was killing him so fast his body elected to purge whatever it had on board. The Glue Guy fell to his knees and puked on the carpet right beside my shoes. I was frozen in fear. He very slowly turned his pasty face and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. He smiled and croaked, “Wanna snort?”
I ran out into the street and didn't stop until I found my way back to 1967.
There was only a week left of the school's summer holidays. I wasn't sure I would be going back. I was thinking of quitting.
Geoff, Steve, John and I were hanging out on Fourth Avenue. A girl pulled up in a Volkswagen Beetle, stuck her pretty head out the window and said, “hi John”.
John recognized her as a neighbour from down the street from his parents' place. Geoff immediately talked her into taking us to Seattle. She looked at Geoff with that 'I’d do anything for you, Stud' look that most women gave Geoff and off we went to Seattle. Geoff drove with her sitting in his lap the whole way.
We pulled into the University District where all the hippies hung out. We wandered down Pacific Street and Columbia Road exchanging, “groovy man” and “far out” salutations to all the freaks we met. We were drawn to the house of a Seattle band called, Buford. They were happy to have us and invited us to crash on their floor.
Somebody offered us STP and of course we took it. STP was a kind of legendary mutated LSD that was supposed to be super-potent. I’m not sure about that, but the next rational memory I have was two days later. We were totally wasted and John’s friend, Geoff’s girl, had left us and gone home. We were told that she got mad because Geoff was balling some other chick. That sounded about right.
When we had gathered some strength, we hitched a ride back to Vancouver on the Friday before the Labour Day weekend. Steve, John and I were still officially living with our parents so each of us went home.
Our folks were furious. The girl had returned in a fit of jealous rage telling tales of sexual promiscuity and unrestrained drug use. As if the truth wouldn’t have been enough to hang us all, she even embellished the charges by claiming, falsely, that we were not only using heroin but also dealing the stuff.
This was like throwing a torch on a powder keg as our parents already lay awake at night in fearful speculation of what we might be up to. Once the bomb went off, our parents united and confiscated all of our instruments; locked the whole lot in the Halls' garage. We were herded together and informed that we would have to straighten up and prepare to get back to school.
The call of the Revolution had a powerful hold on me. I went to Jim for advice. He thought about it overnight and came back with something he called, 'The Manifesto'. I was shocked to read that he strongly advised us to do as our folks had ordered; go back and finish school. Then, he said, we’d have the freedom to pursue our dreams as musicians. I prepared to obey.
My heroic attempt was well received by my parents, Harry and Margaret. In fact, my dad arranged a loan to the band so that we could buy a van to move our gear from gig-to-gig.