The Orkustra

Light Shows for the Blind

By Bobby BeauSoleil



San Francisco, 1966. Narrow Victorian façade houses, gaunt and quaint, squeezed together side-by-side like musty books in the library of a lunatic. The roller-coaster streets arranged with about as much apparent forethought as a casual toss in a child's game of pixie sticks, each hilltop offering up its own unique vista, each vale a haunt of subtle intrigue. Elegant old theaters, dilapidated warehouses, eateries and clubs and coffee houses, places of commerce, places of worship, houses of the holy and the unholy, all gracefully suffering the same kind of slow decay that time and salty sea mists inflict on coastal communities. The noise, the din, an ever-present song: machines and voices, music from windows and doorways, in clubs and concert halls; wavelets lapping at the piers on a wharf, the deep bellow of distant fog horns. Twinkling spires supporting colossal bridges spanning the placid waterways, countless city lights sparkling their reflections on the bay like diamonds, like the stars of galaxies. The fairyland gardens of Golden Gate Park, a living testimonial to the vision and determination of one man, and the wisdom of city fathers who allowed him a free hand to create them out of the wasteland. Cops walking their beat on Haight Street, dressed for another era in dark blue double-breasted coats adorned with rows of shiny brass buttons. Unruly traffic on a confusing disarray of highways and byways; the buzzing hustle of an electric streetcar, the more stately bustle of a clanking trolley. And the people—young and old, rich and poor, sane and senseless, revered and misunderstood, fastidious and unwashed, drunk and sober, stoic and passionate, godless and born again—of every kind and color; a port city's rich and pungent brew of diverse cultures.

To one who until just a few months earlier had been in the choking grip of the glitz and stucco squalor of the greater Los Angeles area, being absorbed by the rollicking energy and rich ambiance of San Francisco was like being dipped in mothers milk. It seemed an enchanted place to me. To this day it remains the only city I have ever truly loved.

What has this to do with The Orkustra? Quite simply, everything. Only in that brief and unique period in San Francisco's history could a band like The Orkustra have been brought into being, for it was as much an expression of the times and the environment as it was an expression of the collective imaginations of the band's members.

My arrival in the San Francisco bay area preceded by a couple of months the otherwise uneventful passage of my eighteenth birthday in the fall of 1965. A young vagabond in colorfully mismatched clothing, less than ten dollars in my pocket, I wandered the area aimlessly at first, all of my hopes for the future resting on my ability to play a few chords and riffs on the Epiphone electric guitar I was packing. Accompanying me was Snofox, a mid-sized white dog of uncertain genealogy, my ever-faithful friend and traveling companion.

We stopped for a couple of weeks in Sausalito, and it was nice, but too exclusive and removed from the action. Berkeley was a busy hub of activity, but too collegiate for my tastes, and North Beach reminded me a bit too much of the blinking neon-infested Hollywood Boulevard I had left behind. By a series of happy accidents, we soon found ourselves in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and it was just right.

At that time, the Haight was a relatively quiet low-rent community, charmingly seedy and run down, very nearly a ghetto in places. Bordered on two sides by Golden Gate Park, and with its affordable rentals, the area tended to attract aspiring artists and musicians, and their respective camp followers. This was the Haight-Ashbury district as I found it. In altogether too short a time it would undergo a drastic transformation. The Haight Street Merchants Association was already conspiring to make the Haight a thriving—and hence profitable—center of counter-culture activity, and young people were beginning to drift into the area in ones and two, much as I had. A year-and-a-half later the trickle would become a flood greater than the most imaginative of the Haight Street Merchants could have anticipated, a flood that would quickly swamp the little community. During that brief span of time between, however, it would give rise to a creative outburst that would leave an indelible imprint on the consciousness of the western world.

Having found a suitable base of operations, the next order of business was to find a rock band I could join in with. Locating one turned out to be a snap. Within less than a week of arriving in the Haight, I learned of an up-and-coming band called The Outfit who practiced in the local area. I learned also that they had recently fired their first lead guitarist, and were in the market for a replacement. While this was certainly welcome tidings, I was not so certain that my qualifications would measure up. Having previously played as a rhythm guitarist in a couple of L.A. rock groups, I was not entirely without real band experience, but I had yet to cross the threshold from playing rhythm to playing lead. The noodling and riffing I had been doing in private was unproven in the context of a band, and I was reluctant to bill myself as a lead player. Nevertheless, figuring that the most I had to lose was a bit of my dignity, I forged ahead in a leap of faith, determined to do my best to land a position in the band.

The Outfit practiced in an old movie theater on Haight Street. The sign above the marquee proclaimed it to be the Haight Theater, but it was already becoming known on the street as the Straight Theater. In the hip-speak of the times, the term "getting straight" was synonymous with "getting high," and so, to anyone in the know, the new name was a declaration that the former movie theater had fallen under the dominion of psychedelia. It had recently been purchased by a loose confederacy comprising the Resner brothers, Bill and Hillel, and a few of their friends, who intended to convert the run-down Art Deco style theater into a sort of counter-culture party palace. The work required to bring about the transformation had not yet begun in earnest the day I approached the front doors of the Straight Theater for the first time. Hearing music inside, and finding the doors unlocked, I went inside and introduced myself to the band.

Despite my limited experience as a lead guitarist, the audition went well. The members of The Outfit liked the way I was able to compliment the sound of their repertoire of original songs with my impromptu riffing, and I was unanimously voted into the group. During the almost daily rehearsals that followed, I discovered that I had a knack for spontaneous melodic improvisation. Ironically, this discovery would give rise to a discontent with the formula rock band model that would, in part, lead to my decision to quit The Outfit only a few months later.

I enjoyed playing with The Outfit for those few months. They were a fun bunch of guys, and there was some real talent within the group. But there were problems in the marketing strategy. The band's management was stuck in a Hullabaloo mindset, and simply did not get it that The Outfit was never going to be like a stateside version of The Dave Clark Five. A misbegotten strategy of shopping the band to the bubble gum crowd had us playing high school events and gigs at out-of-the-way nightclubs like The Piano Bar, where the clientele guzzled beer and sipped mixed drinks, and smiled vacuously at the motley looking group on the bandstand, occasionally calling out the names of Top-40 songs that The Outfit could have played only as a mockery. Oddly, the other members of the band did not seem able to apprehend the nature of the problem and were apparently willing to go blithely along with the management's plan. I could not have said at the time why I felt such a growing sense of dissatisfaction, but I knew fairly early on that playing in The Outfit would only be a brief stopover on my way to more interesting musical adventures.

What I learned in those few months laid the ground work for much that followed, including the initial concept that gave rise to the formation of The Orkustra. Out of the experience came the valuable discovery that I possessed an innate ability to improvise linear melody and counterpoint, and the time spent playing with The Outfit gave me an opportunity to hone those skills to a limited extent. Moreover, by exemplifying the kind of formula rock band methodology that triggered the discontent I felt as a member of The Outfit, the experience helped me to be able to discern some of the pitfalls to be avoided. Subtracting what I disliked from the whole and examining what was left, I could begin the process of beating out a pathway that would, hopefully, lead to my greater fulfillment as an artist.

Even as I continued to practice and perform with The Outfit, I was hatching plans to strike out on my own. The gigs we played put enough money in my pocket to buy guitar strings as needed, pay rent on a room in a communal flat in the Haight, keep boots on my feet and food in my stomach, and provide Snofox with a can of dog food each day. Freed more or less from the mundane concerns of everyday survival, I had time in abundance to develop the essential design for the music ensemble I intended to put together.

The grand city of San Francisco laid itself out before me like a King's banquet, and we, Snofox and I, spent much of our time exploring its endless nooks and crannies. One day, I chanced upon a huge music store on Market Street that had a basement level most of its regular customers didn't know about. On the street-level floor there was the usual assortment of guitars, drums, amplifiers, organs and pianos, accordions, banjos, ukuleles, and a selection of high school band instruments. Down below, however, there were row upon row of floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with musical instruments and accessories of every conceivable kind, including numerous exotic instruments from around the world. The elderly proprietors didn't seem to mind that I frequently spent hours down there in that dusty labyrinth, looking around and fiddling with the curiosities I found. They checked in on me from time to time, and patiently answered my questions, telling me the names of instruments I had not encountered before. On one of my visits to the store I took a particular liking to a beautiful stringed instrument from Greece called a bouzouki, and I traded a Gibson acoustic guitar for it and a pickup that would let me play it through an amp.

Meanwhile, my listening habits became increasingly eclectic as my interests diversified. I was most attracted, naturally, to what my contemporaries were doing in the rock music scene. I often went to concerts at the Avalon Ballroom, Fillmore Auditorium, The Matrix, The Annex, and other rock music venues, to check out Big Brother, The Dead, The Airplane, Moby Grape, The Charlatans, Quicksilver, and other bay area bands. And of course, I attended concerts to hear performances by visiting bands from L.A.—my old familiar friends, literally and figuratively—as well as those from other parts of the country and abroad. Though I had resolved that I would not follow in their footsteps, I loved the sounds they made.

By then I was conscientiously expanding my musical horizons by scouring the record collections of friends for fresh inspiration. For the first time, I listened with my full attention to recorded performances of symphonies by Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wagner, marveling at the complexity, the rich colors and textures, and the incredible emotive power of orchestral dynamics. The blues—Delta blues, Chicago blues, rhythm and blues—rocked my soul. The subtlety and nuance of inflection in songs by John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Otis Redding, Charlie Musselwhite, Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, B.B. King, among others, taught me how great gooey gobs of emotion could be squeezed into just a few notes. Listening to recordings by Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and to some of the free jazz musicians I heard live as I sat in the dark recesses of the Haight Levels jazz club late at night, I got an inkling of how to interpret the language of music played spontaneously from the heart and soul, in the moment; music evocative of deep passion and spirituality. Add a generous dollop of imagination, a scoop of determination, and a pinch of too-young-to-know-better, and stir briskly.

On one of my jaunts downtown, I spied a felt top hat in the window of a theatrical supply shop. I couldn't afford to spend sixteen bucks on a hat, but it fit like it had been made for me, and I couldn't resist the temptation to buy it. There was something about that hat. No sooner did I put it on my head than all of the crazy notions about putting together a new kind of band that had been bouncing around in there began to coalesce and assume the semblance of an idea. On an evening shortly afterward, I sat on a rock at the edge of a pond in Golden Gate Park, smoking a joint, with faithful Snofox on point for any sneaky cops that might be lurking nearby. I remember the moment clearly when, like being struck by a thunderbolt, a vision came to me full blown: I saw myself assembling the world's first electric symphony orchestra.

Just like that it had hit me. Suddenly I had a direction and a purpose, and I wasted no time putting plan to action. That the idea this plan was based on was hare bones at best seemed of little cause for concern; I was confident it would flesh out in due course.

I was a man on a mission, spending every waking hour searching out resources and opportunities and advocates, and bending the ear of anyone who would listen. Many of the people I spoke with seemed to think I had taken a hard blow to the head, but even some of them were intrigued by the notion of an electric orchestra, and others were especially encouraging. Among the latter was Brent Dangerfield, the inventive and slightly deranged technician in charge of building the Straight Theater's sound system, who offered a wealth of ideas about how various instruments might be electrically amplified and made to distort in sonically interesting ways. I picked his brain often. But for the most part I was on my own, groping my way along in dark, unchartered waters.

In those early days, when I considered myself fortunate if I could manage to rub two five dollar bills together, the front of the Straight Theater served as my make-shift central headquarters. This was an unplanned development, actually more of Snofox's choosing than mine. That dog would have laid down his life for me, but he was no great fan of my music. From the time I first began practicing with The Outfit at the Straight Theater, he had taken to waiting for me outside, where the sounds made by loud electric guitars would not hurt his sensitive ears. Before long it became clear to everyone that Snofox had laid claim to the area beneath the theater's marquee, and thought of it as his personal territory. He liked it because it gave him shelter from the elements, a good vantage to watch the action on Haight Street, and frequent opportunities to lap up the attentions of young chicks who thought he was just the cutest, sweetest doggie ever. I could always count on him to return to that spot whenever we became separated, and he counted on me to do likewise. The place where we dwelled might change frequently, but the front of the Straight Theater remained our home base for quite awhile.

If the Resner brothers were bothered by this development they never said so. Before long they began to jokingly call me "Bobby Snofox," and I took this to mean that my dog and I had been awarded honorary membership in the informal Straight Theater family. They didn't even seem to mind when I appropriated one of the unused "Now Playing" poster display cases underneath the marquee to use as my personal message board. The glass that had long since been broken out of the frame had yet to be replaced, and some of my friends left messages there for me on occasion. I kept a pencil on a string and paper tacked to the board for this purpose. As I began to recruit musicians to play in my electric orchestra, this message board became the primary means by which interested musicians made initial contact with me, serving in lieu of a telephone.

The process of finding musicians to join up with me for this little adventure began with handwritten notices that I prepared on 5 by 8 inch cards using pens of assorted colors to attract the attention of passersby. With these I let it be known that the "world's first psychedelic electric symphony orchestra" was "now forming," and that musicians of any stripe may apply, "all types of instruments welcome." Interested musicians were advised to "see the guy in the top hat with the white dog on Haight Street," or to leave their contact information on my message board in front of the Straight Theater. Bulletin boards were very commonplace in those days, and I posted the notices on every one of them that I could find—in the Psychedelic Shop, the Haight Levels, the Digger's free store, several local markets, the Donut shop, and on my own message board in front of the Straight Theater—as well as in the windows of a few shops and restaurants I frequented regularly.

The response was virtually instantaneous and surpassed my wildest expectations. While I had been confident of success from the outset, I found myself ill prepared to handle the number of initial enquiries from musicians interested in trying out, given that I had yet to secure a location to conduct auditions and rehearse my erstwhile orchestra. Of necessity, some of the first auditions took place right on the street, or in the Panhandle section of Golden Gate Park. I had gotten a bit ahead of myself.

To my great good fortune and considerable relief, one of the first musicians to express an interest in signing on was David LaFlamme, a man in his mid-twenties who, with his pale blonde hair and mild Scandinavian features, appeared to have little of the French in his lineage. But David "the Flame" could sing and play a violin, and he was looking to join a band that had a place for his instrument and abilities. While he was clearly dubious at first, not quite sure what to make of the beardless boy and his grandiose ideas, David's desire to apply his talents to the challenge of a unique counter-culture musical adventure overrode his initial skepticism. The psychedelic electric orchestra concept had captured his imagination much as it had mine, and we joined forces.

It is impossible to know if The Orkustra, or anything much resembling it, would have come together in that time period were it not for the dedication and resourcefulness that David contributed to the endeavor. From the beginning he brought to the equation a kind of practicality that served to counter balance my youthful impulsiveness and hyper-optimism in favor of a more pragmatic overall approach. We frustrated each other at times, the formally trained classical violinist and the self-taught rock and roll guitarist, but the formula worked.

In short order, we had rented an old tin-roofed warehouse on Page Street, just a block-and-a-half from the Straight Theater, and we immediately began conducting auditions in earnest. The auditions took the form of daily free-for-all jam sessions in the warehouse. Applicants were simply invited to sit in. It was like a kind of acid test: musicians who had the ability to improvise and who enjoyed the experience of playing in the group would find encouragement enough that they might be inclined to show up for the next session, while those who couldn't cut it tended to drift away of their own accord. I don't recall an instance when a musician was fired or asked to leave.

Although I made an effort to guide and nudge the collective energies toward a unified goal, I did not cast myself in the role of tyrannical band leader, except for my insistence on a strictly instrumental approach (as opposed to instruments played in support of vocals) in which every player would have ample opportunity to express freely. Above all, the music had to be free. This was frequently translated to the group as active resistance to the temptation to fall back on traditional and hackneyed approaches to musical performance—as an ideal to aspire to, if not precisely an absolute requirement. By and large, however, the group was allowed to find its own voice and evolve its own identity.

It was not until Jaime Leopold signed on as bassist that the first hints of a recognizable group identity began to appear. Ironically, Jaime was the only member of The Orkustra who did not volunteer to try out for the group. Rather, he was as fortuitous discovery, and I had to court him like a lover before he would agree to entertain the possibility of trying out for the group.

I had met Jaime in social circumstances unrelated to the formation of the band. Visiting his apartment for the first time, I caught sight of a cheap acoustic bass leaning in a corner behind a homemade hi-fi rig. When I asked him if he played bass, Jaime shrugged and said that he played it only as a sort of hobby, that he liked to play along with jazz and blues records. To me, this was more of an asset than a liability. It suggested that he played mostly by ear, and served as a strong indication that he would be comfortable improvising. Moreover, I surmised that an unfretted acoustic bass, electrified, could potentially be a more expressive instrument than the fretted electric bass guitar most bands relied upon, and I wanted that greater degree of expressiveness in the bottom end of the fledgling orchestra's sound. Above all, I liked Jaime as a person, and I knew on an instinctive level that he would bring good chemistry to the band.

My first overtures to Jaime were politely rejected. He seemed almost embarrassed by the proposition and what it implied, claiming to have no aspirations to play in a band. But I persisted, and I persisted, and a week or two later he finally relented and agreed to bring his bass down to the warehouse and give it a shot. Once he played with us and got a taste of what it was like to jam with real live musicians, he was bitten. He made every session thereafter.

Jaime may have been a closet bass player to begin with, but he never had a rival for his position in The Orkustra. What he brought to the venture was a good deal more than an astute and passionate innate musical sensibility. To everyone in the group he was like a sort of benevolent virus, infecting us all with his intelligent wit, his wildly inventive sense of humor, and his generous nature. Seemingly with little effort, he somehow managed to make all of the oddly shaped pieces fit together in a fragile alliance, offering encouragement, mitigating arguments, and helping to keep things lighthearted and fun. This made him the most valuable member of the band, because it is what sustained us long enough to enjoy our brief day in the sun, and to create something remarkably unique along the way.

At times there were as many as a dozen musicians playing together in the warehouse at once, all trying with varying degrees of success to fit in with one another and generate some semblance of harmony. Often what resulted was the most gawdawful noise. But every once in awhile the sounds that emerged took on a transcendent quality, a kernel of promise that kept some of us coming back day after day.

The single biggest problem we faced was finding musicians who were capable of improvising in a group context. Most of the musicians who tried out could not play without a road map right I front of them. My insistence on there being a minimum of the preordained in the music we played earned me the consternation of some, and even a few accusations of being a lazy musician for not troubling myself with the fine points of the decorated staff, to which I would retort that it's hard work to play in the moment, with sensitivity and intuition. It was all academic anyway—I did not read music in any case, and those who decided to play in the band simply had to accept that. Or not. Some chose the latter and moved on.

The instrumentation changed from day to day as musicians came and went. A cellist who was in the lineup one day might not have shown up the next, and a flute player might appear in her place, only to be replaced by a guy with a Hammond organ the following day. A diverse array of instruments and instrumentalists passed through the band in this fashion.

One day, for example, a station wagon with a trailer in tow pulled though the gate leading to the entry of the warehouse, and stopped in the driveway. Out of the car spilled a man, his wife, and five or six kids, the woman moving more slowly and laboriously than the others. The man, after verifying that auditions for an orchestra were indeed being conducted at that location, went behind the car to unload the trailer. From beneath a protective padded cloth covering emerged the most beautiful harp I have seen to this day. It was huge, made of dark woods and ornately tooled golden metal. The woman, who with her considerable girth and her long blonde hair appeared to have stepped directly out of a Wagnerian opera, was a harpist of awesome skill. She entertained us that day, performing a variety of classical pieces she knew by heart, but sadly, she was incapable of improvising with us and did not return the next. And so it went.

Of the many woodwinds players who passed through the portals of the warehouse, only one, Henry Rasof, distinguished himself as being entirely right for The Orkustra. Henry, who seemed shy and reserved at first meeting, played his oboe with a finesse and inventiveness that belied his quiet manner. He was classically trained, introspective and self-critical of his playing, yet he had the courage to stretch out and take chances and try new things. It was fascinating to watch him painstakingly make his own reeds—I had never met a musician quite so fastidious about his instrument. This kind of attention to detail is indicative of a quality Henry possessed that inspired us all to want to become better musicians.

The oboe's distinctive tones and the liquid gypsy scales Henry played on it contributed more to giving The Orkustra a unique signature sound than any of the other instruments within the group. It lent to our sound the power to enchant, a quality that one of our fans aptly called "snake charmer music." When Henry was in the mood, he could weave a spell with that black stick of his.

Dedicated musicianship and the ability and willingness to be inventive was not the only price of admission. Months of auditions and rehearsals were required to make the band ready to begin gigging, and , in the meantime, we all had to eat. Each aspiring member of the group was expected to invest their energy for hours of each day toward developing a unique sound and style of music against the vague promise of an eventual payoff. I lived on handouts much of the time in those days. Then, too, there was the drafty old warehouse we used as a practice studio, which presented its own set of challenges. It was uninsulated and unheated, with a bare concrete floor that would send the chill right up through shoes and feet, all the way to the bones of one's fingers. To ward off some of the cold and damp, we hung several lengths of musty discarded carpet padding over ropes that we suspended between the posts that supported the corrugated tin roof to partially enclose an area within the warehouse, and coaxed into service an old kerosene-burning heater that David found in a junk shop to bring some warmth to the space. We spent many an hour hunkered around that stinking heater, playing our asses off in as much an effort to keep warm as to make some good music.

These assorted challenges effectively weeded out all the half-steppers. Others might have argued that those of us who stuck it out had simply lost our minds, but I believe that the few who saw it through to the end were so captivated by the moments of brilliance that occasionally occurred when we played that the hardships involved seemed comparatively inconsequential. Art always makes such demands of artists. We took them in stride.

The moment when the magic combination finally clicked into place happened somewhere in the midst of the first jam we ever played with Terry Wilson, who immediately afterward came on board as our drummer. Not one of the several drummers we had tried out previously could hold a candle to Terry. Short in physical stature, with curly reddish brown hair, an aquiline profile, and an infectious laugh, Terry was a drummer who came from a jazz tradition, and that made all the difference. Improvisation came naturally to him, and he played with an inventiveness that was nothing short of astonishing. Like any really good jazz drummer, he was always in sync with the bass, always knew just when to accent, when to drive the melody, and his timing was impeccable. And yet, he was more than willing to step outside the traditions of his jazz background to co-invent with the rest of us a style of music that only occasionally flirted with jazz.

When The Orkustra began to play concert gigs, rock drummers from other bands would stand in the wings, jaws agape, watching Terry play. "Where did you learn those rhythms?!," they would ask him later, and Terry would just smile.

As a group identity emerged, it became evident that the band would bear little resemblance to my original brainchild. A group comprising only five musicians hardly constitutes an orchestra, electric or otherwise, but as we explored and experimented with the concept we discovered fairly early on that realizing a comprehensible form of improvisational music was much more easily achievable with fewer players. It seemed to become exponentially more difficult to play as a cohesive unit with each added musician. There was also an economics consideration. Fewer band members meant that gig money would not have to be split as many ways. But more than any other reason, we chose to keep the membership small because we liked the way we sounded with just the five of us. It was simply what worked. We talked about adding more players—a cellist, perhaps, and a flute player, maybe even a horn section eventually—but we did not remain together long enough to take it to that next level.

Because our ensemble was smaller than originally envisioned, we decided to call ourselves The Electric Chamber Orchestra, as a way of signifying that we were a small group with orchestral designs. We didn't keep this name much beyond our first gig, however. Our first public performance was at a coffee house on lower Haight called The Coffee Gallery, where we baffled and confounded the folk music crowd for weeks as we worked on polishing our performances and sorted out the bugs in our amplification system in front of a live audience, picking up some converts along the way. Not wanting to limit ourselves to playing similarly small "chamber" venues, we modified our name to make it more ambiguously representative. Henceforth we were always known as, simply, The Orkustra.

A key element in what was conceived as an electric orchestra was, of course, electricity. Achieving what I initially set out to accomplish in this area turned out to be extremely elusive. Originally I had imagined that the sound made by a single instrument could be electrically "multiplied" to sound like several instruments of the same type playing in unison. In my brainstorming sessions with Brent, it had seemed entirely feasible that electrical circuits could be used to imperfectly duplicate the sound of one instrument several times, slightly delay each iteration of the imperfectly reproduced sound relative to the others, and then combine them to make a composite sound. Using such a technique in live performance, a single violinist, for example, might be able to generate the sound of a violin section. Applying the same process to additional instruments, a small group of musicians could sound like an orchestra. That was the theory, anyhow. Nowadays, electronic devices capable of doing that trick and a whole lot more are commonplace and overused, but back in 1966 they were only science fiction. Another decade would pass before I would have an opportunity to put the theory into practice.

Learning that technology of the sort I imagined did not yet exist was tremendously disappointing, but by that time we had come too far to get hung up on that. We simply had to get by with what was readily available. Back then, that meant we were limited to amplifying the instruments to make them louder, and to using some distortion, some simple filtering, and a little spring reverb to alter the sounds of our instruments somewhat.

The basic necessity of figuring out how to amplify some of the acoustic instruments turned out to be more of a challenge than any of us anticipated. We had no plans to electrify the drums, and my Fender Stratocaster was already suitably equipped, but the violin, oboe, bass and bouzouki all needed to be outfitted with some method for converting their vibrations into electrical signals.

Contact microphones for a variety of stringed instruments were readily available, but they did not sound very good, and getting enough volume out of them without generating squeals and wails of uncontrolled feedback proved to be impossible. Taking our cue from the highly successful electric guitar, it seemed that what we needed were magnetic pickups—for the stringed instruments, in any case. David found a local luthier who carried magnetic pickups for mandolins, and had one installed on my bouzouki. It worked extremely well. Heartened by this success, we continued the search, and before long the violin and bass were similarly provisioned. Jaime and David were then able to crank up the volume to a level that could fill a concert hall, sans the earlier feedback problem, and their instruments sounded great. The only downside was a brief period of adjustment while they conditioned their fingers to playing on the all-steel strings required by the new pickups.

Finding an equivalent solution to the problem of amplifying Henry's oboe proved to be impossible due to the state of transducer technology at that time. After a noble but nearly disastrous attempt to amplify the oboe with a pickup designed for flute, we finally settled on a small microphone taken from a harmonica pickup that just happened to fit nicely inside the bell of the oboe. It was not a perfect solution, but it enabled Henry to make his oboe sound bigger than any other oboe in history, without excessively altering the instrument's unique timbre.

Just as we were about to begin gigging in earnest, Jaime retired his old Sears and Roebuck's bass and invested in one far more suitable to our purposes. The new double bass made a big difference in putting the bump into the bottom end of our sound. And finally, to broaden our percussion palette somewhat, we augmented Terry's drum kit with two large copper kettle drums. Wielding a pair of mallets with characteristic finesse and panache, Terry would, at appropriate instances, give those kettle drums a few wallops to inject some orchestral boom into our sound.

Thus provisioned, The Orkustra—a musical aberration of unprecedented pretentiousness—set out to enlighten the people of San Francisco with its own brand of rock and roll truth.

Our first significant performance, and a defining one for the band, took place on a Sunday afternoon in the Panhandle section of Golden Gate Park. It was the very first in a series of free concerts that would take place in that location, organized by the notorious Diggers. By this time, hundreds of young people had already migrated to the Haight community, and more were arriving every day. Many of them had but recently left the homes of their parents on a wing and a prayer, arriving in the Haight with little or no money, no street experience, and ill-prepared to provide themselves with the necessities of basic survival. The Diggers had declared it their mission to coordinate relief efforts, finding and providing essential food, clothing, communal housing, and medical treatment to the migrants, all free of charge. The free Sunday concerts in the park were urban guerrilla theater events staged by the Diggers, all in the spirit of fun and good times, to bring a sense of harmony and unity to the growing throngs of erstwhile hippies. In addition to live music, huge pots of savory vegetable stew were on hand for anyone who might be hungry.

The Orkustra's association with the Diggers was initially an outgrowth of simple proximity to one another. The old warehouse on Page Street that we used for a rehearsal studio was located directly across the street from a row of derelict wooden garages that the Diggers had procured and made into their headquarters. Above the doors of the garages was a whimsical sign proclaiming them to be "The Free Frame of Reference," the Diggers' free store, where second-hand clothing, blankets, kitchen utensils, and sundry household items could be had for the asking. As members of The Orkustra and some of the Diggers encountered one another on a daily basis, a casual relationship was formed. Emmett Grogan, one of the Diggers' founding members and chief instigators, took a particular shine to The Orkustra. He liked our free-form musical style and devil-may-care attitude, being so much like his own nature, and invited us to play the first of the free concerts in the Panhandle.

A make-shift stage was set up under the trees and a generator was brought in to provide electricity to power the amplifiers. As we began to play, a crowd grew quickly around us. Our performance was very well received by everyone save for the cops who showed up to inform us that the crowd exceeded the number of people who could lawfully be gathered in a public park without a permit. We were allowed to play one more song before we had to shut it down. We made it a long one. Thereafter, the Diggers made prior arrangements with city officials to obtain permits, and with a flatbed truck to serve as a stage and power source, the weekend concerts in the Panhandle became a regular feature of life in the Haight for some time. The Orkustra played that venue several times, along with The Grateful Dead, The Charlatans, Big Brother, and other San Francisco rock band luminaries of the period.

We played so many of the Diggers' events, in fact, that we became known in some circles as The Diggers' band. One of the most memorable of those events was the inaugural ceremonies that launched the infamous Invisible Circus festivities at Glide Memorial Church, wherein The Orkustra performed musical accompaniment for a troupe of half-naked female belly dancers who had been brought in for the expressed purpose of kick-starting the event. Our collective efforts were a rollicking success from my point of view, but the church fathers and city officials saw it from another perspective.

No doubt due to the combination of our madcap appearance and the exotic sounding music we made, we were often called upon to play the unusual venue. Among those, for example, we performed for attendees of the Bedrock concerts at the Carousel Ballroom. Organized and promoted by the Sexual Freedom League, one of the unique features of these gigs were the naked couples dancing at each end of the stage, their bodies painted head to toe in multi-color Day-Glo paints and bathed in ultraviolet light. For The Orkustra, playing gigs like these was all in a night's work.

All of the bay area bands aspired to perform for the big crowds at Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom. The Orkustra played both venues, but not as headliners—that lofty status was generally reserved for recording artists from out of town. The gigs I liked best were the nightclubs. Smaller venues are more intimate, increasing the likelihood that the energies of the audience and the performers will become commingled in a transcendent experience. In performances that are largely improvisational, it can be especially satisfying when that sort of magical interaction occurs. For this reason, I fondly remember our fairly frequent featured performances at The New Orleans House, a club in Berkeley noted for its diverse musical offerings. We once had the unique experience of playing a week at The Both/And, a prestigious San Francisco jazz club. Since we weren't really a jazz group, we considered it an honor to have been invited to play there. Another standout was a weeklong gig at a brand new club called The Rock Garden, sharing the bill with Buffalo Springfield. The owners had put quite a lot of care and effort into making that club something special, endowing it with a great sound system, the best light show the city had to offer, and showcasing some memorable performances by top-drawer music groups.

Sadly, The Orkustra broke up right in the midst of the Summer of Love, at a time when our popularity was steadily increasing. There were probably other factors, but two events contributed most to the band's breakup. The first was that Jaime got busted on a pot possession charge, and though he was soon out on bail and able to continue playing in the band, anxiety over the ongoing court proceedings had clouded Jaime's ordinarily sunny disposition, which effectively dampened the band's energy and enthusiasm. The other is that I had independently become involved in a more or less collaborative venture with underground film maker Kenneth Anger, a project that consumed much of my focus and somewhat alienated the other members of the band. We never officially declared the band defunct; we simply drifted in different directions as if we instinctively knew that The Orkustra's time had come and gone. But it would not merely shrivel up like a husk to be blown away by a vagrant gust of San Francisco's winds of change as so much of the detritus left in the wake of the Summer of Love would be. No, in its passing it would spawn some curious new variations to spring upon the American music scene.

In the end, The Orkustra had become a launch pad to all of its members, each of us in some way building upon the experiences we had shared together. David—joining forces with his pianist wife, Linda—went on to form It's a Beautiful Day, an innovative band in which he would display not only his violin playing, but a rich singing voice the rest of us had barely suspected he possessed. Terry's personal journey took him back to playing in the jazz circuit, where he undoubtedly introduced a few fresh ideas inspired by his experiences with The Orkustra. Moving to Los Angeles, Henry resumed academic studies at the University of California, where he delved into experiments in combining word poetry with tone poetry in an early incarnation of UCLA's electronic music lab. Late one night in 1971, I was watching The Tonight Show with casual interest when Johnny Carson introduced Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks as that night's musical guests, causing me to sit straight up in my seat (Dan Hicks had formerly been the lead singer with The Charlatans, a band The Orkustra had shared the bill with on more than one occasion). Lo and behold, standing behind Dan, with his bass, was Jaime, and he sounded great (from closet bassist to national television, how about that!). And as for myself, finishing the soundtrack for the Kenneth Anger film took me a lot longer that I originally anticipated, but during that process and ever since I have continued to produce instrumental music with a cinematic orientation. Looking back, it seems an inescapable fact that the experiences and times we shared as The Orkustra were defining for all of us.

Jaime, David, Henry, and Terry (wherever you are), in the grand scheme of thing The Orkustra may have been only a flash in the Panhandle, but I will cherish the memories of our little adventure and value what I learned from the experience for all of my days. Thank you for having the courage to traverse the unbeaten path and for letting me be a part of bringing to the world something different and new. Playing with you was inspirational, and an honor. My hat is off to you.



- Bobby BeauSoleil

June, 2003

From artist Dennis Dread/Destroying Angels:

'Free Bobby BeauSoleil' shirts now available!

All proceeds from these authorized limited edition shirts will go directly to Robert K. BeauSoleil.

We believe Bobby BeauSoleil is an artistic and spiritual comrade who has re-paid his debt to society and should be released from prison to enjoy his elder years under the sun.

All proceeds from these shirts will go directly to his prison account for art supplies, vegetarian food, and phone calls to friends and family. Shirts are black and pro-printed with discharge ink that is fade resistant and much more comfortable than commercial plastisol ink. SPECIFY SIZE WITH ORDER! For more information about Bobby visit his website here.

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Kirin Anderson conducted this interview in 1999 for Starvox.

The following is an interview with Bobby BeauSoleil. To some of you who are Current 93 fans, the name might ring a bell, and of course, there are those grim and splendourous years known simply as The Sixties. But, this is 1999. If you want to know more about where Bobby BeauSoleil has been in his lifetime, what he's seen, and what he's done, there are ample histories available regarding the tragedy that lead Bobby to prison in the first place. It is not my intention to discuss those things here, and there is no discussion of them in the following interview. This interview is about who Bobby BeauSoleil is TODAY, and about the music he's been making for most of his life. It's an interview full of joy, and grief, and wonder, and longing, but above all, hope. I can honestly say that I've never interviewed another human being in my life, who was more gentle, more sincere, and more full of colourful joy than Bobby BeauSoleil. His music is just as profound. Without further ado, the interview:
Kirin: First, I had a feeling, before our interview that I wanted to find out when your birthday was, and I'm not sure if I'm a few days early, or a few days late, but Happy Birthday!

Bobby: Thank you very much! Actually, it was a few days ago. Three days ago.

Kirin: I'd also like to say, thank you, just for being you- for enduring all that you have endured, and continue to endure; for having the strength and courage to become a new man, not a bitter one. Your music is a testament to your spirit - the freedom you've found within, shines through as clear as the morning sun. You, and your music, are an inspiration to me.

Bobby: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

K: How is it, that in the darkness where you are, and where you have been, you are able to soar? What is it that you bring to your work that is so full of joy?

B: It's kind of hard to define, from my position. It reminds me of the idea of asking the centipede how it manages to move all of its legs in a synchronous fashion, to move forward. I imagine if the centipede were to try to think about doing what it does, that it would stumble and not be able to move forward. So, in the same way, for me to say how I do what I do, I think I would stumble; I wouldn't know how to say it, because I really don't think about it.

K: So, it's just natural in you.

B: It is natural; however, I do work at avoiding having the environment define me or my inner landscape. So, what comes out is what comes out of me, and I think possibly, to some extent, it's an answer to my environment – a survival mechanism, where I'm able, in my inner landscape, to experience and promote freedom.

K: I think one of the reasons why I appreciate you so much as an individual is that a lot of people in hard circumstances do become bitter and they seek to turn their own sorrows and regrets and pain into pain for other people. I think what I admire so much about what you're doing, is that you're transforming your experience instead of just staying at the level of darkness that surrounds you.

B: I think perhaps that some of that comes from having been in prison for so long. Certainly, earlier in my incarceration I went through periods of anger and blame and self-blame; all of those things that people in prison go through. It's an environment, by design, intended to make one feel powerless; also anger, sadness, loneliness, all those kinds of negative emotions. At some point, one has to transcend, and come to the realization that the environment, the external, does not define you. The internal is what we use to create our own reality, and we all jointly create an overall reality, mutually experienced in our individual ways. Having come to understand that, I have been able, to a large extent at least, to transform my personal experience; how I relate to my environment; how I relate to the people within my environment, so that it can become something that does not destroy me, but instead empowers me.

K: Right. And the wonderful thing is, that now it's empowering people outside of you. It is touching people outside of you.

B: That's good to know; I mean, I don't... I've never done it for that purpose, and I have been learning that that seems to be something that is happening, and I'm grateful for that. I'm glad for that. It's a good thing, if my experience in here can serve some purpose for the overall good.

K: One of my friends, who went into prison a couple of years ago, wrote to me, and I had been expressing my concern for him and missing him and, he made the comment to me that "Time on the inside is the same as time on the outside, it's all just time." It really haunted me when he said that, because I felt like he was just, in a place of so much despair, but then I began to look at it, and there have been times when I thought, perhaps it's just that those of us who are "on the outside" are simply in a bigger prison that sometimes we don't even look at, and then the other side of that, is that no matter where we are in this life, we all have the opportunity to be absolutely free. I know it's hard for you to feel how inspiring it is, that in the conditions you're in, you have found something within you that transforms, and I think that regardless of who we are in our lives, or where we are, if we're able to articulate our own transformation, that's always inspiring to people around us. And yet, because of the nature of our transformation, coming from within us, and it being so personal, it is hard to say, "Thank you for being inspired by me."

B: I would have to disagree, to some extent, with your friend. I suppose, by the clock, time does pass the same for people on the inside the same as it does for people on the outside, but the nature of this experience is such that time seems to pass more slowly in here, on a day to day basis. Although, sometimes years have gone by, and because of the sameness of it, and the lack of things that are distinctively different from one day to the next, it makes it difficult to measure time. It does seem that when I look back, years and years have just kind of flipped by. At the same time, the daily experience... an hour in a prison cell is much different than it would be for someone in, you know, a normal work-a-day living experience out on the streets. It is, I think, to respond to other parts of what you said, that we at this juncture in our journey, what we need to do is form sacred partnerships with each other, for our healing and evolution. I think that this is perhaps part of what you're saying, in reference to me, in reference to my sharing my experience with other people; I think we need to do that more, on a more conscious level. We're doing it, sometimes in spite of ourselves, but we need to become more conscious of that process, and do it actively.

K: I definitely agree. I think we focus a lot on the differences between each other, and differences in age, class, all those different things, and it's interesting that you and the life you've had, can be inspiring to me, and the life I've had, because I was laughing to myself that you actually are the exact same age as my oldest sister...

B: Really!?

K: (Laughter) Yeah, I'm the baby of the family. And, our... lives...

B: How old are you?

K: I'm... 35.

B: Wow.

K: So yes, it's interesting that my oldest sister, it's not that her life isn't inspiring to me, but I think that, um, there are experiences people bring to their relations that make them feel something in common; in my own life, I meet people who have experiences where they have a reference point that comes from enduring great pain or from overcoming intense challenges, and I feel like those people are my family. There are plenty of people in the world who live in a state of despair and the world feels very empty to them, but they don't try to change or learn from it. When I look at someone like yourself, who would have every right to be despairing, and to live in a state of mind where you would be saying "I give up, I don't want to be here, " you are inspiring because you choose to go forward. As sad as it is, those of us who are on the outside, who have, to a certain extent, the best of everything at our disposal, we actually... it's amazing to me that... in our society, it takes someone in your place, to remind us what true freedom is, and what it means to really be alive.

B: There's a lot to that question, if it's a question. (Laughter)

K: Well, (laughter) I don't know if it's a question either, but, will you comment on it?

B: Yes, okay. Well, there are times when I certainly feel despair and have felt despair, and when that happens, I draw strength and inspiration from those who have overcome difficulties as severe as mine or more severe. I mean, for example, seeing a person who is quadriplegic after having been a very active person, who has gone through a great deal of suffering, and has overcome it, and brought a beautiful spirit from their experience. Or a young woman with artificial legs who has become a championship runner. I find that inspirational, and I can understand what you're saying, that people on the outside, who are maybe taking physical freedom for granted, can draw inspiration from someone who has been confined and yet expresses freedom in a different way.
In regards to what family is to me, I would say that there is a gradual change for me, and there has been, most of my life, a change from thinking of family as blood ties, to thinking of family as those who are actively involved in the personal evolutionary process that I'm involved in - you know, spiritually. Those are the people who I can help the most, and who can help me the most. So I feel the greater kinship with people who are actively involved in that process than I do with people who are not, who may even be blood ties. So family has gradually come to mean different things to me. My relationship with Barbara, for example, is much more a sacred partnership than one based on traditional concepts of marriage or family ties. This is what family has come to mean to me.

K: I feel the same way and, I think that I have felt, at times, ashamed of that, because there's so much in our society that tells us that blood family should be the most important thing. I mean, we have the big push for Family Values, and I think if we are able to redefine what family means, then I absolutely agree that family values are very important.

B: Yeah, I think that's really important, to redefine it, because otherwise, what we're doing is using that kind of concept, family ties and family values, as a way of separating ourselves from each other. You know, a "This is my family, and you're not" sort of mentality. What we need to do, if we're going to heal ourselves, heal our society, heal our world- we're going to need to stop drawing those lines and those illusions of separation between us.

K: Wow, I've really taken some tangents here. (Laughter)

B: (Laughter) That's all right, I'm willing to do this for as long as you want.

K: Okay, let's see, one thing I wanted to know, is if it is fulfilling to you, to know that the music you were working on 30 years ago, is now such an influence on music today, even though, most people don't recognize you as one of the pioneers of soundscape and emotive electronic symphony.

B: Um, well, first of all, again, it's... I never consciously intended to be a pioneer, although I may be one, in terms of electronic symphony, because I was one of the early birds, and have devoted much of my life to it. I never began it with the notion of receiving recognition as one of the vanguard. As you point out, other people really don't know what I was doing back then, so I don't know how much of an influence I could have been; I can't credit myself for necessarily having played a major role in influencing that process. However, I'll say that although the instrumentation, in terms of using newer technology, is something of a difference, emotive symphonic music has been around for centuries, so really it's just the change in the tools we're using. The different modes and ways of expressing music that have changed are reflections of who we are now, as music-- all art, really, always expresses the culture and the times from which it derives. It marks our position on the path to wholeness.

K: I can appreciate the notion that you didn't start out as a pioneer; I think that's the wonderful thing of doing things that just are coming to you naturally. You end up being a pioneer. But, I think, I heard someone describe recently, electronic music as the new folk music, because people now, with home computers, are able to create and mix music at home and burn it onto CDs and make music for their friends that is, at least, the same recording quality as music that the big record companies would want to sell for much more money, so there's a certain taking back the music to a very personal level. But the thing that was amazing to me, about your music, was the difference between even... for instance, the tape I have of the film Lucifer Rising, has "Invocation of My Demon Brother" at the beginning of it, and so then, I as able to compare the work that Mick Jagger did on his soundtrack for Invocation, with the work you did for Lucifer Rising. I think both pieces are pretty amazing in their emotive qualities, but at the same time, I think that a lot of musicians working in electronica even now, are not able to articulate the balance you do, of the darkness and lightness of sound.

B: Ahhh!

K: There's a texture you get, in the music you make, that may come naturally to you, which is an incredible gift, but I think that's what makes your music ground-breaking in its time, and timeless now.

B: You know, I , I feel a certain need to clarify something. I understand technology… but, to compare what Mick Jagger did on one soundtrack, with what I did on another is maybe a little unfair to Mick. To begin with, he's not a synthesist. For him, it was like, "Okay, I'm gonna goof around on the synthesizer and do a movie soundtrack", he didn't really approach the instrument with any understanding of what the technology was about, whereas, I do. Although, at the same time, much of the Lucifer Rising soundtrack was not synthesizer at all. It was a lot of guitar, and so forth... Live musicians played quite a bit of that, although some of the instruments that were used, were instruments that I built-- various types of keyboards and experimentations in electronic guitar. So, there is certainly a pronounced electronic sound in that, but there was relatively little synthesizer.

K: At the time though, wasn't that considered pretty daring?

B: (Laughter) Perhaps, though I wasn't doing it to be daring. I was just... I had a passion for using electronics
in my music, as far back as the mid 60s, quite some time before the technology even existed. I had these ideas... like when the original Orkestra was formed, (this was '65, '66); the original concept of that group was to use all electrified instruments, and it was very difficult to do because the technology didn't yet exist to do, for the most part, what I had envisioned. I come at this from a long-held abiding desire to use the technology to make it possible for a fewer number of people to create symphonic music. You know, where you could create vast textures, without having to have 150 musicians.

K: Right. It is pretty amazing.

B: Yeah, it is. So, yes, I come from that adventurous mindset.

K: It's interesting because even to this day as much technology as we have around us, there are people who consider the music that is electronically influenced or changed or filtered, really soul-less music.

B: I certainly disagree with that. However, there is a lot of soul-less electronic music in existence, because people are not creating it, they're just letting the machines do what they do, or they're playing it but not putting any passion into it. I don't care what instrument you use, if you use an old viola da gamba or something, and playpassionately, the passion is going to come through. If you play an electronic instrument passionately, the passion is going to come through. If you don't put any soul in your music, there's not gonna be any soul in the music. And unfortunately there are a lot of people who are just playing at music, not really playing music, who are making program-crafted electronic music. As a result there are naturally some people who come away from the experience of listening to electronic music, with this idea that it's soul-less. It's not the instruments that are doing that-- as always, it's the musicians. So for people who may have prejudice against electronic music, it's just a matter of broadening their listening palette; they just need to listen to more of it and listen to people who are putting their hearts and souls into it. You don't have to go very far. VanGelis has been around for a long time. He puts a lot of heart in his music.

K: Absolutely. He's actually who I thought of when you said the thing about creating a symphony without having to have 150 people there. I definitely remember the first time I heard VanGelis, and my chin remained on the floor for quite some time. That is music with a LOT of heart and soul, and I completely agree with what you say, that if the person making the music is coming from a place of just, really putting their life into the music, then it's going to show, because, god knows, there's plenty of pop music out there made with no, you know, maybe electric guitars, but not electronic music, that is completely soul-less.

B: Right. And you know, I've heard electric guitar players, (and I love electric guitar,) who are technically superior to me in many many ways, who can play these incredible licks with incredible rapidity and accuracy, who play without soul, and it doesn't move me. They may be extraordinary players, but they don't have... there's no soul, or just not enough for me. My approach has always been to express and communicate emotion, so, I mean, that's just how I approach it; all music, regardless of what instrument I'm playing.

K: What artists and/or authors have had the greatest impact on you in your life? What books, music, painters, films, etc. would you recommend to young people today, who are just breaking out of the shells of their childhood and thinking, "Hm, it seems there's more to the world than I thought there was."

B: Well, I can tell you, um, about artists that have inspired me or moved me in some way, but I couldn't do that as a recommendation to young people necessarily. I find that the information that a person needs for their own personal growth and evolution, to become more aware of the world, makes itself available when it's needed. I will say that I've been inspired by just... probably everybody. I love the romantic era of paintings, I love the illustrations, paintings and illustrations from what is called the Golden Age of Illustration, from the turn of the century, and in the 20s. Arthur Rackham, um, I like Virgil Finlay's work, I like Beardsley, (laughter) 'bit of a cliché I guess. I love Maxfield Parrish, his use of colour is just extraordinary to me, it moves me. I also was inspired by the fact that he didn't care what people said about his use of photography- incorporating photography as part of his technique. He was criticised for that, and I think it was extremely innovative and effective. There's been a number of film makers-- it's funny I can't think of that many right now that I can actually refer to, but I have been moved by many many films. I love some of Anger's work, in certain ways, particularly his use of colours and symbols. I like Fellini's work. I thought Fellini was doing something extraordinary with film morality play. A lot of films, as far as getting information out, and something thought provoking or emotion provoking, um, can express that in fiction, in fantasy, as readily as what is supposed to be depictions of true life.

K: Mmm hm, if not moreso.

B: If not moreso, right. There's more freedom in terms of communicating ideas and concepts in fantasy, than in recreations and re-enactments. Film, I think, at its best and at its worst has a lot of the morality play in it, and there are lessons to be learned from films, in that they can reflect life. Hmm, books... at the right time in my life, about 7 or 8 years ago, I found Gary Zukav's book "The Seat of the Soul" extremely inspiring and helpful, but then I was at a time in my life where it was exactly what I needed, it was exactly where I was. It wasn't something necessarily that I didn't already know, it was simply there to reflect where I was in my own process and helped me to define it. In many cases, books have done that for me. Again, I can't really say that I'm recommending this book or that to young people coming up. Like Gary Zukav's book for example, I gave it to my daughter, and while she is consciously on that evolutionary path, she's not ready for that book. New ideas and experiences find the people when they're ready for them. In that sense, I can't make recommendations, but I look to films, books, paintings and music intently, and I draw all sorts of things from them.

K: When you were talking about colour, and you being moved by colour, one of the things that stands out to me about your music, is when I listen to it, say, in headphones, with my eyes closed, it creates a lot of colour. I mean, it's really, what I think could easily be called a psychedelic experience...

B: Well, that's my intention!

K: Okay, that's what I was going to ask you, is if you, um, if that was intentional and if you feel that you... consciously make music in what I guess would be called a painterly fashion.

B: Well, I'm... I am making... movies for the mind. I'm doing it for my own mind- I mean I'm creating colours that speak to me, and putting them down in recordings, and clearly, some people are hearing what I'm putting into them, and are experiencing the feelings I'm putting into them. I'm being a visual artist as well as an aural artist. I intentionally put colour, I mean I want to hear colour in what I listen to, so I'm naturally creating these things. I'm intentionally putting colour in there, and I'm... hopefully, in the experiences people have when they listen to my music, it takes them to places where I was going when I was making the music. They are experiences for me, they are little journeys in a vast internal landscape.

K: Absolutely. That's what I hear in it, so, that was my question when I heard it. I thought, "I wonder if he feels this while he's making it... and if he... "

B: If musicians can't communicate anything in music, it's because they're not feeling. I don't think you can hear emotional content in music where the artist who created it was not putting feeling in.

K: I think sometimes it happens though, with artists who haven't had the experience behind them that you have, where they have their heart in it, and it happens somewhat accidentally, and then they have trouble recreating it.

B: Right, that is definitely true. I try to be as spontaneous as possible, but you can't, at least in my experience, force the magic to happen. I don't write... I don't compose written music. I use electronic media. In other words, I don't write by hand, I don't write a written score, but I do compose in music sequencers or multi-track tape decks, whatever. It's just a different medium. I consciously work at keeping the heart in it, and not left-braining it to death. Letting the spontaneous come in. Although I want that complexity, that symphonic complexity and the use of colours, aural colours, I try not to overwork it. I try to make sure that the initial inspired spontaneous soul isn't lost in the process.

K: Right. You let it breathe.

B: Yes, and that's important.

K: Do you read notes?

B: Yes. (laughter) With pain.

K: Well, you know, it's funny because I actually play piano and some other instruments, but just from... I hated music class when I was a child, and in my adult life I've continued to refuse to read notes and, it's somewhat... it takes away from the experience of your own music when you can't read notes, but yet there's also a wonderful kind of spontaneity when music just comes out from a really personal experience with the instrument, that has that... what did you say... the left brain taken out of it. So when I'm playing the piano, there's no left brain involved, it's just going into this darkness of just seeing what happens, but at the same time, I think... well, you see, for a while I was an art student and it nearly ruined the experience of painting for me because I had these people breaking down paintings that had been favourites of mine forever, and taking them apart and pointing out the pieces of what they were made of, and there was a part of my heart that was just cringing and saying, "Och, you've ruined it!"

B: Well, you can intellectualise art to death.

K: Right! So what I think is so beautiful, is that you are able to... you have enough of a knowledge of music to have a structure, and yet, from that structure, you're able to express something that is completely spontaneous and lovely, and I think it's hard to have both, because you can overanalyse it and try to make the perfect piece and the perfect composition, but like you were saying about the guitar player, he's so technical that it doesn't sound alive anymore.

B: Exactly. And for me it's been an experience about... working to find that right... That balance. There's something to be said for the left brain part of it too, otherwise the spontaneous can lack form and definition and lack harmony and rhythm, because it's just so out there, and so nebulous. So it's important, at least for me, to strike that balance, and to create a certain structure, within which the spontaneity can occur. I like them both. I'll define a certain framework for the painting, I'll define the size and general shape of the canvas first, and then I will paint within that framework, but spontaneously, not thinking about the preconceived notions, and put as much of my real being into it as much as possible.

Kirin: One of the things I loved about the concept of the Lucifer Rising soundtrack was a sense of balance between the energies of male and female, dark and light, and so on. However, when I look at the world around and within me, I also see a world which is becoming increasingly androgynous- physically and spiritually, and less polarized in that regard. There is, of course, a reaction to this androgyny which is an almost satirical polarisation of male and female traits, and religious orthodoxy. How important do you think gender ultimately is to spirituality? Do you think the goal is balance, or integration?

B: I would say that the goal is balance... and ultimately, integration. We came from one, and we return to one, so that would sort of suggest that the genders will become one, beyond the polarisation and the duality. That may be the ultimate goal. I don't know, but instinctively I feel this probably is true. Instinctively I believe we did come from one, and then there was two.

K: You know, that's a wonderful way to put it, because honestly, I had never put it, in my own mind, so simply like that, but that's a really beautiful way to put it.

B: (Laughter) I didn't think it was all that profound!

K: No, I mean, it's really... it's something I already know, because when you said it, I said "Oh yeah, definitely" but I guess just to put it that succinctly, I mean, people are writing books that are hundreds of thousands of pages long, just trying to say basically what you just said… and it's so simple to put it that way.

B: Yeah. But you know, mythology really teaches that. I mean, in the ancient mythologies, the lesson is there, you just have to see it. We need to develop the ability to perceive what the meanings of those mythologies are. In the physical realm of humanity's evolution, I'm not sure we will ever completely become one, in terms of gender distinction; I think that's more on a spiritual level, rather than the physical world...

K: Yes, and yet, there is a part of me that is inspired by childhood fantasy stories that always wonders, how, at some point in our evolution... how much... what happens on our spiritual levels will someday... if it will ever effect the physical realm.

B: And yes, certainly it does. I mean, we are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. (And I'm not the first one to say that.) I have to say, that in our evolution, I believe we're going to need to go through the process of balancing harmoniously the masculine and feminine aspects. That's part of the process. I mean, you can see... an interesting thing that occurs, is that the nature of our relationships as people, towards each other, particularly in regards to gender, are largely reflected by our cosmology. For example, the relationships of men and women in Islamic countries; women are less than second class citizens- they are treated horrendously. And there is a predominant cosmology in those cultures which reflects that. So, I think part of the process is that we need to embrace-- to see, to understand and embrace, the feminine aspect of the divine. I think that's very much a part of the process that we need to incorporate that which has been left out of many religions as part of the process in finding balance, and ultimately oneness. The Christian religion, for example, did not begin as a patriarchy... it evolved into a patriarchy... into a male power-over paradigm. The role of women in the cosmology was relegated to the role of the Virgin Mother, and only until more recently, was that even given the emphasis that it is given now, because that was not something that had served the agenda of the power structure... you know, Father Church really suppressed the feminine in the Christian cosmology. So, there was the result of… unbelievably horrible things being done to women, in a male dominated culture, and just the shabby treatment of women and wives and daughters in general. And that's not just Christian religion, but Islamic and other religions; the culture reflects the cosmology and vice versa. So I think, in answer to your question, I think that we need to evolve... and I think that the process in our evolution, a large part of the process, is to embrace the feminine aspect ofthe divine and understand that it is partnered to the male aspect, fully.

K: You know, the sad thing I see, is that our society right now is so out of balance that even when people embrace the feminine aspect and embrace even just the idea of feminine or female goddesses, there's a whole group of people who then want to embrace the feminine to the point where it becomes a matriarchy which negates the male gods and aspects, which then puts it completely out of balance in a whole new way.

B: Of course, and that has happened in history. There has been the converse of the patriarchy, in history, in many cultures of the world, and you know, again, what I'm speaking of is balance and harmony, and that part of that process for people who see that they are coming out of a mindset that diminishes the importance of the feminine- they are going to overamplify, to begin with, the feminine aspect. The focus will be on a sort of matriarchal vision. And, I think that's going to happen, that there is a certain amount of overshoot. But I think ultimately there will be balance... like how sloshing water in a jar swings back and forth by its own inertia for a while and then eventually settles. And I think that's going to happen. I see that process occurring, and at least from my own perception, I'm not so worried about it swinging the other way for awhile; it doesn't concern me too much. I think it's just part of the process.

K: We were talking about evolution, and you had mentioned one time that you had read some Timothy Leary I think... And someone had told me that Leary had a theory that the evolution from primate form, to what we know now as human, had a lot to do with psychedelic experience. That was his theory of how we evolved from a more animalistic state to a more divine being. Do you have any opinions on... how in the 60s everyone was beginning to experiment with psychedelia, and then suddenly it was extremely illegal and use of it doesn't really happen in a guided atmosphere as a spiritual tool any more. So, as far as our evolution... are we stuck?

B: First of all, I need to qualify something, and that is to say that I've never really read much of Leary...

K: I haven't either...

B: I thought he was pretty irresponsible, actually. I mean, he played his role, and I suppose it had some value... the promotion of the psychedelic experience. But in answer to your question, I don't think we're so much in a stasis as we are in a period of assimilating that experience. I mean, it takes a bit of doing before we can go on to the next level. And it certainly won't happen because we are imbibing substances. That was needed as the instigator, as a way of opening the channels, so that we could appreciate new experiences and a new awareness and understanding... to get a peek through the door. The experiences that come by way of the substances are not truly lasting. You go on a psychedelic acid trip or mushroom trip or something, and you forget most of what you experienced. At the time it's happening, you are marvelling at your new awareness, but it doesn't stick. It's still there, you know, you don't lose the memory, but it takes a while to really assimilate it into the long term process of what we're calling evolution.

K: For me, honestly, I've never taken an acid trip by choice. I got dosed once, and it was awful, and it was something I wish I didn't remember parts of.

B: I understand.

K: But, as far as things like, your music, music and art have always affected me in the ways that I hear other people describing what acid does for them. So, I think it definitely doesn't... the acid isn't the part of it that needs to be there, but I think in my own life, there have been periods of extreme grief and things like that, that brought me to the place in my mind where I was open to really feel what's there to feel. And, I guess what frightens me is, when I look around me, people my age and younger, it just seems like everybody's caught up in what kind of clothes they're wearing and cars they're driving, and pop music, and, it seems like everybody's really focused on shallow things, and I see people growing older, and not wiser, and that's frightening for me. I don't know if that's really something NEW in the world particularly...

B: It's not. I mean, that's always been the case, and there's a tendency... I mean, it's frightening to be part of the evolutionary process, part of the vanguard in adapting in new ways, and diversifying. It is frightening. And people find safety in sameness and fashion and all those things that are really distracting, but ultimately everyone is going to become aware in the end, at some point. I don't know about multiple lifetimes or whatever, I don't know what it's going to take, but it's something that's going to happen and I try not to concern myself... I mean, I'm entrapped in a system that is stuck in those very modes that you're speaking of. I long for something different. I long to be out there with the people I love, and to get on with my life. I mean, it's really serving no purpose, in terms of ostensibly what it's supposed to be about. So, I experience what you're referring to, in a very pronounced manner. At the same time, I'm not worried that we're going to be stuck. You know, I do worry about humanity sometimes, and that we won't adapt and diversify fast enough to avoid destroying ourselves. I can't help but feel that concern, but I think that's just part of the energy of that process; part of the impetus. It becomes vitally important to communicate, to create, to do all the things that represent this process of diversifying and adapting.

K: You said an interesting thing when you were talking about the process of healing and that we need to begin a conscious dialogue between each other, that is beyond the differences we all have, be they age or class or whatever. I was pretty amazed by that, just from people I've known who are in prison or have recently gotten out of prison, talking about how... they are more focused on differences in race. They're really into just staying with their own race. They tell me, "You have to understand prison, and you have to understand what kind of world this is", and I can understand where they're coming from, but I also thought it was pretty amazing that you, where you are, in the midst of all that, are also saying something completely different, and also different from what is happening on the outside, with people collecting up guns and getting ready for a race war and things like that. It's seems like such a reactionary attitude to something I feel now, which is more of a "can we find the spark of humanity within all of us, that doesn't depend on race or sexuality or class or whatever". And of course then that makes me a bleeding heart liberal to some members of my family and so on, so... what are your comments on all that?

B: Well, you know, the power-over paradigm which exists now, and which we are all working to come out of, thrives on fear. Its tool, its element, is fear. It becomes manifest in these ways that we come up with- these ways that we invent, to separate each other, separate ourselves from other people, separate them from us: the separateness error. We get stuck in it because we're fearful, and we have to rise above our fear. I'm not sure what necessarily makes me different in that regard, in relation to a number of my peers, who are very much caught up in that separateness, otherness, sort of mode. Except for the fact that I've been in prison for so long, and have been in situations where fear was extremely intense, and I've learned to rise above my fear, and to see my commonality with others, in terms of race, gender, class, and so forth. This whole dying dinosaur of separation, the good guys and bad guys, the us and them, all of that, in its death throes, is going to be more desperate to cling to its old self-reality. So, there is, and will continue to be, for a while at least, this desperate clutching to the old paradigm, the old thing that no longer works. We talk about the differences between feminine and masculine roles, and that is something that has come out of our history, our primitive history, where the male had to be of a certain separateness from women, who brought the children into the world, and raised the children, and their role as hearthkeeper; the male's role was to overemphasize his masculinity, and be the hunter and the warrior and all of the things that have created this sort of division, this polarity, in the dual aspects of gender. That mode of separateness and overemphasized difference between gender was necessary but is no longer necessary. It's like extra trimmings that no longer serve the purposes they once did.

K: Kind of like our little toes. (Laughter)

B: Exactly! Our toes in general, really; I mean, at some point in our evolution we probably used them to cling to trees, but now they're just these appendages on the end of our feet, covered with shoes, so we no longer have much use for them. So, there's a lot of left over stuff, and we're trying to figure out how to get past it, and the way a lot of people deal with that, is that they feel safer if they cling to those old modes that no longer serve the evolution of the species.

K: I don't know if I can speak on a global level, but it seems like it's a painful kind of process, to be in this place, and yet, I don't know if you know much about spiders, but I have a pet tarantula, and they moult- they break their old skin and have to come completely out of it, and it seems like we're in that place. The old skin is actually broken already, but we're in that painful place of waiting to crawl out of it, and it's a hard time, but yet there's also somethingreally beautiful at the core of it.

B: Exactly. And I think that's a perfectly good analogy, a perfectly valid analogy; we're involved in this very painful process of sloughing off the old skin.

K: I want to talk to you a minute now about... some of the people I've shared your music with, have asked me if there is any way they can send you things, or if there's anything you need... stamps, paper, books, anything like that. I mean, is there anything in particular that you would most like people to send?

B: Well, yes, people can send stamps, but, really... other things, I mean, I can only get books directly from the publisher, but if people wanted to send postcards, and just, little things to get in touch, I would like that. They could send it to the P.O. Box, to Barbara, and she will get them to me. [See below for P.O. Box information.]

K: Okay, this question is kind of a silly one, but I'll ask it anyway. If you could have your name mean something in another language, what do you wish your name to mean? For example, my name is Kirin, and I'm told that in Japan, my name is a symbol for a mythological animal which is a giraffe with wings. I love giraffes, and the idea of a flying giraffe even better, and so... if you could have your name create an image in people's minds, what would you have
that image be?

B: Well, actually my name does mean something in another language, because, in French, Beau means beautiful, and Soleil means sun, so my name means beautiful sun. But, if I could have my name create an image, I would want people to feel from my name... from me... light, and warmth.

(At this point in the interview, Bobby has to go, and call me back. All is well, except that I forget to turn the tape recorder back on! Therefore, the interview, in its verbatim form, ends here. The following is paraphrased from what Bobby told me in that last 10 minutes or so. It's kind of nice, in a strange way, because the last word from Bobby, as far as this interview goes, is "warmth.")

I asked him about the instruments he's been making through the years, and he said the first time he ever made an instrument was when he was very young. He laughed, and said it was made out of a crate, and a bunch of other things. The instrument he's put most of his time into, is one that, in its first inception, was called a syntar. It's an instrument that frees the synthesizer from a constrictive keyboard, to become an instrument played more like a guitar. Bobby said he'd been working on that concept for quite some time, but then, in prison, it's hard to have the time and materials to really be able to experiment with ideas and create what's in his mind's eye. He said that a few years back, he met a fellow on the outside, named Harvey Starr, who brought an instrument to market incorporating similar ideas, called a Z-tar. The instrument has continued to evolve, and some of the syntar's unique design elements have contributed to the Z-tar's continuing development. Bobby said that he has one of these instruments with him, and expressed a great deal of joy, that the instrument has finally been able to find it's way into the three-dimensional world. We discussed a little bit, the wonder of having dreams and ideas become manifest, and how fulfilling that is.

My next question to him was about how often he gets to work on his music, and if any new music is in the works. He said his job in prison actually involves working with music and video every day, because he's creating training and instruction videos. He mentioned that he first started working with audio/video, at least in the prison context, in the 1970s. Some of the work, he said, seemed rather mundane at times, but he's able to be creative even within the context of doing soundtracks for information videos, so it's not all drudgery. He said that sometimes, the instruction film soundtracks actually do bloom and become full-fledged songs. He said that several of the songs on the "Running With the White Wolf" album, started as ideas at work. He also said that the Mantra album came mostly as a request, from his fellow inmates, for music that would allow them to meditate and focus their minds, even in the midst of the chaos and the noise of prison life.

As far as the new music goes, he said he is indeed working on new music, and most of it is recorded, but it'll take a while to mix and master it, and get it out into the world. Things take a little longer on the inside. He said the new album will be titled "Orb."

I then thanked Bobby again, for his work, and for his music, and his life, and told him that he does touch people's lives in very profound ways, and that he is not forgotten. Once again, he expressed thanks and gratitude, for my sentiments, and for the opportunity to do the interview. About this time, I looked over at my tape recorder, and had that sick, "I've just locked my keys in the car, and I'm 200 miles from anywhere" sort of feeling. I'd forgotten to turn the tape recorder back on. Ah, the little joys and surprises that life always has in store! Bobby, of course, in his good natured and down to earth way, just laughed, and said it was not a problem. If it all was lost, we could do it over. I think that attitude, that easygoing, "it'll be okay" kind of feeling, is what I'll always remember about him. In my mind, he is, truly a beautiful sun. Just from this hour or so of being able to talk to him, he touched my life profoundly. He, and his music, will always remind me of the very things he wishes to be... I will always think of him as Light, and Warmth.

For information on Bobby's White Dog Music project, and to buy Bobby BeauSoleil CDs, go to:

www.whitedogmusic.com



This interview was conducted by Kirin Anderson for Starvox.

INTERVIEWS WITH BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL
1998-9
By Michael Moynihan for Seconds Magazine



What were the circumstances you came out of?

I was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1947, to a couple who were and still are—at least the one of them who is still living—Catholic. I was the first born son, the first of five children. I have two brothers and two sisters. Not a well-to-do family, but we always got by. My dad worked two jobs sometimes to make that happen with such a large family. For most of the years when I was growing up he worked for Arden Farms Dairy—he was milkman, basically, and he became a manager for the company later on. It was a working class family. On the GI Bill my dad bought a tract home in 1955, and that's where I spent most of my years growing up. We had lived in a couple of other houses before that.

What were your earliest musical recollections?

I've always had a fascination for music. The earliest Christmas present that I remember getting was a drum—one of those little toy drums with paper heads and a pair of drumsticks. I was four or five, but I remember that gift, whereas I don't really remember any of the others. And I remember that I beat it to death, there was nothing left of the skins on either side—which was kind of a shame because then it wouldn't work as a drum anymore! After that as I was growing up I remember building these strange instruments, out of wooden crates, sort of jug band type instruments . . .

Stringed instruments?

No, they were percussive, they had can-lids and things attached. I would build these contraptions and I called them my "jazz bands," and I would play them and just banged the hell out of them. So maybe had I been born one universe over from this one I would have been a drummer. But as it happened I found a guitar in the attic of my grandmother's house when I was about eleven years old.

Do you know who it belonged to?

It was said to have been my mother's, but I think it might have been her brother's, my uncle's, because one day he came over and played a song on it. For some reason I think it was his, although my grandmother told me it belonged to my mother—maybe she just wanted me to believe that, I don't know.

Was there any kind of musical tradition in the family?

My mother could play a couple of songs on the piano, I guess she'd had a few lessons. But other than that there was no real music tradition in my family. My uncle at one point must have played guitar a little bit, since he played me a song that one time. On my father's side, both my grandparents were deaf. Other than singing in the shower, which he did with considerable passion, my father didn't bring any musical ability to my early years, or at least not any musical influence. Most of it was just my listening to the radio.

Do you recall what you heard that got you excited?

Rock and Roll, from "Hound Dog"—that was the first one that caught me. From that point on, it was wherever I could listen to Rock music. Later I branched out into other interests, musically, but early on it was Rock and Roll. I eventually wound up with the family radio. We had one table radio, but eventually my mom got a hi-fi stereo, one of those console things on which she would play Harry Belafonte and Johnny Mathis records. When she got the stereo I was given the family radio, but up until that point I had a crystal radio that I had built and it had a little earphone, and underneath the blankets I would listen to KISS radio all night. Every third or fourth song they played was a rock song, you had to listen through all this other songs . . .

This was before Rock had really come to precedence.

Yes, and Santa Barbara wasn't really a place that was on the cutting edge.

How would you describe where you lived?

At the time I heard one person characterize it as "a town for the newlywed or nearly dead." When I was first growing up there it was a pretty small town, only a couple of stop lights where the highway went through. Very quaint . . . the wealthy people were up in the hills, the less wealthy were on the flats, down at sea-level. There was Haley Street area, which was the black ghetto, and there were the barrio areas and then the upper crust in the Montecito and Hope Ranch areas, and various strata in between. It was a pretty nice town, and the beach was always great. I loved the ocean, and the mountains weren't too far away.

Did you surf?

I never really got into it. I did a lot of body-surfing and swimming. I think probably my life might have gone differently if I had been able to afford a surfboard, but they were kind of spendy back in those days and I never got into it. I wound up in more of a greaser mode—the hair falling down the center of the forehead and the ducktails.


This was when you were fourteen or fifteen?

More like twelve or thirteen.

Did you listen to Rockabilly back then?

I guess some of it was. One of my favorite artists back then was Ray Charles, "What I Say" and that mode . . . I really liked Rhythm & Blues and Rock, and actually I didn't know the difference. If it had a beat, it was Rock.

Did you just begin to figure things out on the guitar by yourself?

To begin with I taught myself. I've never had any lessons or formal training. In fact, the way I found the guitar, it was set up for Hawaiian style playing, intended to be played on the lap with a steel bar. There was a metal nut that actually went over the regular guitar nut, which raises the strings off the fingerboard. I found the guitar and the steel, and my first explorations were with the steel, so I would tune it up to intervals that sounded okay to my ears. I had no idea what I was tuning it to, and basically I was tuning it to a chord that sounded good. And then I would play these impromptu compositions. I've always been an improvisational player, still am, and always will be.

You've always played by ear?

Yes, but I'm not sure I would call it that by now. It's beyond "by ear" . . . it's spontaneous playing, by feel.

Did you start by learning how to play Rock songs?

Eventually, yeah, I realized that was not the normal setup for that guitar with that metal nut on it. So I took that off the guitar, and I found a place to play along with other musicians at Bonnie Langley's Music Store on State street. Bonnie was an older rotund lady, with a big mat of kinky hair, who let kids play the guitars and drums in the afternoons after school. She was deaf in one ear . . .

I was wondering why she would allow such things to go on!

That had something to do with it, because we were playing Rock. Sometimes it would get to be too loud even for her and she'd cut us off for a week or so. Then we'd come back much more timidly and play soft for awhile and gradually over the course of a few days it would come back up to its normal roar and then she'd cut us off again. So that was kind of the exchange that we had there. We helped bring people into the store apparently, it must have been good for business. She sold records, so people who were into buying 45s would come in.

And these were electric instruments . . .

She had electric and acoustic guitars. This was my first exposure to electric guitar. Of course I couldn't afford one at that point. But I did get to play with other musicians who could show me chords, how to tune a guitar, and I picked up things fairly fast. Sometime after I had learned a few chords and could strum a few tunes I was visiting my grandmother during the summer in El Monte, in the Los Angeles County area, and made friends with some, I guess, Rockabilly-oriented people. This was a Mexican barrio and a white ghetto, El Monte, with a lot of people from Arkansas and other places who had migrated to California looking for the economic "Grail," and found themselves in this low-rent district, pretty much a shanty town type of environment. I wound up hanging out at this gas station which a friend of mine helped his parents operate. It was a little run-down 76 station. He was about my age, thirteen or fourteen. His parents would spend most of the day in the bar, and he would for the most part run the gas station and we helped him, me and a couple of other guys. We all played guitar, so we spent much of our time sitting on old car seats behind the gas station playing "What I Say" or some stuff that one of the guys brought from Arkansas like "Under the Double Eagle" or "Wildwood Flower," all those kinds of things. I got into where I was picking notes instead of just strumming and I expanded my repertoire in a sense, or my techniques anyway. I had a blast doing that. Then I refused to return to Santa Barbara when it was time to go back to school—I wanted to stay there with my grandmother and hang out with my friends. That lasted for several months past the time I was supposed to have gone back to school . . . and then I got busted. It was just after Christmas and my friends and I went out in one of our homemade jalopies.

We were building these cars and we usually took them down to this dry riverbed to race them—none of us were old enough to drive. One night we went out and got crazy and just kind of terrorized the neighborhood. One of the things we did was vandalize a lawn of Christmas decorations. We took all the cardboard reindeer and A hammered them up on the side of a truck van that was out behind the gas station, and turned it into a circus van with reindeer flying across the sides. About two hours later the Sheriff's Dept. pulled into the gas station and there the evidence was, in plain view, and we all got busted. I was sent to L.A. Juvenile Hall and then back to Santa Barbara. To make a long story short, I wound up in a kind of a reform school, a fire camp called Los Prietos, up in the mountains above Santa Barbara. My parents basically said that they couldn't control me any longer.

Did you still get along with them?


I got along with them okay. I had loving parents, and I had a good family—still do, my dad's dead now but my mom has hung in there with me through all of these years. It wasn't so much a problem with them as with me. I was just a freedom-bound person from when I was very young. I was very independent and the circumstances enhanced that proclivity—I moved out into the garage when I was nine, which was something I wanted to do, rather than share a bedroom with two other brothers, both considerably younger than me. So I built a little room out in the garage, and that gave me a situation where I could pretty much come and go as I pleased. I used to go down to the beach late at night.

You weren't afraid to go out and do whatever you felt like.

Exactly, and I wasn't doing anything criminal, but in the middle of the night I liked to take my dog and go down to the cliff overlooking the ocean, which was just a couple of blocks from where we lived. I'd spend hours down there. Sometimes I would just walk the neighborhood streets at night, and that kind of oriented me to being very independent.

And you preferred El Monte to Santa Barbara.

My grandmother had cancer, and so when I was visiting her I didn't want to leave her alone—she'd been pretty much discarded by the family—and at least that was part of my rationalization, that I wanted to stay there with her . . .and to be with my friends and learn more about playing guitar, and take the old jalopies down to the riverbed, all those kinds of things. I was having more fun in that little shantytown called El Monte than I was in Santa Barbara, where I really didn't fit because I couldn't afford a surfboard. My parents had four other kids to deal with, and I'd made my own bed so to speak, so my parents let me lay in it and they signed the papers to let me spend some time in Los Prietos Boys School. It actually did a number of things for me. One, I got physically strong—I grew up a lot there. It was a good transition from boyhood to manhood, and it was pretty grueling at times.

As far as work?

Work, and dealing with a bunch of hard-headed kids. They definitely put a guy through his paces. They had a kind of boot camp training, and they really put you through it. One of the things that you did was to go up on the shale hill and break up the shale and then load it onto a flatbed truck, which would go over a tiny bridge and dump it on the other side of the creek. You asked what you were doing this for, and they would tell you, "We're moving this hill over there, to the other side of the creek." This was something you did, and you spent a lot of hours doing it in the heat. It was not that they were trying to kill us. They were trying to make men out of us. And it did serve that purpose for me.

Do you remember what state of mind you were in then?

There was a part of me that resented it—I didn't like being there and I wanted to go home—but at the same time I was getting tougher, and that was good. And I'll tell you the truth though, I didn't really notice it until I got out. I didn't realize how different I had become from other people. It was something that had taken place over a period of ten months or so. There were some changes that took place. I hated having my hair cut short like we had there, and I promptly started growing my hair as soon as I got out. This was pre-Beatles, pre-hippy, it wasn't a fashionable decision at that point.

Were you cut off from music when at the boys camp?

I did have an opportunity to play a little guitar when I was there, but it wasn't something that was normally allowed. The way that worked out was that I got into the glee club—there was this guy who was one of the camp counselors, and he wanted to start a glee club. I joined the glee club and after trying to sing a cappella with these guys for awhile, I convinced him that some musical accompaniment would be needed. He had an old guitar in the cabin where he lived and he brought it out, so I got the opportunity to play a few chords along with the glee club songs. The action was so high on this guitar that it was excruciating to play, especially when I'd already lost my calluses. But at least once a week I could grip the neck of a guitar and do a little bit with it.

When you got out did you still have your guitar?

I lost my guitar in El Monte—it stayed down there after I got busted, and there was no way to retrieve it. So I didn't have a guitar when I got out. But when I'd been in Los Prietos during the summer months there were fires, and this was a fire camp. We didn't actually go out on the fire lines, but we would follow the path of the fire to put out the smoldering stumps, or during the fire we would sometimes load the liquid fire retardant that the fire planes dropped. We would fill the same planes with grass seed after the fire, for re-seeding. They paid us by the hour and I made quite a bit of money—I had almost $300 by the time I got out. So when I got out I had almost enough money to buy a guitar and pay cash for it. I got a little help from my mom . . .

Were guitars that expensive back then?

The one I wanted was, although by today's standards it was extremely inexpensive considering what it was: a Les Paul signature SG Gibson, cream white, 3 gold pickups—just a gorgeous guitar, with a nice hard shell case. I paid $269 for it, plus the case, and today that guitar would be worth probably ten grand! So I had this really cool electric guitar and I started going back to Bonnie Langley's just to have somebody to play with, and because I didn't have my own amplifier yet. I got to play a little bit there, but she wasn't allowing that as openly as she had been before. Also I had evolved and the people I had grown up with had not, I don't know how to describe it any differently than that. I had gone through all this stuff and I didn't fit in.

It doesn't seem like you ever really fit in, in Santa Barbara . . .

No, I guess not. I would not have stayed around as long as I did were it not that I was afraid of getting busted again. So I tried to mind my P's and Q's and hang in there as long as I could, but I just kept getting more and more distant from myself and the kids in town. By the time I was not even sixteen I was pretty much living with a girl in an apartment, she was about four or five years older than I was.

How did you find her?

She was the sister of a friend of mine. We just hit it off. Like I said, I was beyond my years, at least in my attitudes and thinking and how I carried myself. Part of the reason why I left Santa Barbara was that she became too dependent on me, too obsessed with me. So eventually I left and went to stay with my cousin for a little while in Sunland, down on the outskirts of L.A. County. I was headed down a shady path I guess, although not in a criminal sense. My favorite cousin who I had gone to stay with turned out to be kind of a dip. He really didn't take care of his family very well. It's a little embarrassing, but at the same time it's part of the story here—I wound up sleeping with his wife. He left, and I ended up living with her. I got a job at the Travel-Eze Trailer Company, building trailers, supporting his wife and kid, and sleeping in his bed with his wife. And again, she was quite a few years older than I was. I was only sixteen.

And you were supporting this family?

She was working too, we both were. I had no experience doing that, but I grew up in a family where my dad worked two jobs. So as far as understanding a work ethic and supporting a family, I had no problem with that. I just did what came naturally. I've always had the ability to work, to do real work. I kept my job easily enough. Actually I had not quite turned sixteen yet. I had a learner's driving permit, which you're allowed to get at fifteen and I'd doctored it so that I appeared to be sixteen—that had allowed me to get a job at the trailer company, and it also allowed me to drive. I bought a car, a '50 Ford with an Olds engine in it, and a hydromatic transmission. I loved that car! So I was beginning to do adult things. Then my grandmother died, the whole family was notified. Of course I had been very close to my grandmother. I went to the funeral, and it turned into a very ugly situation. My cousin went to my family and told them I was sleeping with his wife. It got really weird. My father was trying to lay down the law all of a sudden and take me home, to make me tow the line. And he'd got one of my uncles backing him up . . .

And this is at the same time you're torn up over losing your grandmother.

Right, and I basically told them all to get fucked, and I took off. I went to Hollywood.

You didn't return to your cousin's wife?

No, I had to get out of Dodge or risk another clash with the juvenile authorities. I went back just long enough to get some clothes. Actually during this time I didn't take my guitar with me, I'd left it underneath my parents' bed at home. But anyway, I didn't know where else to head but L.A. While living in Sunland I used to go on the weekends to a club called the Red Velvet with my fake ID card, and go listen to Rhythm and Blues. By chance I had discovered this club, and there were a lot of bands, not real famous ones, from the East Coast, Motown music. Every once in a while the Righteous Brothers came in and did a little guest thing, particularly Bobby Hatfield. One of the performances that I saw was completely spontaneous—the guy came in, just to have a few drinks with his fellows, and the band got him up on stage. This band was from Baltimore, a black R&B band. He did an impromptu version of "Summertime" that just blew me away. Bobby Hatfield is the high voice in the Righteous Brothers. That was one of my more memorable nights out there.

Did you start to talk to these people?

Not really, I was still too shy. I had a $1.98 sportcoat on. I didn't know how to dress or how to behave around these kinds of people. All I used to do was go into the non-drinking section with a cherry Coke and listen. Every once in awhile I'd get up the courage to ask a girl to dance. That was about it.

Anyway, I moved to L.A., and I fell in with a girl by the name of Bridget. This was a whole new scene. This was right after the release of "Tambourine Man." The Byrds had just been on a fairly successful tour to England, long hair was beginning to emerge, so I fit right in. It was fate, no doubt. Bridget was the seamstress for Sonny and Cher—she made all their fur vests and striped bell-bottoms. So being teamed up with her for a bit, I naturally took on a whole new way of dressing. She introduced me to Pot, and LSD.

Was that all pharmaceutical LSD?

Yes, Sandoz, the going thing at the time. It came from Switzerland, for the most part. This was before Owsley, and nobody has ever made LSD better before or since. It was a shock, the first time I took LSD she and I were alone. It was very eye—opening and a very beautiful experience.

How common was LSD at that point?

It was just beginning to be common, barely. Just the very edge of the expanded consciousness movement.

What had you heard about it?

I knew nothing. I'd heard about Pot, and actually down in El Monte I'd tried it once and got really silly. I think it was just seeds and stems that I'd been smoking anyway, but I didn't know the difference since I didn't know what it was supposed to look like. I remember I went swimming in the pool at some apartment complex and tried to do a bunch of silly things, triple somersaults and stuff like that, but I think I was more amped up on the idea of smoking the notorious Reefer than anything else. The experience in Hollywood with Bridget was a totally new thing for me. That was my first real exposure to any mind--altering substances, and it had a profound effect on me. Also just meeting the types of people that I was meeting, had a profound effect on me. There weren't so many long—haired musicians at that point, the Byrds were about it, and there were a few Folk groups who were beginning to sport long hair. The Byrds were originally Folk artists too, who followed suit when Dylan took up the electric guitar, and "Tambourine Man" was one of his songs . . .

Had you heard much Folk music?

There was a little bit of prior experience for me in the Folk scene. This was in Santa Barbara after I'd gotten out of the Boys Camp and I had my live-in girlfriend and that whole situation. I was going to a club called the Rondo, which had things called hootenannies. So I was getting exposure in the Folk scene, and I was playing on the weekends on hootenanny night. Of course it was a whole different thing when I got to L.A. . .

Did you start playing music with people when you arrived in Hollywood?

I kind of laid back. I was feeling kind of shy, because I was freshly out on my own. I felt like this was a scene where I belonged, but at the same time I didn't really know where I was and I didn't know anybody yet. So I checked things out. I went dancing at Ciro's. The second time I took LSD I went and saw the Byrds for the first time. I really dug them. The whole electric band experience took on new dimensions, under the influence. It brought it to a whole new level. I'd always loved music, but there were parts of it I'd never really heard before. So I became exposed to that. To be on LSD and hear for the first time an electric twelve-string played by Jim McGuinn . . .

I can see how that experience could have changed everything.

It did. One of the bands that opened for the Byrds one night was called The Grass Roots. This wasn't the Grass Roots that most people would be familiar with; this band later became a group called Love. I saw them and it was also the first time that I'd ever seen music of that type played by integrated musicians—a couple of black guys, a couple white guys playing together. Some of the R&B bands were integrated, but none of the California Rock bands had been. So this was a whole new thing in and of itself, and also the talent of the people in the band, I really dug the band.

I'm familiar with the Love records, but how did they sound at this earlier stage?

They were still doing a lot of renditions of Stones songs. Arthur Lee was playing the harp and covering a lot of Stones tunes, but he was beginning to write his own material when I first saw him. I saw a tremendous potential with them. I had tried to tentatively form or join a couple of bands during this time, one of them was called The Weeds. I remember going to places where there were bands forming and trying out as a guitar player. I still hadn't gone back to Santa Barbara to get my guitar, as I was a little bit reluctant to do so. I was using borrowed or rented guitars. One day I went to Arthur Lee and I told him I thought he needed a rhythm guitar player in the band, so I tried out for him. They were getting ready to play a gig at a place called the Brave New World. It was a gay bar, although they didn't know it at the time—or at least I didn't. But it was a gig that was coming up, and one that Arthur didn't expect too much attendance at, so he decided I could get on stage with them. I'd already played impromptu in front of him, but he thought he'd try me out in context, so I could learn the songs as I went along, as we were performing at the Brave New World. I made a rush trip to Santa Barbara to get my guitar. I snuck into my parents' home when I knew they weren't there and my father would be at work. I got my guitar, but my father caught me just as he was coming home for lunch or something, as I was leaving, so I didn't get away scot-free. He was flabbergasted when he saw me—I had long hair, I was wearing very, very strange clothes compared to anything he'd ever been exposed to. He didn't know what to make of me, and the only words he said were: "I don't know you anymore." But I got my guitar, and by that time I had a dog too, a white dog by the name of Snofox—I mention that because he got to be a famous dog, and together he and I got to be fairly well known. So I had my guitar, I had Snofox, and I had a gig in a band. I had everything I needed. I started playing the Brave New World, and it was a good combination—Arthur saw the potential in having some pretty white guy in the band, apart from the musical potential. The first couple of nights we played there, for the first sets anyway, it was all gay people. It was actually a private gay club, so you had to be a member. But obviously we didn't want to be playing gay bars, we weren't oriented for that. By that time I'd been on the street in Hollywood for close to a year, and I'd gotten to be familiar with just about everybody on the street. Everyone knew me and my dog.

Were you still living with Bridget?

Oh no, no. That only lasted a few weeks or a month. I was still friends with her, but we weren't an item or anything. I'd probably had a bunch of girlfriends by that time. I just kind of hopped from one girl's house to another, sometimes I had a little place of my own. It wasn't that hard to live hand-to-mouth in those days. I very rarely worked; there were a couple times when I took up a few odd jobs here and there, but I was determined to make it as a musician. The first few months were spent just exploring this new world.

The Grass Roots had a name for themselves in L.A. then, right?

They began to. When I first saw them they didn't have much of a following. I was probably the most enthusiastic fan they had. Then we got this gig at the Brave New World, where we were playing for this private gay audience, we've got men dancing with each other, which was not what we wanted to do. So after I played a few sets over a few evenings, I went up on the Strip one night on our break. I just got tired of the situation—we were all tired of it, we wanted an audience. So I went out on Sunset Strip and told everybody: this is where it's happening, and I gave out directions to the club. By the time I got back to the club, people were already starting to arrive, and between that set and the next, the place was packed.

With a whole new crowd. . .

A totally, totally different crowd—in fact, that was the last night that it was a gay bar. There was a huge caravan of cars which came down from the Strip. It was just the right time, right place, right people, I guess. It was great, because we had our own place. It wasn't some sleazy club owner taking advantage of the hippy kids—of course at that time they weren't called hippies, this was a couple years before the term was coined. It was the colorful people—or the "freaks" as we were often called. The place was packed from that point on, and Brave New World was a happening thing.

So it was transformed into a straight Rock club.

Yeah, although it still maintained its private club status for quite awhile. It was just a matter of paying a "membership fee" when you came in, which was really not any different than a regular admission fee. It was a blast. At some point after a couple months we were going to take a break for awhile because the Brave New World was moving to a larger place. The last night we played at the old venue, I got invited to take a trip to San Francisco with Bridget and a friend of hers, a guy from New York who was a friend of Dino Valenti of the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Dino Valenti had gotten busted for Pot in San Francisco and he'd been doing time. Bridget was in love with him, and Dino's friend came from New York and invited her and whoever she wanted to bring to come up to his houseboat in Larksburg, near Sausalito. So Snofox and I went along for the ride, in this big, huge brand—new Thunderbird, smoking Pot and listening to Ravi Shankar the whole way up the coast.

Things were shifting into the hippy era . . .

Oh yeah, it was definitely picking up steam at this point. We went through Big Sur, and all of a sudden I'm seeing a lot more long-haired people. I began to see distinctions in the cliques of long-haired people. I was in my gigging clothes, I had on skin tight pants and a blousy crepe shirt with ruffles. I had the nickname of "Cupid" back in those days. It came from the period when I was playing with the Grass Roots and this girl, Linda Moss, began making shirts for me. I had a mop of hair and these blousy crepe shirts she would make for me, so I got the nickname Cupid.

The fact that people were listening to Ravi Shankar sounds like an early example of that interest in Eastern culture that became so pronounced in the later years of the '60s.

This was the first time I was exposed to Ravi Shankar, I'd never heard of him before. This was something that was happening in the Village in New York I guess, and this guy had brought it with him. That was my first exposure, and I really liked it because Shankar was a guy that played spontaneously. I was in awe of this—and here I am exposed to a form of music that is based on this entirely. It was mind-boggling for me. But we stopped at Big Sur and I'm stepping out of this great boat of a car in my tight pants and here's all these earthy-looking people in worn clothes—beards and long hair and faded jeans and work boots. It was whole different mode, and they're kind of looking down their noses at me, and I'm thinking, "Do I belong here?" I was a little embarrassed. So I became aware that there were differences within this new generation of people which I thought I was a part of.

What was it like when you got to San Francisco?

I loved that city from the moment I got there, I loved everything about it. We drove through Golden Gate park, and through the streets of San Francisco with all these houses piled up next to each other. I went with Bridget to visit someone who was a wife or girlfriend of a member of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and it turned out to be a girl I knew in Santa Barbara, at the Rondo. So you begin to see how small this whole thing is really, and later as years went by I kept running into people who I knew growing up, even people from El Monte would show up in places like San Francisco. It was an interesting process. Anyway, I just fell in love with the Bay Area. I spent about a week up there on that first trip.

What was it like in comparison to L.A.?

A breath of fresh air. L.A. had always seemed superficial . . .

It still is!

Yes, it is that. Frank Zappa, another guy I made friends with in L.A., was a really interesting guy to me. In fact I was on his first album, just as a guest—the Freak Out album. I was one of the people yelling "Help, I'm a rock! Help, I'm a rock!" "We are the brain police!" and all those things. He just came and got me and a few of my friends off the street and put a microphone in front of us and had us do that. Frank Zappa came to the scene lampooning that sort of superficiality: "Brown Shoes Don't Make It," "Plastic People, You've Got to Go Now". . . that was the L.A. scene. Then you get up to San Francisco and people are a lot more real, more down-to-earth. There was still that sort of elitism with some of the long-haired people there, but for the most part it was a breath of fresh air after L.A.

Was the music you were hearing at that point a lot different than what you had been playing yourself?

In some ways, yes.

Love, for example, became heavily psychedelic.

Yeah they did. And they fit in real well when they came up to San Francisco later on.

What was some of the music you were exposed to in San Francisco?

I saw the Jefferson Airplane, before they "made it." This was later on, not that first trip to S.F., but shortly after that I went back up there and I went to the Avalon Ballroom, and I saw Janis Joplin's very first appearance with Big Brother and the Holding Company—she only sang half a set because she only knew a few of the songs. She was just mind-blowing in that performance—this was before her voice got hoarse. You should have heard this girl—just piercing, and then Jim Gurley, and he's got this screaming guitar and she's screaming right along with him, trading licks.

How was your state of mind as far as the emerging "hippy" attitudes. Did you fit in with all that?

No, I didn't. I got to where I would pointedly tell people, "I'm not a hippy—I'm a barbarian.

That's great!

Well, it's the truth. I hated it, I hated that term "hippy." I was there when it was coined, when somebody told LIFE magazine, "We're hippies," and I didn't like it. It was one of the two brothers who owned a place called the Psychedelic Shop, which was the first head shop that I'd been exposed to. As self--appointed spokesperson he told that to LIFE magazine and it really irritated me. The youth movement had never been a fashion thing, that's not what the point was. And if it became a fashion thing, you had missed the point.

And it did turn into that.

Of course it did, and it was inevitable that it would, so it's kind of silly and naive of me to have taken real exception to it. But you asked me how I thought about it, and I didn't think a hell of a lot of it, to tell you the truth. I didn't like it. I wanted to be thought of as something other than that.

Did these ideas about peace and love and all that ring true at the time?

Yes, they did. That was genuine. It was extremely naive, and I was part of that naivete—I was subject to it, I was young and idealistic and all that. But when it began to become cliched, we saw that that's what it was.

It became something marketable.

Right, exactly, and then I began to distance myself from it. Then it was no longer representing me.

To get back to your story, you returned to L.A. . .

I went back down to L.A. and found out that I'd been replaced in the band, and the reason was that I was too young to play in many of the clubs, legally. I was also still learning to play. I could play a real good rhythm guitar, but there was somebody who had more experience at that. His name was Brian MacLean and he took advantage of the opportunity—I wasn't there—and made a pitch to the band, and beat me out. I wanted to be real gracious about it, and I'm still to this day kicking myself in the ass for it. I should have been showing up at some of the rehearsals that we were supposed to have had, but I'd been gone and had gotten hung up in San Francisco. So this guy took advantage of the opportunity and I can't say that I didn't resent that.

But you stayed on good terms with Arthur Lee and the band?

As time went on, yes. I never did make peace with Brian MacLean. I never really cared for him, I knew him before, and he really put on the "pretty" thing, whereas with me, I couldn't help it. I didn't have any choice because I wasn't shaving yet and I had that kind of face, I guess. But this guy put it on, it was a cultivated image. So he moved in on my spot in the band and got it. I wanted to be gracious about it, and I'm trying to figure out, how do I behave in this situation? I'm young, wondering what I should do. What I wound up doing was loaning Brian my guitar. He didn't have an electric guitar, he'd been a folk player. So I loaned him my guitar, and then I went back up to San Francisco and got myself established up there.

Having lost your position in the band you didn't really have any reason to stick around in L.A.?

No, I didn't. It was perfect timing in a way, because I had fallen in love with the Bay Area, although I probably would have stayed in L.A. if I'd kept my place in the band.

Had they changed the name from the Grass Roots to Love yet?

No, that was a little bit later. It had happened by the next time I came down to L.A., which was to collect all my stuff, including my guitar. That was some months later. I went back up to the Bay Area and just kind of bummed around. I didn't really know where I was going, and I didn't really know anybody. I knew that one guy who owned the houseboat and there were a couple of other people I'd met there, and in some cases I'd met people and I didn't even know how to even find their places again. So I went to Berkeley for awhile, I bummed around in North Beach for a time, and finally found my way into the Haight-Ashbury. It took awhile, because Haight-Ashbury was not known then for what it later became.

The Haight evolved into that . . .

Yes, and it's unfortunate that it turned into what it did, because it was really a nice little community. It was actually a ghetto; it was just outside the Fillmore district, which is the ghetto. It was a low rent district, right next to the park. As far as the scene goes, there was just a handful of artists and musicians living in the area. The Grateful Dead lived in the area, and The Charlatans—two bands—lived there, and some artists. There was the Haight-Levels, which was a Jazz club. You could go in there twenty four hours a day and listen to Jazz music. Then there was the Psychedelic Shop and the Donut Shop, and that as pretty much it.

Were you taking lots of LSD at this point?

I never really took "lots of LSD." I never really went looking for it. In L.A. I'd had a real serious bummer one time, being in the midst of too many people—it was just the wrong way to do it. Of course you learn from your mistakes, and I learned that LSD is not a party drug. I took the attitude that when it comes to me, that's the time. And I never really went looking for it. Pot, on the other hand, I smoked pretty much every day, but not a great deal. If I smoked a joint a day, I was perfectly happy with that. That was the extent of my drug involvement. I never got into heroin. I experimented a little bit with uppers and downers, to see what they were—and didn't like 'em. Actually I liked the Speed, in pill form, but it ran my health down so bad. I got really sick one time. Luckily I've always had a good "landing"—some girl would take me home and take care of me. I was always real fortunate that way. But I'd gotten real sick after a run of uppers, so I got out of that scene, and tried to discourage anyone I knew from doing that. I lost a lot of friends to crank and heroin.

Could you see a clear point where things shifted in those directions?

You mean as far as the types of drugs? Yes, after the so-called Summer of Love in 1967 . . . and by the '70s it was in full-swing. It reached a peak in the '70s, but as far as the shift occurring, it happened in '66 and '67.

There's a legend about where the name Love came from, that it was a tip of the hat to you.

Well, at least that's what Arthur Lee told me. I'd gotten a gig in another band in San Francisco. I'd found my way into the Haight-Ashbury, fell in with this nice community, and this girl I'd befriended told me there was a band which practiced down at the Straight Theater—which was still called the Haight Theater at that time. It was an old theater that was renovated by a couple of guys called the Resner brothers, and they were going to re-open it as the Straight Theater. But it was a long ways away from that and there was this band practicing there called The Outfit. I joined the band. It was San Francisco Rock, all original music, a pretty good little band. I didn't last long with them. My problem with many of the bands that I took up with—and I think this had some bearing on my situation with Arthur Lee—was that I had a tendency to upstage my fellow band members. That happened with The Outfit, and it lead to difficulties . . .

Did you upstage them in your playing?

It was the attention that would be brought to me when I was on stage, because I moved, man—I didn't just stand there playing the guitar. I moved with it, I danced with it as I played it. The parting of the ways happened with the Outfit when I got offered a contract, and it didn't include the rest of the band. There weren't that many Rock clubs in those days. There were a few coffeehouses that were being converted over into Rock clubs, and then there was the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium, that was pretty much the extent of it. We were playing a gig at a place called the Piano Bar, and some guys from Sun Records wanted to sign me up and take me to Vegas—on my own. They weren't interested in the rest of the band.

But back to Love for a moment—what was the explanation you heard for their name change?

This occurred some time after I had joined The Outfit. I was still commuting between the Bay Area and Los Angeles every so often, although I'd set up home—base in San Francisco. Once I had joined The Outfit, I needed my guitar. I was playing lead guitar now for the first time, because that's what the opening in the band called for. I became a lead guitar player really fast in order to get myself settled into a spot in the band. I knew going into it that it would be an interim arrangement. I liked the band, but it wasn't something that I felt myself staying with for a long time. I needed to go down to L.A. and settle my affairs, and to get my guitar, so I borrowed an old VW Bug and made a trip down there for a couple of weeks. While I was there this situation emerged with the other band called the Grass Roots from the Bay Area coming to L.A. They'd just had a hit record. They pretty much captured the band name by being the first to record using that name. So there was kind of a war going on when they got to L.A., with people taking sides over "who is the real Grass Roots?" At that point, Arthur Lee's Grass Roots were playing at a club called Beato Lito's. I went to the club and I waited until the band took a break and then I told Brian that I needed my guitar back. He got real surly about it.

That was still his only guitar at the time?

Apparently so, but I'd given him plenty of time to use it, and get one of his own. I probably would have been amenable to him at least finishing the gig that night, and after that he could go and rent a guitar, which was pretty standard practice in L.A. There are music rental shops everywhere there, and you can rent good guitars. I'd given him plenty of time with my guitar, so I wasn't feeling too guilty about asking for it back. I had planned to at least let him finish out the night using it, but when I asked where it was and he pointed it out to me, it was leaning against the drum kit on the stage. I went up and looked at it, and he'd just treated it like shit. It had been this beautiful, immaculate guitar and now it had big gouges in it. The case for it was lost, and it was in really bad shape. So it almost turned into a fight out in front of the club, but I just took my guitar and split. He was pissed off because I was taking it in the middle of the evening, but after I saw the way he treated it . . .

Meanwhile this controversy over the band's name was still brewing. I spent a couple of weeks down there, picking up my clothes—I'd left stuff scattered all over the place, with different friends. Now that I was going to be staying in the Bay Area, I went around saying my goodbyes and letting people know where I was, saying farewell to friends. Also trying to figure out what to do with the guitar, because I didn't want to keep it anymore. Every time I looked at the thing it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I traded it in for an Epiphone, a hollow body, which was a real trade-down. Also thrown into the trade was a student model sitar. That was my first sitar—it wasn't very good as it didn't have any sympathetic strings on it, but it gave me a way to practice the scales and learn the basic technique. Also I found another instrument in a different music store as I was shopping around. It was a Greek bouzouki, and really, really cheap. It had been sitting in the window forever and it needed a little bit of work.

Were you picking up these more exotic instruments just for the pleasure of playing them, or did you have something specific in mind to use them?

I hadn't any real clear idea where I was going to go with it, but I was beginning to evolve an idea for a band of my own. I wanted to use new instrumentation, I didn't want to use the same Rock band instrumentation. I was listening to Middle Eastern music, I was listening to Jazz—I used to go to the Haight Levels and kick back and listen to Jazz played in the mode of Coltrane and Mingus, all those guys. I was listening to classical, I liked Vivaldi and Mozart . . .

Your interests had gone beyond the typical four piece Rock band.

What I wanted to do was play Rock music with all these other elements being a part of it. I didn't want to lose the hard, driving rawness of Rock, but I wanted to bring in this sort of "universal" music concept that I was evolving, a multi-cultural, multi-disciplined sort of thing. It was extremely vague at this point in my conception. It was something that was just beginning to emerge as I was listening to these other types of music. So I began to pick up other instruments: a dulcimer, the student model sitar, the bouzouki, an acoustic guitar. But while all this was going on there was the controversy over the band name Grass Roots in L.A., and eventually it was decided that the band I'd been part of was going to change their name. Just before I went back to San Francisco I was at one of the hang-outs on the Strip, a place called Ben Franks, a "standard fare" eating establishment, let's say. But it was a convenient spot, and the colorful people used to go in there for coffee and cake, to hang out. I was there by myself, getting ready to leave, and Snofox was out front. Arthur Lee came in, and sat down with me. He told me that he'd decided to re-name the band Love in honor of me, alluding to the Cupid nickname that I had. I felt honored. It kind of healed the hurt feelings.

Did you keep up with what Love was doing after that point?

Oh yeah. Not religiously, but I heard the records—the Love album, with "Little Red Book" which was a hit. I was glad for them. The first album had a song called "Signed, D.C.". Arthur wrote a lot of great songs, with a lot of personal emotion and experiences.

At first hearing a lot of it sounds like typical hippy psychedelia, but there was a darker current underneath a lot of the lyrics . . .

"Signed, D.C." was a really well done piece of music, for the statement that it made. "D.C." was Don Conka, who was the drummer when I was with the band. He had gone the way of the hypodermic needle and died, an overdose. Arthur wrote the song as if it were a letter from Don. And this was prior to that shift we were talking about, that slide down of the youth movement into heroin and the whole suicide thing that happened. This was right on the edge of it, and he was telling that story . . . and he went down that path himself, Arthur did. Johnny too.

Did you see that shift or shadow of the harder drugs coming over everything?

It had always been on the fringes. It had always been lurking around the edges of the youth movement, because it had always been part of the Jazz and Beat scene, which in some ways had been the precursor of the youth movement of the '60s. So it wasn't hat far away or that unknown. I began to see it much earlier, even while I was still living in L.A. there were people getting strung out on crank. There was a very little bit of heroin use, and of course there were the pills. People didn't really draw the distinction between the different types of chemicals, they just sort of got mixed up with one another. It was all part of this "new experiment" that a lot of kids got involved with. We all laughed when they said that marijuana would lead to other things, the old Reefer Madness line—but in a sense they were right.

You have to start somewhere.

Well, it's just that there was nobody there to tell us what these different chemicals did—how they work, and which ones did something that we would want to experience and which ones we'd want to stay away from, and why. Nobody was there to tell us any of these things.

You have to find out for yourself.

Exactly, the hard way. It was real easy to take the attitude that if you had a good experience smoking a joint of marijuana, then you could drop some pills and it would be equally beneficial in terms of experience. And it wasn't, it was a completely different type of thing. It was real easy for some people to fall into this crank trap. I lost some friends right off the bat, even before I went to San Francisco. That's exactly what it was for me, a loss of friends. Because they were no longer my friends, it was as if they had died.

They didn't literally die . . .

. . . but they became these paranoid, back-stabbing people—their whole personalities changed, and all the things that I liked about them as people and made me want to be their friend, those things were gone. That was really bad for me, and I made the decision very early on that I wasn't going to go down that road.

Was that due to awareness of what happened to other people, or was your disposition something that didn't tend toward those substances?

Heroin I decided about early on. I had a friend and he was a singer in an R&B band. When I was in L.A. I'd still continued to go out to the Red Velvet once in awhile, to listen to some R&B. The other kids—the Freaks or whatever they were being called at that time, the people wearing the colorful wild clothes—most of them didn't go to the Red Velvet, it was a whole different kind of scene. But I still liked the music and there was a guy that played there fairly frequently, and I really liked him. Then one day he showed up at Ben Franks and I looked into his eyes and he looked like he had just come out of the grave. There were tombstones in his eyes. I went and tried to talk to him, and I knew what it was, that he had just shot a fix of heroin. I tried to talk to him and I said, "Man, this isn't you," and he wasn't there. He didn't hear me, he just said, "Hey Bobby, how 'ya doin'" I wasn't there. And I made that decision, I'm not going there. You can't straddle that fence either, in your life. You're either into that scene with them, or you're a victim to them. And if you're in it with them you're a victim to them anyway, so it's a set—up, once they've gone down that road. Although I do know people who've been down that road and have come back, they've learned from it. I'm glad I didn't have to go down there to learn myself what it was. They'll always be addicts, they'll always have that. It will always be a matter of will power, and decision, and choice. They'll always be struggling against it.

In a more positive sense, what effect did the newly emerging drug culture have on the music?

Oh god, it had a profound influence on the music from the very beginning. From the very beginning when I got involved with it, "Tambourine Man" was about LSD, you know . . . it was the first song, the first exposure that I had to the scene, to the so—called youth culture, to that whole emergence of the '60s youth movement and being turned on to Pot and LSD. So perhaps my own personal observation of the lifestyle that I was living was influenced and skewed in the sense that I was primed to receive that information which permeated the movement. It seemed like from the very beginning that the consciousness expanding substances were always a part of it, and it wasn't so much the drugs but rather: we are finding out who we are. That's what it was about, because that's what the drugs were for. I hate to categorically define all these substances as "drugs" because they don't belong all lumped together. I wouldn't lump marijuana together with heroin; in actuality they are very different substances and have different applications. It's unfortunate that we didn't have some sort of way to know in advance that if we are going to go down this path of finding ourselves, which things we should stay away from and why, and which things may be some catalyst in this emerging understanding, this quest.

Was this "quest" also occurring with the music itself?

I don't know how you could have separated it. It was part of it, the music was the voice of it—the uncensorable voice of what was happening, this awakening that was occurring to the human species at that time among a certain group of people, on a worldwide basis. It was a really astonishing thing that happened. Sadly, it gets cliched to death in the whole hippy fashion thing, and gets buried under that.

The hippy fashion superceded it . . .

At least in the awareness of the media and the mainstream population, yes.

Were you conscious of this at the time, how the whole quest you spoke of was unfolding?

Absolutely, that was what it was for me. When it became fashion, and became bracketed under this term "hippy" I resented it—it didn't represent me. When people talked to me about it I told them, "I'm not a hippy." That's not what it was for me. It was always that quest. It was frightening, it was moving, it was inspiring. It was crazy, it was extremely humorous at times, it was tragic at times. It was all those things that that kind of on-the-edge quest is.

Was there a feeling that all rules had been cast aside?

Absolutely. That's really what it was. There was so much that we had discovered was invalid in the social structure, in the mainstream . . . but like with the drugs, we were out there fending for ourselves. Nobody could take us by the hand and lead us down the path and say: this is what you do, this is what you don't do, and why. Nobody was doing that, and we could only learn by trial and error. The whole thing was like that. It's so difficult to characterize that whole event . . .

How do you look back on it now, since obviously some of what you're saying is with hindsight. For example, a lot of those people who made themselves out to be against the system, not part of the mainstream, and created that aura around themselves—they later just became the system. People like Abbie Hoffman, who were such agitators back then, only to end up working on Wall Street.

I understand what you're asking, but I'm not sure how to answer it, and one reason is because I didn't go down that the road that they did. I didn't care for them at the gate, I didn't think they had a hell of a lot to say that I wanted to hear.

You weren't really sucked into that aspect . . .

I wasn't trying to declare a war against the United States, and I didn't believe in this idea of "Go kill your parents"—those kinds of statements were extremely irresponsible. I understand where it comes from, I was young too, and I can get out there and play guitar until it makes your ears bleed, hang my emotions out there on the line for everybody to see. I don't have any problem doing that, but it's me playing music, not me telling you to go out and kill your parents, or making statements that are possibly going to influence other people in acting out behavior that would effectively put an end to the quest that I was on. I didn't like that scene. On the other hand, we all became part of the system. We all were absorbed in one way or another. In my case I was just another one of the '60s casualties, only I'm still alive. That same disillusionment which led some people to heroin addiction, led me to prison. It was that same reaching the bitter end, and realizing there wasn't any escape. I might have had fantasies about sailing away to Jamaica and living on the beach for the rest of my life, but they were only just fantasies and you finally realize that, and there's nothing left to do but knuckle down. It's not going to be as easy as you thought, and you're going to have to go down the same road that your parents did, in a sense. You have to experience the processes they went through. It'll be different, because this is a different time and awareness in certain areas, but still, we all were absorbed in one fashion or another.

As one gets older you become wiser and you can see that wanting to kill your parents when you're 15 years old is probably a universal thing, and something you quickly grow out of.

It absolutely is, but in a figurative sense. If only we had the ceremonies that many cultures do which ritualize that process of killing your parents. The rite of passage where in order for a boy to become a man he must metaphorically kill his father. It's a metaphor, and it's not meant to be taken literally, but it literally does happen in the internal mindscape of the person coming of age.

You need to come out from under that authority and then become that authority.

Exactly, in order to be the individual. It's part of who and what we are. It's a necessary part of simple survival and continued adaptation, because you can't just follow this mold, you have to be your own individual. To emerge as your own individual you have to say goodbye to childhood, and become your father, and the only way you can do that is to figuratively kill the father figure that you have been looking up to.

It seems to me there was a phenomenon in the late '60s where you had a lot of people who were incapable of growing up and taking responsibility for their actions. All the rules had been broken, and they were adults, but they were still running around like children, not feeling like they needed to take any responsibilities. Did you see that going on, where people didn't really want to be strong and assert themselves in a responsible way?

[laughs in acknowledgment] Yes, but it catches up with you! If you go down that road, it's going to come down on you hard. It sets you up. Maybe that's the way to do it for some people, I don't know. It will set up circumstances that really bring home the process of growing up. To continue to hang onto that childhood irresponsibility, to try to sustain and live it for a length of time, it catches up to you. It's not that that's a bad thing—it's what happened to me. I was so adamantly hanging on to that, to the point of desperation, hanging onto that high youthful spirit, that I killed a man. In the process of trying to hang onto that I killed a man and brought myself to prison. That brought the responsibility home to me in a very definite way, and there was no way to squirm away from it. It's like being held up against the wall and someone telling you, "You're going to stay there until you figure it all out, until you make it work, until you accept your responsibility, until you emerge as the man you're supposed to be." That's what it's like, and when people hang onto that irresponsible life they will eventually put themselves into a situation where they must deal with the realities.

And if they don't go to it, it's going to come to them.

Exactly. It's usually a way of really bringing it on as a challenge, because the events that occur that make it necessary to do that are generally the kind that really slap you back.

San Francisco must have been a very different scene than you had been used to in L.A.

It was very different. The people seemed much more down to earth—but maybe that's the wrong term since some of them were pretty "out there"! But in one sense it seemed more real. The L.A. scene had been so superficial, and that veneer was pretty much stripped away from the people who were involved in the youth movement up north. I'm not sure why, maybe it was just the ambience of the city, where there was a lot of Old World influence, even in the architecture. In L.A. you look around and everything is cardboard and stucco. In San Francisco it's old rotting wood, old stone . . .

What about differences in the music scene?

The music was in a sense more adventurous. San Francisco had its own style and sound. It was much more diverse, the people were more open to new influences in the music. You had the main bands with the Grateful Dead, Quick

JAILHOUSE ROCK
An inmate reaches out through music.
By Jeff Silver for Electronic Musician – June 1997


When you talk to Bobby BeauSoleil, he sounds like an average musician trying to get the most out of his gear on a limited budget. The only real difference between BeauSoleil and many of you reading this article is that he has been in prison since 1969 for a murder committed during a drug deal gone bad. He doesn't ask for sympathy, and long ago he accepted responsibility for his actions. What makes him different from thousands of other men and women who are serving long prison sentences is his passion for music's ability to empower, teach, and unify across obstacles and barriers.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
In the mid 1960s, BeauSoleil moved back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles, racking up bona fide professional credits as a guitar player for various bands. In 1966, he formed a group called the Orkustra, which included David LaFlamme of It's a Beautiful Day. The group's instrumentation consisted of violin, oboe, stand-up bass, guitar, bazouki, and drums. BeauSoleil's original concept for the Orkustra was to combine culturally diverse sounds and timbres in an "electronic orchestra," but at that time technology wasn't adequate to accomplish what he envisioned. He went back to Los Angeles to do session work in 1968, mostly as a blues player. It was there that the event took place that would change his life forever.

Following his conviction, he was sent to San Quentin Prison in California where he put together several bands that performed in the prison. In 1974, he was transferred to another California prison in Tracy where he established a music program that still exists today. The program started out in an unused barber shop with a small P.A. and two guitar amps; it eventually spawned several bands, two of which won a music competition among prison inmates statewide.

In 1976, a former contact from San Francisco talked to BeauSoleil about scoring an underground film he was producing. A TEAC 2340 4-track machine was brought in for the project, and the Freedom Orchestra was born. "We improvised on different themes to create the score," BeauSoleil recounted. "When the recording was over, I had to use a razor blade to edit hours of tape from these long jam sessions to fit the film."

BeauSoleil got his first hands-on exposure to electronic music during the recording of the soundtrack. "I needed to enhance the sound palette of the basic rock instrumentation we'd used. I read Polyphony magazine [which later became Electronic Musician] and a couple of books by Craig Anderton to learn how to build my own circuits and instruments. From there, I graduated to building modules from scratch using parts from electronics surplus houses, and I used the modules to create new sounds." Thereafter, he studied audio electronics for several years in a prison vocational electronics program. This learning phase gave him the opportunity to develop skills he has put to good use ever since as a synth programmer and engineer. In 1984, he persuaded Jerry Kovarsky of Casio to loan him a CZ-1 synth in exchange for developing sounds for the instrument. (Kovarsky is now with Korg.) This was BeauSoleil's first experience with digital programming, but because the instrument was based on an analog architecture, he was able to complete several volumes of sounds. He is also a guitar player, so Casio later provided him with a PG-380, a MIDI guitar synth that he still uses as a stand-alone instrument. Actual programming of the PG-380 had to be done on Casio's rack-mounted VZ-10, from which patches were transferred on a data card. This programming experience and his connections at Casio later led to programming gigs with Ensoniq for the KT-76 synth, Kawai for the K4 synth, and Kurzweil for the K2000.

In addition to his other projects, BeauSoleil is currently doing field testing for Harvey Starr of Starr Labs on the Ztar, a guitar-like synth controller. Years ago, BeauSoleil began developing a similar instrument, which he called the Syntar, but because of technical limitations, he was never able to get it off the ground. He has high hopes for the Ztar, however. "Harvey has created a wonderful instrument. It is solid state and digital, electronic from the ground up with no physical strings. The fingerboard is all buttons in rows like strings, although there is a version with string triggers for the right hand. The standard version has rows of trigger buttons arranged in a string-like fashion so they can be tapped or strummed, and they have aftertouch capabilities, which is a big advance." GETTING WITH THE PROGRAM
Finally, in 1994, BeauSoleil requested to be transferred closer to family and was moved to a prison in the northwest. Through this change of location, he found a change in possibilities. Because of budget cutbacks and the resulting dismantling or reduction of cultural programs, the California system had not allowed much room for creativity. What he found at the prison was an administration very interested in finding ways to help people change their behavior patterns. More specifically, prison officials wanted to institute a video-production program. Several years prior, a project to install an audio-recording facility had been launched, as well, and the work had gone as far as the wiring of two rooms with XLR and 1 4-inch patch panels. That project had been abandoned, and one of the rooms was being used for storage when BeauSoleil arrived. He had taken training in basic video production at Tracy and Soledad prisons in California, so he convinced prison officials to let him assist in developing the video facility and completing the audio studio, as well.

This turn of events gave BeauSoleil the chance to act on the philosophy he'd developed after so many years in prison. "You can get locked into routines in prison that are designed to make you feel powerless unless you take measures to create opportunities for yourself," he says. "People in prison tend to be conditioned by the environment to feel like they can't make it any different, but I've found ways to make time work for me rather than having time done to me."

Aside from the new wiring, though, about all BeauSoleil found in the "A/V room" was 20-year-old guitar amps, a tired drum set, and a noisy P.A. With the cooperation of the prison administration, BeauSoleil started getting in touch with his old music-industry contacts. Those contacts became even more important after voters passed Measure 17, which diverted funds that might have, among other things, provided money for developing the new studio.

"In this day and age, we can't count on taxpayer dollars to fund this kind of program. Money is being funneled into building more prisons and buying more beds," BeauSoleil explains. "But I'm not trying to pat myself on the back for what's been accomplished here. The credit for the response we've received belongs to the people in the industry." And respond they have. In addition to those who have contributed gear in exchange for programming, other equipment manufacturers, including Mackie, Hafler, KRK, Kawai, A.R.T., Fender, MESA/Boogie, and Paradigm, as well as software companies, such as Keyfax and Beatboy, have either loaned or contributed equipment to the program. (See sidebar "Pitching In" for some insights from a few of the contributors to the prison A/V program.)

The undertaking of setting up the studio received mixed reactions from his fellow inmates. Being a new guy from another state, BeauSoleil was viewed with some reservation. Thomas "Zinn" Dickerson, BeauSoleil's coworker in the A/V program and one of the prison's rap artists, says, "We had to talk a lot in the beginning to be able to understand each other. There's naturally a lot of tension here because of the environment and the way it can affect guys. But Bobby has the patience to try to get them to understand what he's trying to do and to get through to them."

WORKING THE SYSTEM
An interesting thing about the A/V program is how it's able to "justify" its existence. The same Measure 17 that diverted funds from the development of the program also requires that all prisoners have full-time jobs, but most of those jobs don't exist. However, by establishing a viable training program, funds can be made available for that training. The video program qualifies for those funds by providing training in production and producing informational and training videos. The only problem is that the money must be used almost exclusively for video equipment. The acquisition of audio gear is left to the generosity of contributors and BeauSoleil's powers of persuasion.

Nevertheless, the program has been quite a success. For example, Los Hermanos is a powerfully dramatic video written and produced by the inmates that documents the youth intervention program of the same name. In it, inmates provide at-risk adolescents with first-hand accounts of their crimes to make the youths seriously consider the consequences of their actions before it's too late. Reyes Miranda, a board member of the Los Hermanos program, is one of the inmates featured talking to a group of young people who were brought into the prison. He tells them, "The actual crime took one minute--one minute of stupidity. I've now been incarcerated for nine years." Watching the faces of the kids as they hear this only adds to the intensity of the moment. It's also obvious how powerful these experiences are for the prisoners as they recount their actions and recognize themselves in the faces of their young audience. The A/V program also records inmate sports events and outside performers who come to the prison, but Los Hermanos is more typical of the kinds of projects the program seeks to produce. Los Hermanos offers a 9-month program that includes a course book and curriculum developed by the inmates. Other programs served by the A/V production facilities include youth intervention programs and a planned victims/offenders program (in which inmates and crime victims will meet face-to-face). By producing these programs on video, they can be made available to the broader community and educate a larger audience than just those individuals who come to the prison to participate. Another project in the works is a compilation rap CD featuring prison rap artists; BeauSoleil is engineer and coproducer with the artists. He says, "We want to put out an album of hard-core rap by guys who have seen it, who have street savvy as well as heavy prison experience. The overall lyrical theme will be a reverse spin on the violent messages in some releases. Wannabe hard guys use the scene to sell their image, and sometimes that takes the form of glorifying violence and crime. The main purpose of our release is to share viewpoints that reveal more of the whole reality, including the painful consequences of violence and crime to the individual and the community."

Dickerson, one of the artists who will be featured on the CD, agrees: "Most of the friends I came up with are either dead or in prison. Through music, I can relate real life experiences to try to help others who are coming up and help them to begin to understand their real potential."

THE STUDIO
In discussing the equipment and technical aspects of the studio, BeauSoleil points out that the two rooms were originally concrete boxes with horrible sound. One of his industry contacts, Bernie Chlop at Systems Development Group, supplied BeauSoleil with acoustic foam, Sonora panels, and diffusers, along with several suggestions as to their placement based on computer models of the rooms developed from blueprints provided by BeauSoleil, who is tremendously grateful: "It made a big improvement. The live room is much sweeter sounding, and the mixes I'm doing now seem to translate well to other systems."

As far as hardware is concerned, several factors play key roles in determining what gear is best suited for the program's needs. As BeauSoleil explains, "We have very limited space for equipment, and because there are no funds for upkeep, we have to look for things that can stand up to use by seven different bands." The recording room doubles as a practice room, and each band gets a two-and-a-half hour practice session two or three times a week, one of which each month can be used for recording. "In the live-recording room, we have a Mackie 1202 [12-channel mic/line mixer] that sounds great, and it's bulletproof, so guys who are unfamiliar with it can't hurt it," says BeauSoleil. "Most of the amplifiers for the guitars and bass were given to us by Fender, and Kawai contributed almost the entire MIDI keyboard setup. Our old acoustic drum set died of natural causes, and now we use an electronic kit." Having read about the Dauz Drum Kit, BeauSoleil contacted Dan Dauz, who gave him an experimental kit. BeauSoleil has it set up to trigger sounds from an Alesis DM-5. "It works great. It's held up to constant adjustment by different players and has rubber ball joints to hold the drum triggers. The rest of it is made of metal and has stood up to everything over the past year."

The live room also has a MESA/Boogie V-Twin Tube Preamp. "It looks indestructible, like something chipped off of a Harley Davidson," says BeauSoleil. "We have a very limited supply of microphones, so running the signals through the V-Twin gives us all the classic tube-mic sounds." In the control room, aside from the Kurzweil K200RS, Ensoniq KT-76, and the trusty Casio PG-380, the main features are a Studiomaster Star System console and an Alesis ADAT.
"The control panel of the board is almost vertical except for the faders, which are in the normal position. This makes for a large rear panel that forms a patch bay with access to all the key signal points; that and the normalled scheme on the front panel give great flexibility for 8-track recording. It has a built-in stereo noise gate and compressor, and the upright design has a small footprint. I don't know where we would have put a more conventional mixer."

BeauSoleil says building his own modules is a thing of the past because of the wide array of commercially available gear. When asked what hardware he'd really like to get his hands on, he says, "A Power Mac would be dynamite; we'd just have to find room for it in our little space!"

He adds, "Some of the guys have their own gear, mostly guitars and a few hardware sequencers with built-in sounds, such as the Yamaha QY-22. I'd like to see more of those around. It's an instrument that's more suitable than a guitar, because there's no security problem. A guitar has parts that can be turned into weapons, although I've never seen an instrument used as a weapon. No violence has ever occurred within any prison music program I've been involved with."

PITCHING IN
There is no question that Bobby BeauSoleil is an effective communicator. This is readily apparent when one looks at the sheer number of contacts he's made within the music industry. The only thing more varied than this network of manufacturers and suppliers is the reasons they have for supporting BeauSoleil and the prison A/V program.

Jim Giordano, national sales manager at Studiomaster, was skeptical when Beausoleil first contacted him. He receives many requests for donations and as a rule does not give away merchandise. However, after hearing about the community benefits of the program and reviewing the extensive documentation BeauSoleil provided, he was won over. "This request stood out. It was different in that I was moved. These are guys who are not just killing time; they're doing something genuine and constructive."

Bernie Chlop of Systems Development Group in Maryland was impressed with what BeauSoleil had managed to accomplish within the state prison system's bureaucracy. "We've done projects with some local institutions here, and at the county level you can't even get a Bible in without major hassles," he says. "For Bobby to have done what he has at the state prison level is just amazing."

David Sweet of DK Sweet Artists Relations Consulting recently contributed an Alesis ADAT. His reasons for becoming involved with the A/V program go beyond his feelings about BeauSoleil as a talented musician. He believes in the work that's being produced. Disturbed by the content of some rap and its effect on young people, Sweet is supportive of the program's antiviolence rap CD. He also feels it is important to lend support to antiviolence and other youth-intervention programs. "Once they're thrown into prison, young people are hidden away, and no one really knows what happens to them. The unintended consequence is that the idea of being a criminal is then romanticized, and the prisoners become heroes and martyrs. These programs let kids find out what life on the inside is really like without any of the mystique."

GETTING RESULTS
Most of us have images of prisons as places where violence and victimization are commonplace, which brings up the question of what kind of difference the studio and A/V program has made at the prison. "The program has developed its own subculture that breaks down barriers within the inmate population at large. There's more interaction among culturally diverse people than elsewhere in the prison system," BeauSoleil explains. "We're artists. A lot of these guys were not artists before; it's something they've developed since they've been in prison. They've made the choice to do something creative."

Dudley Janeway, a recreational therapist at the prison for 28 years and the supervisor of the A/V program, agrees. "You'll see a lot of personal growth within any program that lets people use their creativity and God-given talents," he says. "They can create a finished product, and the community can say, 'That's nice work, we want to use it.' At that point it doesn't matter who you are or where you are, in prison or not."

Dickerson gives perhaps the most moving testimony to the program's benefits. "A lot of guys lives have been changed through music. I know mine has. Before music, I was down in the hole for a year or two at a time. Officers treat me completely different now. This is the first time in my life there's something I'm proud of, something I'm sure of."


After being in prison for 28 years, it seems that BeauSoleil's philosophy of making time work for him has paid off. He's helped create a world that allows him personal fulfillment, gives other inmates opportunities they wouldn't have had otherwise, and provides value to the community. He considers himself lucky to have been able to pursue his musical activities and believes it would not have come about if prison administrators had not been sensitive to the needs of the inmates. But as Janeway points out, "Bobby provided the expertise in expanding the program and created the enthusiasm to move it forward." BeauSoleil's efforts have helped establish a new-found trust between inmates and administration and among prisoners who otherwise would not have reached across the cultural and ethnic barriers that normally separate them. And whether or not BeauSoleil feels he deserves credit for helping that to happen, those are goals everyone should strive for, no matter which side of the prison walls they live on.

Jeff Silver is a songwriter and freelance author living in Atlanta. This article first appeared in June 1997 Electronic Musician magazine and is reprinted here with permission.