For those readers interested in learning more, I’ve made a separate page with several articles on Don McCoy and the commune at Olompali: Friends with McCoy, the Dead visited the Olompali commune through 1968, sometimes playing impromptu shows or jam sessions there on the weekends, along with other San Francisco musicians. ), http://electripipedream.tumblr.com/search/thomas+weir, https://www.facebook.com/OlompaliMovie/posts/557752874337971, http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/rancho-olompali-8901-old-redwood.html, http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/october-1966-acid-rock-party.html, http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2015/01/don-mccoy-and-olompali-commune.html, http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/04/march-17-1969-winterland-san-francisco.html, 1970 Audience Tape Guide & Anti-Taping Stories, deadessays.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default, http://www.archive.org/details/GratefulDead, http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Bands/GD.htm. Alivia is the best thing that's ever happened to us.... just want you all to know she is here. I don't know whether Hank would have told her this; but neither of her parents were in the picture. McNally p.308 (Some of McNally’s details are taken from band anecdotes, so they may not be correct. When I wrote the Courtney post, I had no idea there were so many connections between the Dead and McCoy & the Olompali crowd, so I learned a lot from writing this. Um...I don't think any of the Manson crew were at Olompali. In later years, we know Guaraldi occasionally played with Garcia at the Matrix Monday-night jam sessions in 1970 (Garcia & Guaraldi were both regulars at the Matrix), and that they also played together in a band a few times in summer 1972: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2013/03/summer-1972-pierce-street-annex-san.html. I was there that day and lived at Olompali. Owsley, also called Bear, was a chemist who lived with the Dead and made STP and acid. SPRING Jerry, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Bob Weir join forces as Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. But at the same time I was really turned off by how locked into their style they were.At the same I was also seeing things like Iggy Pop and Devo and it just made me wish that the Dead would throw a fucking cherry bomb into the audience every once in a while and scare some of these fucking hippies out of the twirling trance thing they were in." the guy in the back with the mustache to the left of the horse is none other than San Francisco jazz piano legend, Vince Guaraldi, best known for his "Peanuts" soundtracks in the 60s & 70s. It seems that Dan Healy, John Cipollina and other members of Quicksilver also stayed in McCoy’s houseboat community, and the Dead may have heard about McCoy’s heliport rental space from them. Ken Babbs recently wrote on his website, "In 1969 I was working as the warehouseman at the Grateful Dead studio called Alembic in Marin County. Jerry's first baby, Heather, and Courtney used to play together. 9. #12 is Gretchen Glanzer. Here's a quote we axed from out forthcoming tome of Babbs talking a bit about Alembic and the scene up there with the Olompali girls:"That's where I got know Owsley a lot better, because he was the soundman and spent a lot of time up there. She would be the same age as the girl in the picture, and both of Courtney parents WERE in the picture. When we moved to Olompali the mansion, dormitory and 5 acres was renting for $200. 3. We thought that's what we were going to be until Phish started getting all of the kids in tie-dyes. As band leader. Everyone would play all day in the sunshine, just doing everything, and then when the sun would start to go down and it got cold, people would pack it in. The Jensen girls went to live with Mickey Hart. Experimental music. He seems to have accompanied the band at a couple photo shoots in Jan/Feb '69 - one by Herb Greene, and one by Tom Weir... Babbs' situation reminds me a bit of Willy Legate - a friend of Garcia in Palo Alto in the early '60s; sometimes writing liner notes & newsletters for the Dead in the '70s; and in the '80s, the custodian/superintendent of the Front Street studio, and the first "vault" tape archivist. Have you noticed this?Yeah, from like way back. I knew you had it in you! Not Cookie. And a lot of people like the various filmmakers and writers and dope dealers. The commune remnants staggered on for a few months longer, but after two kids drowned in the pool in June ’69, everyone was evicted and the commune shut down. White Angels. So it was disputed even then - what's interesting is that the writers talked to Hank Harrison, who is probably the one who told them her claims were false.In her Playboy interview that year, Courtney spit some more venom at her father: "He makes his living as a parasite off the Grateful Dead. It seemed like man was raping the earth… I wanted to change the world.” He sold the houseboat business, and started looking for a new place where he could live with his friends. And as if he wasn't cool enough on his own, he was friends with The Grateful Dead and used to hang out with them at both 710 Ashbury and Rancho Olompali. Comments . Supposedly he even sat in with them at a few shows, but after listening to many thousands of hours of Dead shows I have yet to find one with Vince on it. Hank replied: "Phil changed her diapers! Admittedly, I don’t know who the other kids and people in the photo are, and more identifications might be useful in mapping the Dead's close social network circa '69. I-) ihor. After returning from Los Angeles in spring ’66, they moved to Rancho Olompali and stayed there through May and June, renting the property for several weeks. The Olompali Angels! That would include Don McCoy, who appeared on stage and gave a little speech in the middle of the 2/19/69 Celestial Synapse show - a couple weeks after his commune home at Rancho Olompali had burned down on February 2. Here is a link to a blog someone wrote about meeting her. In between the house and the pool the Dead would set up their equipment and play from time to time during the day. Reporters became interested in this communal experiment, and there are many retrospective articles available on the Chosen Family. It wasn't the style that impressed me so much, but the fact that they played what they wanted to play. Noelle Barton, a teenager at Olompali (and in the Aoxomoxoa photo), worked for the Garden of Delights, a light-show outfit sponsored by McCoy that worked at various venues in '68-69 - the Carousel, the Fillmore West, the Avalon, the Family Dog – in fact, they’d done the lights for the Dead’s recent shows at the Avalon. Other … While an anthropology student at Sonoma State University in the late 80s, I worked on a project about Olompali, interviewing some of the people mentioned in this article, some of the adults from the Chosen Family and some of their children, too. She had a loose hippie upbringing: one biographer describes her childhood house as full of musicians, groupies and freaks; and Courtney later shuddered, “There were all these hairy, wangly-ass hippies in our house…running around naked.”, Of course it’s not known just how involved Hank was in the Dead scene in 1969, as detailed information is scanty and his books are rather obscure. The other guys were all tripping, but he was not into that," Kreutzmann Quinn says of Pig Pen, with whom she was pictured on the cover of the Dead's "Aoxomoxoa" album when she was 5 years old.”. We haven't definitely confirmed that #12 is Cookie Eisenberg; people say it looks like her, but we're not totally certain yet. I thought we were going to be naked up here! They'd improvise. another oddity - in that 'just what we were kneading' article, the ranch is consistently called 'oampali'.thanks for all the updates! He made his 30 million dollar fortune with The Grateful Dead, Kingfish Bobby and the Midnites. Though they weren’t there long, they would remember their stay as an idyllic golden age, a “paradisiacal retreat.” (Although sometimes in their acid trips, they’d have threatening visions of the ancient Indians who’d used to live there, their spirits still haunting the walls and trees.). Way to go Leslie! Directed by Justin Kreutzmann. It's not just a myth.”. At any rate that wasn't an issue for me here; there may easily have been misspellings in the album credits. So when the former Grateful Dead drummer does happen to speak up, it’s worth noting for Dead Heads to shut up and listen. Discography. (Nothing more is known about her at the moment.) Prankster Ken Babbs appeared, along with his partner Gretchen Fetchin and two of their children. Who knows, they may even use some of your tapes! Just sayin'. There was a lot of concern when I went to kindergarten about how I would do. 11. Don't know when she came along, but she was with Mickey by August 1969. It would echo throughout the hills. At any rate, it seems the Dead may have simply gathered up whatever women & children were available that day for the photo. She may have looked a lot like Stacy in '69, and she may have believed it was herself. Right around the time we put out Monsters the Dead asked us to open for them. They'd improvise. I couldn't believe that Melissa from Hole mentioned him too, from the stage, after Courtney went on about how Kurdt was up there in that moon, and Hendrix, etc. I don't know if it was 24 hours a day, but every time I was there it was going.”. The photo may have been inspired by the Band’s Music From Big Pink album, which had been released in summer '68 and featured a “Next of Kin” photo of the Band with their families: A little background on Olompali’s history can be found here: The Dead had a close connection to Olompali – it was, for them, something like sacred ground. Maybe one day those interview tapes could be revisited by some intrepid researcher, if they are still in the State Park's archive. thanks again. I don't know how "warts & all" it will be, but it's been 25 years since your interviews, more is being written & published about the commune, and some of the older adults have passed away; so I'd imagine more people might be willing to be open about their experiences there. The guys in Jefferson Airplane would get together with Quicksilver and different guys, 81 different players, would get together and get high and get loose and have some fun… That was when we started getting tight with Quicksilver… They came and hung out at our place in Novato when we had our parties. The Dead could have taken a more traditional band-only shot, something like this (done with the same photographer and location): But instead they rounded up some women and children they knew and headed to Rancho Olompali for a kind of bucolic, tribal-commune image: this wasn’t just a band, it was a whole family. McCoy recovered and went back to the ‘straight life,’ putting his Olompali episode behind him. McCoy rented the land there, moving to Olompali with his friends and their families in November ‘67. Maura McCoy and Sheri Jensen sat by Garcia; Sheri’s sister Rhonda held Mickey's horse Snorty for him. ), For the record, Curt Kirkwood has talked sometimes about the Dead's influence on the Meat Puppets: "We wouldn’t be the band we are without the Grateful Dead.” "Q: Are you a a Grateful Dead fan?Sure.Q: Meat Puppets are often compared to the Grateful Dead. There wouldn't be a Meat Puppets without the Dead, for sure.I think it was '77 the first time I saw them and it was at a time when I was seeing a lot of cool things like Art Ensemble of Chicago and Ramsey Lewis. Jerry joins the Zodiacs formed by Bill Kreutzmann, featuring Pigpen on harmonica, Garcia on bass, and Troy Weidenheimer on guitar. And DEFINITELY at Altamont in Dec. 1969. the dog next to 22? I'm really thrilled to read this stuff, thanks for your excellent research! Add in Glenn McKay at 715 (not to mention that HALO was based there), and many of the little parts start to fit together. I met Stacy during the summer of 1989 and she once showed me the cover and told me that it was her. Those parties were like a chance to move the whole thing closer, so to speak. If you were an old friend of the Dead's, they'd find a place for you! She was still part of the Dead family, though – in fact, “Pigpen was my first babysitter.”. He even was included on the "family portrait" photo on the back of 1969's "Aoxomoxoa" (he's the one in back with shades on, his hand on the horse). People who had seen each other at rock and roll shows…in that first year. More interesting than Courtney NOT being in the picture is who IS . - JPK. Band manager Jon McIntire appeared, but none of the Dead’s other managers like Rifkin or Scully (among others). My mom knew how to deal and Rhonda knew how to pick them. It's a kind of art that's always been around in a way. I left shortly afterwards and went to stay with Bobby Weir and his then girlfriend Frankie Hart.. Gone to leave this brokedown palace, on hands and knees, to roll on home. Their mother was Opa Willy, a pot smuggler, and when she failed to return from a business trip to Mexico, Mickey became a substitute parent.”, The Jensen girls from Olompali also danced onstage at some Dead shows in this period. "My mother liked him. . i totally appreciate the depth of your continual strong research. After the Dead’s lease at Olompali ended, they headed on to Camp Lagunitas in late June ’66, and then moved to the house at 710 Ashbury Street in September. 1. - I don't know when Mickey got his ranch. She had owned a travel agency in New York, and besides a Millbrook connection, knew a lot of wealthy, wild East Coasters. One who meant so much to so many people as a 'spiritual guide', pointing signposts to new space, as it were, couldn't control his own appetite (in more ways than one) for those very substances that he proclaimed as sacraments. The perfect end to some perfect trips.We got "Mickey's Ranch" in March '69. We were really into playing music more than anything.... We got into The Dead and we realized if we make up some lyrics now we’re a rock band. After his divorce, “I found myself a lonely man… It started in disillusionment with what I was doing.” Though wealthy from an inheritance and the profits from renting his properties, he said that “I had become a slave to my business affairs. I think the Dead are weird because a lot of people who say they don't like them haven't actually heard them. says Kreutzmann Quinn, who admits to doing acid in her youth but says she's drug-free now that she's the mother of a 3-year-old girl. No bullshitting at their shows, no platform heels or mega light shows to mask the fact that this was just a group of ordinary mortals up there doing the best they could. Libra and he is now 73 years of age blog administrator tie-dyes in later,! 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