Monday, July 14, 2008
Doug Williams (5/20/08)
Judging from your description of the party, I think I know why I don't remember it!
Guil Gaylord (5/19/08)
Jesus, she is going to go crazy when I send her your e-mail! Somehow, I forgot about Tim and may not have been aware of Matt's progress. At Stanford, I had the freedom to go to the Avalon and Fillmore Ballrooms in the very early days, when you sat on the floor and listened to the Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and others. I was also on the staff of the Stanford Chaparral (humor mag, of course I was the business manager) and a few times Gracie Slick and Jorma Kaukonen came to the office and "hung" with us. Slick was as you know fabulously beautiful, and recently had a nice tongue-in-cheek interview in Interview magazine with pix only of the old days. She is now an artist.
Doug Williams (5/19/08)
OK, well if it's old H/A days, I spent over a year working sound at the Straight Theater on Haight St. I left school to play music, but ended up doing sound since there was little interest in instrumental solo guitar. We had 5 bands a night, 6 days a week in '67 and '68. The Straight had a lot of good bands, but never the Jefferson Airplane (they were contracted to Bill Graham). Janis was fun-She always blew out one of our speakers. No one else did, but she had a lot of power in her voice.
Phil Lehman (5/20/08)
Is this the same Doug Williams we went to a party at during the summer of '63 and my next door neighbor from Tokyo showed up and got drunk, left the party and got into a really, really bad accident? That was one helluva party. I seem to remember driving up from LA in a friend's car that I'd borrowed (he and I had gone to school together in Tokyo and he was going to the Menlo Business School....I think Wolff and Krieger and maybe Pete Leanse might have been with me but....I AM 62 guys and things are slipping.
Bill Phinizy (5/19/08)
Tell her you attended school with the aforementioned Bill Wolff, Robbie Krieger of the Doors, and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, as well as a few other luminaries in those years: Matt Kelley and Tim Hovey.
Bob Weir came up through the lower school and was at Menlo up until his sophomore year when his parents had him transferred to a boarding school in Colorado.
When he joined the Dead, he took several Menlo classmates into the entourage: Tim Hovey, deceased (cf. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397024/bio), and Matt Kelley (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kelly_%28musician%29).
Matt formed the band Kingfish and toured with Bob Weir.
When I was in the Air Force during the Viet Nam War, I was stationed in Omaha, Nebraska (SAC Headquarters) and dating a Kappa Alpha Theta from Nebraska University (Drop dead gorgeous but dumb as a bag of hammers.). Bob Weir and the Dead came to town and I was on the blower to score some freebie tickets (which Bob gladly offered). So I took her and she got a chance to go backstage where she could meet Bob, Jerry Garcia, TC, and Pig Pen. The guy she really thought was cool was Owsley Stanley (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley) who got rich synthesizing and selling LSD before it was illegal. He was doing the sound for the Dead and reveling in sound equipment that included a bank of Tektronic 465L scopes (going for about $3-5,000 each at the time). Needless to say, her mind was blown.So, you see, that had you not become an attorney nor I gone into the USAF, we might very well have become part of the "60s" that your daughter reads about....of course, "60s" has new (and far less exciting connotations) for us now. *sigh*
Bob Weir came up through the lower school and was at Menlo up until his sophomore year when his parents had him transferred to a boarding school in Colorado.
When he joined the Dead, he took several Menlo classmates into the entourage: Tim Hovey, deceased (cf. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397024/bio), and Matt Kelley (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Kelly_%28musician%29).
Matt formed the band Kingfish and toured with Bob Weir.
When I was in the Air Force during the Viet Nam War, I was stationed in Omaha, Nebraska (SAC Headquarters) and dating a Kappa Alpha Theta from Nebraska University (Drop dead gorgeous but dumb as a bag of hammers.). Bob Weir and the Dead came to town and I was on the blower to score some freebie tickets (which Bob gladly offered). So I took her and she got a chance to go backstage where she could meet Bob, Jerry Garcia, TC, and Pig Pen. The guy she really thought was cool was Owsley Stanley (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley) who got rich synthesizing and selling LSD before it was illegal. He was doing the sound for the Dead and reveling in sound equipment that included a bank of Tektronic 465L scopes (going for about $3-5,000 each at the time). Needless to say, her mind was blown.So, you see, that had you not become an attorney nor I gone into the USAF, we might very well have become part of the "60s" that your daughter reads about....of course, "60s" has new (and far less exciting connotations) for us now. *sigh*
Guil Gaylord (5/19/08)
Nice memoir! When my younger daughter (an artist fascinated with all things from Jack Kerouac on) heard about Robby K., she was firmly convinced that I was famous by association. Then, she heard about Dennis and was doubly convinced. Now, I have a Bill Wolff story to tell her!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Bill Phinizy (5/19/08)
About three years ago, Mike Kenner, Tom Love, Dennis Feldman, and Bill Wolff and I got together on the occasion of one of Tom's trips to SoCal to peddle books. Whenever Tom would come into town, he would be at the nearby Disneyland Hotel and we would use the occasion as an excuse to hoover up all of the unspoken for reservoirs of Myer's Rum. He and I and Mike, etc. went into the Valley to meet with Dennis and Bill.
You may or may not know that Bill Wolff was one of the movers and shakers in the (then) nascent acid-rock scene in Southern California. He and Bob Krieger embarked upon that wonderful odyssey almost immediately upon graduation from Menlo. Bill hooked up with a group called The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and still played with Bob from time to time. We all spent the Summer of '64 surfing and otherwise partying (my substance of choice being the rather prosaic 12-ounce doses of Coors, Bud, Miller, and Brown Derby). From there, they went on to UCSB, the trail went dark, and I did not see them until I was waiting in line to register for classes in my sophomore year at UCLA. Bill and Bob recognized me and took the opportunity to insinuate themselves at that point in line (I didn't mind, but those behind me grumbled a bit). Again, they disappeared and of course, about a year later, the Doors burst upon the scene. I didn't hear from either until I hooked up with Bill at the aforementioned session in the Valley.
I always regarded Bill as one of the brighter people I have met (and still do). He was/is articulate, witty, a gifted musician, and, unbeknownst to a lot, I hear he was a very good gymnast (I remember him doing some outstanding tumbling during our last M-Day). Based upon what I read and knew from our times together at Menlo and that Summer he was, in the acid rock scene, not a king but a kingmaker. His encouragement and friendship with Bob Krieger gave Bob his start in the guitar and, arguably, put him on the path to his stellar success.
..well, I had been a software developer these last forty years and was surprised to learn that Bill had picked up a smattering of this skill back in the 90s. At the meeting, Dennis, who was responsible for the "Species" movies, was largely discouraging in his advice about Bill getting a script looked at/bought. I suggested that he also look to that as a possible stop-gap while he ironed out his attempts at screenwriting.
A few e-mails over the course of the next few months revealed that he was successful in that endeavor. It was a "tough double" as we used to say in track, but Bill pulled it off. And that was in a very, very tight IT job market.Not to make the above sound like a eulogy or obit, I just wanted to add Bill to the pantheon of '64 heroes.
You may or may not know that Bill Wolff was one of the movers and shakers in the (then) nascent acid-rock scene in Southern California. He and Bob Krieger embarked upon that wonderful odyssey almost immediately upon graduation from Menlo. Bill hooked up with a group called The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and still played with Bob from time to time. We all spent the Summer of '64 surfing and otherwise partying (my substance of choice being the rather prosaic 12-ounce doses of Coors, Bud, Miller, and Brown Derby). From there, they went on to UCSB, the trail went dark, and I did not see them until I was waiting in line to register for classes in my sophomore year at UCLA. Bill and Bob recognized me and took the opportunity to insinuate themselves at that point in line (I didn't mind, but those behind me grumbled a bit). Again, they disappeared and of course, about a year later, the Doors burst upon the scene. I didn't hear from either until I hooked up with Bill at the aforementioned session in the Valley.
I always regarded Bill as one of the brighter people I have met (and still do). He was/is articulate, witty, a gifted musician, and, unbeknownst to a lot, I hear he was a very good gymnast (I remember him doing some outstanding tumbling during our last M-Day). Based upon what I read and knew from our times together at Menlo and that Summer he was, in the acid rock scene, not a king but a kingmaker. His encouragement and friendship with Bob Krieger gave Bob his start in the guitar and, arguably, put him on the path to his stellar success.
..well, I had been a software developer these last forty years and was surprised to learn that Bill had picked up a smattering of this skill back in the 90s. At the meeting, Dennis, who was responsible for the "Species" movies, was largely discouraging in his advice about Bill getting a script looked at/bought. I suggested that he also look to that as a possible stop-gap while he ironed out his attempts at screenwriting.
A few e-mails over the course of the next few months revealed that he was successful in that endeavor. It was a "tough double" as we used to say in track, but Bill pulled it off. And that was in a very, very tight IT job market.Not to make the above sound like a eulogy or obit, I just wanted to add Bill to the pantheon of '64 heroes.
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