Barefoot in Babylon

by Bob Spitz

  “We can sign these groups and lay back. It’s the answer we’ve been looking for.”

  “Hey, take it easy, man. I’m not signin’ anybody until I hear them—and, even then, I gotta at least like them.”

  “You’ve gotta do it. You’ve gotta appease Graham.”

  “Cool it, John. That’s a crock o’ shit. I don’t gotta do anything. Graham’s not doin’ anybody a favor except himself.”

  Bill Graham, however, knew how to deliver the final blow and sent tapes of the two groups to Michael’s attention. Both groups impressed Lang.

  “I don’t know,” he told Morris a week later. “They’re both pretty good, but nobody’s ever heard of ’em. I mean, we’d look like schmucks adding both It’s A Beautiful Day and Santana when we could get two other groups that mean something. I’m gonna hafta pass.”

  Still Graham refused to give up. He called Morris again and implied that if they didn’t take Santana from him, he’d pull the Grateful Dead off the show. Lang was furious when the veiled threat was repeated to him, but he knew that Graham was capable of such a move. Graham was known for picking fights with promoters and holding grudges that often lasted years and prevented promoters from booking his acts. He was quoted in a December 1968 Sunday New York Times Magazine article as saying, “I give you a chance, you don’t deliver, I’ll kill you; in my head, you’re dead.” Lang decided that for a few dollars more, it was not worth cutting his own throat. He called Bill Graham and, by process of elimination, chose the unknown group, Santana, to open Saturday’s show for $1,500. Two months later, it would prove to be one of the highlights of the Aquarian Exposition and would establish Santana as one of the most exciting and influential groups in contemporary pop music. Graham, indeed, had the magic touch, and Woodstock Ventures was, as Graham had predicted, acclaimed as a booking genius.

  • • •

  Michael Lang and Bill Graham had another score to settle. Michael had booked many of the groups for the festival that Graham was promoting in the New England and New York areas that summer. The festival was picking up a lot of steam, causing a lot of the young kids to take notice of what was happening in Wallkill. If Woodstock was a box office success, Graham’s shows in the area would die. He reasoned that the kids would not pay an additional five dollars each to see the Airplane or Creedence or Richie Havens or a half dozen other acts he worked when they could buy one ticket to see them all at Woodstock. His summer schedule was in trouble.

  One afternoon in mid-June, John Morris ran into Lang’s office and closed the door. “We got trouble, man. Bad news. Bill just called, and he says he’s gonna buy you out.”

  “What!?”

  “He’s gonna buy out the festival or make it impossible for us to put it over. And he can do it, too, Michael. You’ve gotta take him seriously this time.”

  “Sure,” Michael said, giving Morris the high sign. “Why don’t you go into your office and cool off. I’ll take care of Graham.”

  “All right, but make it quick. He can stop us dead.”

  Lang assumed correctly that Morris had overreacted. When it came to Bill Graham, Morris’s negotiating steel became molten. But Lang was smart enough to take the premise seriously. Graham was not about to let Woodstock get away with ruining several millions of dollars in regional gate receipts without a fight. They’d have to make some kind of a deal.

  Lang called Graham, found out the San Francisco impresario was about to fly to New York, and arranged to meet him for lunch at Ratner’s, a famous Kosher dairy restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There, over a tiny table laden with bowls of hot onion rolls, sour cream, and blintzes, they worked out a formula whereby Lang would wait until a month before Graham played his acts in the area to advertise the same groups appearing at Woodstock. The festival already boasted close to fifteen acts that Graham had planned to showcase at the Fillmore during the summer, and Graham worried that it would kill his business.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Michael assured him. “We’ll wait. It’s not going to make any difference to us.” They shook hands on the arrangement.

  As Lang got up to leave, he was swept with divine inspiration. “Hey—I got a great idea. You should come up for the festival and emcee it for us. It’d knock everybody out.”

  Graham was flattered, but he didn’t want to share Lang’s spotlight.

  “That’s too bad. I was really hopin’ you’d be there.”

  Graham looked up from his plate and smiled without any humor. “You don’t have to worry about that, my friend. I’ll be there. I’ll be there.”

  • • •

  Sunday’s show was the most incomplete of the three days. Only the Band, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Johnny Winter were firmly under contract, and those names remaining on Michael’s list of available top stars (and only the biggest names were being sought to cap off the event) were rapidly filling in their schedules with other dates. A good two months’ lead time was absolutely essential for wrapping up negotiations with managers, and that date was approaching with alarming speed. The Moody Blues had decided not to play the festival because of the long haul it would take to get them there and the obvious financial loss they would incur by doing so; Michael had offered them $5,000—a figure that barely covered their plane tickets from London. They had to pass. Jimi Hendrix, who had performed for less than $5,000 at Miami Pop only a year before, was demanding $50,000 to put in an appearance at Wallkill. Michael told Morris: “We don’t need him at that price, but keep all channels open to Mike Jefferies [his manager]. He’ll come around sooner or later.”

  “There’s always Sly,” Morris suggested, knowing Lang had already rejected that idea twice before.

  “We’ll see. Don’t make any deals for him yet. The way things are going, he’ll have plenty of free dates left for the summer. No one’s taking a chance with him. Keep Sly hanging as a last resort.”

  One chance that Lang had decided to take was with a virtually unknown performer whom Artie had brought to his attention a month before the staff’s move to Wallkill. Artie had disappeared for a few days without telling anyone where he could be contacted. When he resurfaced, he casually told Lang that he had “gone to the Islands to do a little gambling” and had met a “real together cat” named Denny Cordell at one of the casinos. Cordell was a rock manager who insisted that Kornfeld listen to a new act he was producing.

  “Send me a record,” Artie said, a typical record-executive response.

  “I’ll do better than that, man,—I’ll give you the single we’ve just done and you can tell me right away what you think.”

  Artie feigned enthusiasm and halfheartedly accepted Cordell’s invitation. He soon made a complete about-face.

  The record was called “Feelin’ Alright,” and Artie thought the singer, a growling Englishman named Joe Cocker, was just about the most exciting new voice he had ever heard.

  “You gotta get into this guy, Michael,” Artie insisted. “We gotta grab him to do the festival before he gets hot.”

  Lang listened and was “blown away.” He agreed that Cocker would make a great “discovery” for them to introduce at Woodstock and instructed Kornfeld to make introductions. Artie had one of Cordell’s business cards and, within a few days, Joe Cocker had signed to open Sunday afternoon’s show at a mutually acceptable price of $2,750. It was perhaps the first bargain, other than Santana, they had gotten since putting the show together.

  Sunday’s format was shaping up to include “the rest of the world”—groups who were hard-rockers and mostly English. The Beatles were still a possibility—even though Lennon had suggested otherwise—and Lang had kept a spot open for them should they eventually be convinced of Woodstock’s eminence. But there was room on the bill for three more acts, and “they had to be killers.”

  Morris called Frank Barsalona who was head of Premier Talent, the most influential
hard-rock booking agency in the United States. Barsalona quickly sold him the Jeff Beck Group and Ten Years After for a combined price of $18,000. Beck had earned his reputation by replacing Eric Clapton as the lead guitarist of the Yardbirds. When that group broke up in 1967, Beck formed a new band featuring a young singer named Rod Stewart who belted British blues standards more powerfully than anyone else on the scene. Ten Years After was an equally up-and-coming progressive blues band, having made their first American appearance a few months before with a dazzling guitarist named Alvin Lee. Some critics invested Lee with the title of Clapton’s logical heir, which aroused national interest in the group. Lee, the Woodstock people were informed, had a bad back and was canceling unimportant dates to recuperate, but his manager, Dee Anthony, guaranteed he would be at Woodstock ready to play if he personally had to bring Alvin in on a stretcher.

  With Jimi Hendrix temporarily in cold storage, they still needed a headliner, a group or performer whose appearance would be welcomed with mounting anticipation and would send the audience back to their respective cities reeling with delight. Barsalona had mentioned that the Who would be in the United States during that time, but he seriously doubted that they could be convinced to add another city to their overcrowded tour at that late a date. They were slated to close out their American obligation two weeks before Woodstock, and then they were leaving. They desperately needed a vacation, he told Morris, after which they were prepared to begin work on a long-overdue album. After some gentle prodding, Barsalona consented to ask anyway.

  In the meantime, Morris learned that while the Who were going back to England when they were through in America, they had to return two weeks later to put in a promised appearance at Tanglewood for Bill Graham—the same weekend as the festival. He called Barsalona and said that if they would do the festival, Morris would arrange to have a helicopter pick them up at Tanglewood, shuttle them to Woodstock and then directly to Kennedy Airport for their trip back—anything, as long as they said “yes.” Unfortunately, it was to no avail. Peter Townshend, the group’s leader, wanted nothing to do with another American date.

  “We need them badly, Frank,” Morris begged. “I’ll do anything. Can’t we work out some kind of deal where Graham and I both get them for some fantastic sum?”

  Morris was told that a few thousand dollars more meant nothing to a band that made millions yearly. They preferred their sanity, and that meant a quick escape back to the motherland.

  “Look, I know I shouldn’t do this,” Barsalona said, “but my wife and I are having Peter over to our house for dinner tomorrow night. Why don’t you come too, and we’ll see if we can work on him. It’s your only hope.”

  Morris hung up with Barsalona and simultaneously informed Joyce Mitchell that he was going home to sleep. “In the middle of the afternoon?” she asked. John explained that it was a well-known fact among rock execs that Frank Barsalona was an incurable insomniac; people knew that if they arrived for dinner at Barsalona’s house at seven o’clock in the evening, they might not leave until nine the next morning. “I need all the rest I can get. This looks like it’s going to be the toughest fight yet. Barsalona may very well set a new Guiness record for Most Hours Awake.”

  Barsalona and Morris had agreed beforehand they would combine their talents to “do a number on Townshend.” But as they sat down to heaping bowls of spaghetti and meatballs, the Who’s guitarist made his position clear. “We’re not coming back, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “You’ve got to,” Barsalona protested. “First of all, you can’t fuck Bill Graham. And secondly, you really should do Woodstock. It’s going to turn into one of the biggest events in the world. It’ll be fantastic, and you’ll kick yourselves later for missing it. You’ll have the prestige of playing Tanglewood one night, and doing the biggest festival in history the next.”

  “I’m exhausted, man, and I want to get home.”

  The subject was dropped for the moment, but Barsalona and Morris had only begun their windup for the fast pitch.

  After dinner, the guests and their host moved into the living room; Frank and John sat facing each other in armchairs while Townshend took up a position on the floor amidst Barsalona’s pre-Columbian artifacts. Talk turned to the Who’s future projects—an album, a new rock opera, perhaps even a motion picture. Every time Townshend was permitted to explain one of those areas, Barsalona brought up the festival.

  “You guys are trying to get me to give in, aren’t you?” Townshend asked. “Well, it’s no use. We’re not gonna do it.”

  The Who’s manager, John Wolff, arrived at one o’clock in the morning and shifted the conversation to anecdotes about the current tour. Somehow, Barsalona always led them back to Woodstock without being too pushy. No more dates would be considered under any circumstance, Wolff said. The group was on the verge of physical collapse; they needed an immediate rest; they should not even play Tanglewood. Barsalona “practically had to sit on him.” He and Morris then had to work on the irascible Wolff for a few hours to “calm him down.” Without his support, the Who would never appear at Woodstock.

  Through all this, Townsend was slumped in the corner, asleep. Barsalona shook him every few minutes to keep him awake. It was a modernized version of rack torture, Morris thought. Sooner or later, their victim would “break” and agree to anything—which was not very far off from what actually happened.

  As the clock struck eight the next morning, Barsalona and Morris’s filibuster was still raging. Townshend’s resistance was crumbling. Finally, he looked up at both of them with red eyes and dark shadows above his cheekbones. “All right—I give in. I’ll do it. As long as you let me go home and go to bed.”

  “How much?” Wolff asked.

  Morris swallowed. Price was one thing they hadn’t discussed beforehand. There was a problem. Lang had told him that, in case it took the full $50,000 to get Jimi Hendrix, Morris could only spend another $10,000 total on bands. Not a cent more. Graham was giving the Who $12,500 for their Tanglewood performance. How was he going to be able to tell them that “the biggest rock festival in the world” could not match Graham’s price?

  “Ten grand. That’s all we can do.”

  All of a sudden, Townshend was awake. “What!? Are you kidding?”

  Assuring him that he certainly was not, it took Morris another two hours to convince the guitarist that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair’s funds had been depleted by exaggerated costs. By ten o’clock that morning, however, everyone left Barsalona to his sleep. Promises had been made, hands shaken. The Who would play Woodstock on Sunday, August 17, 1969. The price they had agreed upon was $12,500. Bill Graham had struck again.

  6

  Wes Pomeroy arrived in Wallkill on June 15 amidst all the pandemonium between his young associates and the town board. Michael briefed Pomeroy on the trouble, assured him everything was under control, and asked to see the budget Wes had been assigned to prepare for the security operation.

  “I couldn’t come up with a budget.”

  Michael’s eyes became inquisitive slits. He had counted on Pomeroy’s dependability, had not given the assignment a second thought since their earlier meeting in New York City. Lang needed a security breakdown urgently to wave in front of the board’s frosty stares. The residents of the town, he explained to Wes, wanted to be assured of police protection from the hippies before anything else; that was really the issue—not drugs or sex or even loud music.

  “I know what you’re saying, but that doesn’t help me to arrive at a more conclusive proposal. We don’t even know that we have any land. You say you can get that overpass finished quickly; if you don’t, we’re in real trouble. We’re also being pushed by people who are frightened. You see, we’re dealing with several levels of human comprehension here, and I just can’t come up with a budget because I haven’t been able to figure out how many men I’m going to need to appease them. We certain
ly won’t need many. If our idea works about a central culture that encourages peace-keeping among the people themselves, we don’t need cops. At all. But we cannot say that publicly because people are scared. They’ll climb the walls with fear if our plan is exposed.”

  John and Joel made a rare visit to the site and walked in on the middle of Pomeroy’s discussion. Wes greeted them warmly and told them he appreciated that the majority of the festival’s principals were on hand to hear what he had to say. “I’ve got to say something once to you, and then I’ll never mention it again,” he began uncomfortably. “What I’m saying is not judgmental. It doesn’t mean a damn to me what anybody uses here. I’m no longer in the police business, I’m a consultant. But I do know that drug enforcement is so important to a lot of police agencies and police officers. And you guys are really quite vulnerable. You’ve put a lot of money on the line and have a lot of things riding on this festival—not to mention your professional reputations. The whole thing could be blown out of the water with one chickenshit little marijuana bust. So I strongly suggest that you make a hard and fast rule that there be no use of any drugs by any of your staff during the planning process, anywhere near this site or anywhere we go together.”

  Michael explained to him that he and Mel had already made speeches of that nature to the staff.

  Pomeroy’s eyes narrowed. “Then make another one. They’re playing games with you. Don’t pussyfoot around it. It’s your necks, not theirs.” Later, he expressed a desire to meet with the three of them along with Stanley Goldstein, Don Ganoung, and Mel Lawrence sometime that evening so they could become acquainted and go over his plans. Everyone agreed upon midnight for a field office rendezvous. The hour, someone said, seemed a fitting time for them to conspire against the town. No one laughed at this statement.