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Forty years ago today -- September 7, 1972 -- the Jefferson Airplane played the San Diego Sports Arena. This was one of the Airplane's final concerts with their "classic" lineup, which split up two weeks later following a San Francisco date.
Onstage at the Sports Arena were Paul Kantner, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and Grace Slick. Singer Marty Balin had left the band, and drummer Joey Covington had quit in April, to be replaced by John Barbata from the Turtles.
Future Jefferson Starship members David Freiberg and Papa John Creach were also on board for this show, recorded for the original Airplane's final album, Long John Silver.
Country-ish rockers Poco opened, playing a short set that included "Consequently So Long," with Jorma Kaukonen guesting on the latter.
Just two weeks earlier, the band had threatened to cancel the remainder of the tour, after Slick was maced by police and Kantner slightly injured in a fight during an Akron, Ohio, concert. Someone in the band's crew allegedly called the police "pigs" from the stage, sparking the melee: the crewmember -- Jack Casady's brother Chick -- was dragged off the stage and arrested.
September 7 has hosted several other notable local shows through the years, according to http://www.sandiegoconcertarchive.com :
09/07/74 Sly & the Family Stone, Balboa Stadium
09/07/84 REM, Fox Theater
09/07/85 Dire Straits, SDSU Open Air Theatre
09/07/93 Anthrax, White Zombie, Starlight Bowl
09/07/94 Bette Midler, San Diego Sports Arena
Also this week in Local Rock History:
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31077/
September 2, 1977: On this date, local concertgoers could choose from Mahogany Rush at the Civic Theater, Leon Russell at SDSU's Open Air Amphitheatre, and Bob Marley at the Civic Theatre.
The Marley show, however, (and the rest of his tour) was canceled, because a cancerous growth had been found on one of Marley's toes. The press was told he'd injured his foot while playing soccer. When a toe had to be amputated, Marley refused, saying it was against his Rastafarian beliefs.
He died of cancer three and a half years later.
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31073/
September 15, 1983: Elvis Costello and the Attractions played an experimental "amphitheater seating" show at the Sports Arena with two thirds of the venue blocked off. The bands (Aztec Camera opened) were set up in the rear of the venue and played to what would normally be the worst seats in the house.
Only about a third of the 3500 seats were filled, despite the success of Costello's most commercial effort up to that time (Punch the Clock).
Security guards let in people without tickets, but the exodus of patrons outnumbered those coming in, and the Attractions finished their (mostly inaudible) set for fewer than a thousand fans. "Amphitheater seating" at the Sports Arena died soon after.
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31078/
September 1, 1985: Black Flag, the Minutemen, and SWA played Palisade Gardens Roller Rink on University near 30th. Police stopped the show four times due to noise complaints. Nearby businesses frequently petitioned owner Johnnie Wright to shut down Palisade's concerts. The shows stopped soon after this one, but what a helluva show it was!
September 11, 1966: Del Mar was renamed “Clarksville” for the day, as part of a promotion for the Monkees TV show, which would debut the following night.
The Sunday event was historic for pop/rock music, as it marked the first time the foursome ever performed music in public.
Ron Jacobs was a DJ at L.A. radio station KHJ at the time. “One of Boss Radio’s most exciting promotions was staging an actual Last Train to Clarksville,” he says on his website. “A few hundred KHJ winners rode to ‘Clarksville,’ the city of Del Mar…whose train station was hustled by promotions director Don Berrigan.”
“The tenth callers would get two free tickets to the Last Train to Clarksville,” recalls KHJ promotions associate Barbara Hamaker in the Mike Nesmith biography Total Control. “To this day, I don’t know how we did it. I was the one who had to type up all the releases and all of the stuff that was involved in getting kids onto the train…we used some Podunk town called Del Mar.”
According to Ron Jacobs, “Once the winners debarked there and ate their fried-chicken lunch, whackatawack, a quartet of helicopters slowly alit near the train.” There were four helicopters, because each one held a single Monkee!
Once the Monkees emerged and converged from their respective aircraft, dressed in their double-breasted costumes (designed by Gene Ashman), they were greeted enthusiastically by both contest winners and curious locals who’d been told they’d be meeting “the next Beatles.”
The mayor of Del Mar was there to give the quartet the keys to the city (or at least the town), officially declaring the town “Clarksville” and nailing up a sign near the train depot saying so. The Monkees single “Last Train to Clarksville” was at #61 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, though it would shortly hit number one.
The song’s original title had been “Last Train to Home, Girl."
“It’s good we decided on Clarksville,” Peter Tork told reporters. “Can you just see the mayor saying ‘I now proclaim this the city of Home Girl’?”
Micky Dolenz talked to the press about the group’s rising profile. “We really don’t know where it’s at yet. I mean, like, we just got back from the [publicity] tour, and then we got up this morning, flew down to San Diego, took a helicopter to Del Mar, and now we’re on a train to L.A.”
Says Jacobs, “The four soon-to-be American Idols boarded the caboose and picked up instruments that were set up and waiting, as the Monkees played their first live music in public.”
The two songs performed were “Papa Gene's Blues,” written by Mike Nesmith, and a cover of “She's So Far Out, She's In” by Baker Knight (also released as a single by Dino, Desi & Billy in May ‘66). “By the time the train pulled into Union Station,” says Jacobs, “the rumor that the fellows were lip-synching their stuff had been put to rest.”
The Monkees debut episode was also screened for the 400 or so contest winners, who had left L.A. at noon and returned just before 8 p.m.
The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC the following night, quickly becoming popular enough to nearly qualify the “next Beatles” hyperbole as prophetic.
The live “Clarksville” performance was filmed by KHJ for an L.A. TV show called BossCity, which aired it on September 17, 1966. “That footage is lost and has never turned up on the collector’s circuit,” says local Monkees memorabilia dealer Duane Dimock, aka Ed Finn, co-author of The Monkees Scrapbook.
“All that exists is some silent black-and-white 8mm footage that shows a person donned in a gorilla suit, crawling and pounding his chest along the tops of buildings. The Monkees show up in their classic long sleeved, double breasted shirts, get off the train, and they move through the crowd to the stage. A prior band had been warming up mostly teenage kids. Then you see the Monkees waving at the crowd from the train.”
The late Davy Jones had fond memories of the day KHJ made a Monkee out of him. “I was a jockey, so of course Del Mar was a big part of that life,” he told the Reader in 2006. “When you see that ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ video, I mean in the [Monkees] TV show, that’s really Del Mar the train goes to…it was really grand fun, even though nobody had really heard of us yet.”
HOWEVER – tho the Del Mar event was the first time the Monkees performed in public, the very first time the band EVER performed music together was ALSO in San Diego – a year before the Clarksville promotion!
In mid-November 1965, the foursome shot scenes for the pilot episode “Royal Flush” at the Hotel Del Coronado, including the country club and bar sequences. Exterior scenes were filmed on the beach near the Hotel; this footage would also turn up in the series original title sequence, as well as throughout the episode “Here Come the Monkees.”
West Coast Iron Works guitarist Gary Carter was a sophomore at Coronado High School at the time, and he recalls the Friday afternoon he and two friends stumbled across the Monkees on the Hotel Del beachfront. “We noticed them in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and a guy filming them with a handheld camera,” he says.
“We had no idea who they were…During a break, we struck up a conversation with Davy Jones, and he asked us if we could take him to Tijuana! We explained that we were underage and not allowed to cross the border.”
Jones invited the teens to dinner with the band that evening in the Hotel Del’s Crown room, along with crew members, potential network affiliates, and, in the case of Micky Dolenz, groupies. “That was when I recognized him as the grown up kid [Micky Braddock] from the Circus Boy TV show,” says Carter, “and he had six or seven of the most beautiful Hollywood starlets anyone has ever seen at his table with him.”
“As the evening progressed, they [the Monkees] started having fun with each other. I don’t remember which one it was, but someone picked up this big bowl of shrimp cocktail and tossed it…soon, it was a full-on food fight, and we had to leave the table to avoid getting food all over us. I was horrified [for the Hotel]…the carpet in that room alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars.”
The messy dinner notwithstanding, Carter accepted Jones’ invitation to return the following day, to watch a TV scene being filmed in the Hotel’s Circus Room (seen in the series pilot).
(Monkees invade the Hotel Del)
This shoot marked the first time the Monkees ever played musical instruments all in one room together, as they plugged into the prop amps between setups and took a shot at a few old Chuck Berry and folk numbers.
“I got the hint from watching that their show was a satire of the Beatles, which I personally took offense at,” says Carter, who got bored after a couple of hours and departed the shooting.
“On the way out, I stuck my head into the Crown Room, and a bunch of people were still cleaning up the mess from the food fight. They were really pissed off.”
All four Monkees were banned from the Hotel Del, collectively and individually, until September 2004, when Davy Jones returned with his band to perform at a private function. “Memories flooded the moment as we checked in and walked down the longest and widest corridors,” he wrote on his website davyjones.net.
“The concert for a couple hundred execs went down well,” says Jones, “and a couple of convention goers helped me sing ‘Daydream Believer’ and ‘I'm a Believer’ to rapturous applause. A good time was had by all."
"By Thursday, I made my way to the beach and shrunk my vitals. Extreme cold sea.”
Forty years ago today -- September 7, 1972 -- the Jefferson Airplane played the San Diego Sports Arena. This was one of the Airplane's final concerts with their "classic" lineup, which split up two weeks later following a San Francisco date.
Onstage at the Sports Arena were Paul Kantner, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and Grace Slick. Singer Marty Balin had left the band, and drummer Joey Covington had quit in April, to be replaced by John Barbata from the Turtles.
Future Jefferson Starship members David Freiberg and Papa John Creach were also on board for this show, recorded for the original Airplane's final album, Long John Silver.
Country-ish rockers Poco opened, playing a short set that included "Consequently So Long," with Jorma Kaukonen guesting on the latter.
Just two weeks earlier, the band had threatened to cancel the remainder of the tour, after Slick was maced by police and Kantner slightly injured in a fight during an Akron, Ohio, concert. Someone in the band's crew allegedly called the police "pigs" from the stage, sparking the melee: the crewmember -- Jack Casady's brother Chick -- was dragged off the stage and arrested.
September 7 has hosted several other notable local shows through the years, according to http://www.sandiegoconcertarchive.com :
09/07/74 Sly & the Family Stone, Balboa Stadium
09/07/84 REM, Fox Theater
09/07/85 Dire Straits, SDSU Open Air Theatre
09/07/93 Anthrax, White Zombie, Starlight Bowl
09/07/94 Bette Midler, San Diego Sports Arena
Also this week in Local Rock History:
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31077/
September 2, 1977: On this date, local concertgoers could choose from Mahogany Rush at the Civic Theater, Leon Russell at SDSU's Open Air Amphitheatre, and Bob Marley at the Civic Theatre.
The Marley show, however, (and the rest of his tour) was canceled, because a cancerous growth had been found on one of Marley's toes. The press was told he'd injured his foot while playing soccer. When a toe had to be amputated, Marley refused, saying it was against his Rastafarian beliefs.
He died of cancer three and a half years later.
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31073/
September 15, 1983: Elvis Costello and the Attractions played an experimental "amphitheater seating" show at the Sports Arena with two thirds of the venue blocked off. The bands (Aztec Camera opened) were set up in the rear of the venue and played to what would normally be the worst seats in the house.
Only about a third of the 3500 seats were filled, despite the success of Costello's most commercial effort up to that time (Punch the Clock).
Security guards let in people without tickets, but the exodus of patrons outnumbered those coming in, and the Attractions finished their (mostly inaudible) set for fewer than a thousand fans. "Amphitheater seating" at the Sports Arena died soon after.
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/sep/07/31078/
September 1, 1985: Black Flag, the Minutemen, and SWA played Palisade Gardens Roller Rink on University near 30th. Police stopped the show four times due to noise complaints. Nearby businesses frequently petitioned owner Johnnie Wright to shut down Palisade's concerts. The shows stopped soon after this one, but what a helluva show it was!
September 11, 1966: Del Mar was renamed “Clarksville” for the day, as part of a promotion for the Monkees TV show, which would debut the following night.
The Sunday event was historic for pop/rock music, as it marked the first time the foursome ever performed music in public.
Ron Jacobs was a DJ at L.A. radio station KHJ at the time. “One of Boss Radio’s most exciting promotions was staging an actual Last Train to Clarksville,” he says on his website. “A few hundred KHJ winners rode to ‘Clarksville,’ the city of Del Mar…whose train station was hustled by promotions director Don Berrigan.”
“The tenth callers would get two free tickets to the Last Train to Clarksville,” recalls KHJ promotions associate Barbara Hamaker in the Mike Nesmith biography Total Control. “To this day, I don’t know how we did it. I was the one who had to type up all the releases and all of the stuff that was involved in getting kids onto the train…we used some Podunk town called Del Mar.”
According to Ron Jacobs, “Once the winners debarked there and ate their fried-chicken lunch, whackatawack, a quartet of helicopters slowly alit near the train.” There were four helicopters, because each one held a single Monkee!
Once the Monkees emerged and converged from their respective aircraft, dressed in their double-breasted costumes (designed by Gene Ashman), they were greeted enthusiastically by both contest winners and curious locals who’d been told they’d be meeting “the next Beatles.”
The mayor of Del Mar was there to give the quartet the keys to the city (or at least the town), officially declaring the town “Clarksville” and nailing up a sign near the train depot saying so. The Monkees single “Last Train to Clarksville” was at #61 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, though it would shortly hit number one.
The song’s original title had been “Last Train to Home, Girl."
“It’s good we decided on Clarksville,” Peter Tork told reporters. “Can you just see the mayor saying ‘I now proclaim this the city of Home Girl’?”
Micky Dolenz talked to the press about the group’s rising profile. “We really don’t know where it’s at yet. I mean, like, we just got back from the [publicity] tour, and then we got up this morning, flew down to San Diego, took a helicopter to Del Mar, and now we’re on a train to L.A.”
Says Jacobs, “The four soon-to-be American Idols boarded the caboose and picked up instruments that were set up and waiting, as the Monkees played their first live music in public.”
The two songs performed were “Papa Gene's Blues,” written by Mike Nesmith, and a cover of “She's So Far Out, She's In” by Baker Knight (also released as a single by Dino, Desi & Billy in May ‘66). “By the time the train pulled into Union Station,” says Jacobs, “the rumor that the fellows were lip-synching their stuff had been put to rest.”
The Monkees debut episode was also screened for the 400 or so contest winners, who had left L.A. at noon and returned just before 8 p.m.
The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC the following night, quickly becoming popular enough to nearly qualify the “next Beatles” hyperbole as prophetic.
The live “Clarksville” performance was filmed by KHJ for an L.A. TV show called BossCity, which aired it on September 17, 1966. “That footage is lost and has never turned up on the collector’s circuit,” says local Monkees memorabilia dealer Duane Dimock, aka Ed Finn, co-author of The Monkees Scrapbook.
“All that exists is some silent black-and-white 8mm footage that shows a person donned in a gorilla suit, crawling and pounding his chest along the tops of buildings. The Monkees show up in their classic long sleeved, double breasted shirts, get off the train, and they move through the crowd to the stage. A prior band had been warming up mostly teenage kids. Then you see the Monkees waving at the crowd from the train.”
The late Davy Jones had fond memories of the day KHJ made a Monkee out of him. “I was a jockey, so of course Del Mar was a big part of that life,” he told the Reader in 2006. “When you see that ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ video, I mean in the [Monkees] TV show, that’s really Del Mar the train goes to…it was really grand fun, even though nobody had really heard of us yet.”
HOWEVER – tho the Del Mar event was the first time the Monkees performed in public, the very first time the band EVER performed music together was ALSO in San Diego – a year before the Clarksville promotion!
In mid-November 1965, the foursome shot scenes for the pilot episode “Royal Flush” at the Hotel Del Coronado, including the country club and bar sequences. Exterior scenes were filmed on the beach near the Hotel; this footage would also turn up in the series original title sequence, as well as throughout the episode “Here Come the Monkees.”
West Coast Iron Works guitarist Gary Carter was a sophomore at Coronado High School at the time, and he recalls the Friday afternoon he and two friends stumbled across the Monkees on the Hotel Del beachfront. “We noticed them in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, and a guy filming them with a handheld camera,” he says.
“We had no idea who they were…During a break, we struck up a conversation with Davy Jones, and he asked us if we could take him to Tijuana! We explained that we were underage and not allowed to cross the border.”
Jones invited the teens to dinner with the band that evening in the Hotel Del’s Crown room, along with crew members, potential network affiliates, and, in the case of Micky Dolenz, groupies. “That was when I recognized him as the grown up kid [Micky Braddock] from the Circus Boy TV show,” says Carter, “and he had six or seven of the most beautiful Hollywood starlets anyone has ever seen at his table with him.”
“As the evening progressed, they [the Monkees] started having fun with each other. I don’t remember which one it was, but someone picked up this big bowl of shrimp cocktail and tossed it…soon, it was a full-on food fight, and we had to leave the table to avoid getting food all over us. I was horrified [for the Hotel]…the carpet in that room alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars.”
The messy dinner notwithstanding, Carter accepted Jones’ invitation to return the following day, to watch a TV scene being filmed in the Hotel’s Circus Room (seen in the series pilot).
(Monkees invade the Hotel Del)
This shoot marked the first time the Monkees ever played musical instruments all in one room together, as they plugged into the prop amps between setups and took a shot at a few old Chuck Berry and folk numbers.
“I got the hint from watching that their show was a satire of the Beatles, which I personally took offense at,” says Carter, who got bored after a couple of hours and departed the shooting.
“On the way out, I stuck my head into the Crown Room, and a bunch of people were still cleaning up the mess from the food fight. They were really pissed off.”
All four Monkees were banned from the Hotel Del, collectively and individually, until September 2004, when Davy Jones returned with his band to perform at a private function. “Memories flooded the moment as we checked in and walked down the longest and widest corridors,” he wrote on his website davyjones.net.
“The concert for a couple hundred execs went down well,” says Jones, “and a couple of convention goers helped me sing ‘Daydream Believer’ and ‘I'm a Believer’ to rapturous applause. A good time was had by all."
"By Thursday, I made my way to the beach and shrunk my vitals. Extreme cold sea.”