“What kind of trip are you on, man, swimming naked in my pool?”

epub with thanks to the original sharer

The Strip would be packed with people, back then. A lot of them drove by just to see the styles we were wearing. We sure didn’t disappoint them. We were as freaked-out looking as you would want to see. To me, it was just a way of expressing freedom. I never liked suits and still don’t. There we were, the talk of the town, and all from an idea I had about how and what I thought it could be. I’d see a lot of straight people just coming by to look at what they called ‘the freaks.’ The crowds congregating after gigs every night at Ben Frank’s grew so large that the cops were always there. What kind of hangout is it when you’re getting harassed all the time? So we took the crowd somewhere else, a place called Canter’s, on Fairfax, and did we start something or what? Everyone who was anyone would come to Canter’s, after hours. Just about everyone that was in the audience when we played followed us to the place. I didn’t know a sidewalk could fit that many people. I remember playing the Hullabaloo in LA, right across the street from the Hollywood Palladium, on Sunset, where Buffalo Springfield were playing. Our side of the street was packed from corner to corner but their side was practically bare. It’s safe to say we were the number one group on the West Coast when we went to play the Fillmore in San Francisco. We headlined at the Fillmore and I remember I had to stand and listen to Janis Joplin scream. She was the great white hope for the blues, but all she did was scream. You see, people think that when white people scream that it’s soul. But that isn’t soul, it’s just screaming.

epub with thanks to the original sharer

Many people found the band not just surly but intimidating, profoundly at odds with the prevailing spirit of peace and . . . well, love. LA music writer Jerry Hopkins, who briefly managed them, said they should have been called Fist, while in San Francisco they were regarded with even more opprobrium: the fanzine Mojo Navigator called them “a bunch of hoods,” and Pete Albin of Big Brother And The Holding Company referred to them as Hate. . . . When KPIA Beat’s Rochelle Reed interviewed them in June 1966 in the legendary “Castle” . . . they treated her abominably, psyching her out with mind games and telling her they’d met during a gang fight.