Although it’s typically overshadowed by bigger occasions of the period, America’s first rock competition – the Fantasy Truthful and Magic Mountain Music Competition – was held June 10 and 11, 1967, at Mount Tamalpais in Northern California. The placement was a pure selection. The Summer time of Love was blooming in close by San Francisco and the hippie counterculture was prepared to affix collectively in celebration. Native radio station KFRC hosted the occasion, with earnings from ticket gross sales (which price $2 every) benefiting native charities.
Up till this level, outside music festivals had been extra subdued affairs, centered on jazz or folks.
Maria Muldaur, who carried out on the Fantasy Truthful with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, instructed Rolling Stone that “the portent of issues turning into rock festivals was when [Bob] Dylan first performed electrical at Newport [in 1965]. The ‘various way of life’ – the hipsters, the jazz aficionados – have been already drawn to Newport, however issues have been slightly extra buttoned-down and straight. There have been nonetheless vestiges of the ’50s.”
As America’s first rock fest, the Fantasy Truthful would dramatically change the competition blueprint.
For starters, street entry to the picturesque competition website was restricted. Attendees needed to park in close by Marin and take rented college buses to the occasion, dubbed the “Trans-Love” bus line. In the meantime, the native Hells Angels bike gang was enlisted to maintain the peace.
“They weren’t employed,” competition co-producer Tom Rounds later clarified. “It was their turf and we wanted their help. I don’t assume it was our intention to make use of them as safety; it was simply our intention to have them current to be fearsome. [Laughs.] It was completely nonconfrontational, simply them being there mentioned, ‘OK, there’s regulation and order.’”
The Fantasy Truthful additionally performed up its theme, with decorations together with a large inflatable Buddha balloon and banners displaying every astrological signal. Cubicles and tents housed a wide selection of native retailers promoting meals, jewellery, handmade candles, clothes, bongs and virtually another trinket you can dream up.
“The honest half was based mostly on the Renaissance Gala’s the place individuals dressed up in costumes for interval items and so they had jugglers, acrobats and folks reciting previous poetry,” famous Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady. “It was a part of the entire attraction of the competition – of getting numerous proficient individuals of their neighborhood capable of specific their expertise in so many alternative methods.”
“There have been youngsters sliding down the hill on cardboard, individuals promoting trinkets and incense, portray faces, all types of individuals within the woods smoking pot — that was probably the most superb factor,” photographer Elaine Mayes instructed Marin Journal.
“There have been cops all over the place, and no person paid any consideration. That had by no means occurred earlier than.”
Watch Fan-Shot Footage From Fantasy Truthful and Magic Mountain Music Competition
Regardless of all of the accoutrement, the Fantasy Truthful was nonetheless a music competition. Organizers delivered an eclectic lineup, together with Jefferson Airplane, Canned Warmth, Dionne Warwick, the Byrds, Steve Miller Blues Band and – in one among their greatest gigs exterior of L.A. at that time – the Doorways.
“I keep in mind seeing the Doorways and pondering it was extra theater than music,” John York, who was enjoying with the Byrds on the time, later recalled. “Jim [Morrison] was like Hamlet or Macbeth; he’s created some type of a personality that generates this power the place individuals need to see what occurs subsequent.”
Sadly, the Doorways singer wasn’t precisely on his sport.
“Morrison was shit-faced drunk and there have been these two poles on the nook of the stage that held lighting,” long-time San Francisco music critic Joel Selvin later recalled. “He was swinging round it. One minute he was there, the opposite, he wasn’t. He fell off the stage about 15 toes, however got here again and completed the music like nothing occurred.”
See Footage of the Doorways at Fantasy Truthful and Magic Mountain Music Competition
The Doorways’ efficiency was simply one of many weekend’s memorable moments. The Byrds delivered their set with a stagehand as their drummer. “He had no concept who we have been; he simply acknowledged that we have been 4 guys on stage with guitars and a bass however no drummer,” York recalled. Unable to discover a spare set of drumsticks, the stagehand performed utilizing the broken-off legs of a espresso desk. “He didn’t know the songs. He simply listened to the music and performed. And nobody was upset with what he appeared like.”
Nonetheless, the trippiest efficiency of the fest belonged to Captain Beefheart. Throughout his Magic Band’s second music, one thing came to visit namesake frontman Don Van Vliet.
“Don utterly froze,” drummer John French mentioned. “I see Don flip round, panicked, and stroll off the again of the stage like there was no drop and fall off.” In keeping with French, Van Vliet suffered an intense acid flashback. “He was wanting down at this woman [from the stage] and her face become a fish and bubbles got here out of her mouth.” Captain Beefheart wasn’t the one one seeing issues on the Fantasy Truthful. By all accounts, drug use was rampant. “Everyone was doing acid, if nothing else,” admitted Artwork Resnick of the band Salvation. “It was San Francisco within the Summer time of Love, for Christ’s sake. After all of the medicine and shit, man, I don’t even keep in mind enjoying.”
Watch Novice Footage From Fantasy Truthful and Magic Mountain Music Competition
The Fantasy Truthful was celebrated by attendees and hailed within the native press as an enormous success. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as “wild sound and wild colours, skydivers and side-shows, weird hippies from the Haight-Ashbury and T-shirted fraternity boys from Cal, younger individuals necking. … There was one thing for everyone.”
Regardless of breaking new floor and establishing many parts which can be nonetheless utilized in music festivals at the moment, the Fantasy Truthful and Magic Mountain occasion has been largely forgotten. The Monterey Pop Competition passed off per week later adopted by 1969’s Woodstock, and they’re generally held because the period’s most traditionally vital fests.
“[Fantasy Fair] was a weekend that symbolized how we have been and the way we felt on the time,” singer-songwriter Penny Nichols later defined. “By the point Monterey comes round, now we’re all feeling self-aware of how essential we’re.”
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