High Notes: A Rock Memoir Working with Rock Legends Jefferson Airplane Through The Doors to the Grateful Dead by Richard Loren with Stephen Abney. East Pond Publishing, 268 pages.
Richard Loren’s new memoir about the ’60s and ’70s revisits a time when a nascent rock scene was changing the way things went down and he had a front row seat on how things played out.
Loren began his career working with established veterans such as Liberace but soon found himself involved in a burgeoning youth market where bands were waiting to break on through to the other side. The future was unwritten, anything was possible and he was the man who could make things happen.
Loren spoke to the North Shore News about working in the trenches with some of rock’s biggest acts.
North Shore News: During your career you worked in both the East Coast and West Coast music scenes at a micro level. You were there on the ground making things happen.
Richard Loren: Basically I’m an East Coast guy. I started off on the East Coast working in the summer tent theatre where I met Liberace who sprung me to work for the same company that represented him — the Agency for the Performing Arts in New York City.
I was born and raised in the New York area so that’s where I started off essentially. After three years of being an agent I kind of became disenchanted with the industry. It was wonderful working with the artists but working with the more unscrupulous people that you have to work with in that end of the business, where people are treated more or less like commodities and less as people, I didn’t like that so much.
I quit the business for awhile but I hadn’t yet met Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. I had wanted to be their agent while I was trying to secure talent to go along with the Jefferson Airplane and The Doors who I represented but they didn’t want any part of “the suits.” They wanted to do everything in-house so I was never able to represent them.
When I came back from hiatus in the agency business I met David Grisman (he was in a group called Earth Opera who I put on as the opening act for some concerts by The Doors back in ’67, ’68) on the street in New York City. He was involved with a couple of young musicians named the Rowan Brothers who were Peter Rowan’s younger brothers. He and I formed a partnership called Hieronymous Music to represent the Rowan Brothers. Get them a record deal and so on.
We were based in New York City and Jerry and the Dead came into town. David noticed that they would be appearing at the Fillmore East and he said, ‘I haven’t seen Jerry in about six years now.’ They’d met at a bluegrass festival in Virginia in 1964 when they were both kids. David was a mandolin player and Jerry played banjo and guitar. David said, ‘Let’s go check them out.’ Sure enough he gets Jerry on the phone at the Chelsea Hotel and he puts some tickets away for us. We go backstage after the show and that’s where I met Jerry for the first time. During our lengthy conversation at 4 in the morning after he had played for several hours he was still pretty energetic. David and I told him we were having a little bit of difficulty getting record deals in New York. The Rowan Brothers were a couple of young kids and it was hard to break into the industry. Jerry said, ‘Why don’t you guys move to California. There’s tons of clubs there and I will put in a good word for you.’ So that’s how I got to the West Coast.
North Shore News: On the East Coast were The Doors your first big act?
Richard Loren: No. The agency that I worked for APA had a lot of mainstream artists — Liberace, Victor Borge, Harry Belafonte. They were personal appearance artists who didn’t have a lot of appeal to younger audiences. When I was hired I was put in charge of the college concert division at APA and the colleges weren’t really interested in that. I had one fellow who befriended me from the State College of New York in Stony Brook, Long Island. He was younger than I was and really involved in the sounds of San Francisco. Somehow he contacted Bill Graham, the manager of the Jefferson Airplane at the time, and convinced them to come play at his school. They accepted that offer but they also booked two weeks at the Cafe au Go Go a very ‘in’ spot in Greenwich Village in New York City to break talent and he tipped me to the fact that the Jefferson Airplane would be playing there. I parked myself for two weeks every night at the Cafe au Go Go and befriended Bill Graham. I got along with some of the musicians, especially Marty Balin who to this day is one of my best friends.
One thing led to another and on a handshake I was booking the Jefferson Airplane. Tim Buckley, the folksinger at the time, was really my first client but my first major rock band was the Jefferson Airplane. Shortly after that, maybe two months, I was getting some gigs on the road for the Airplane on the East Coast. I got a phone call from the record company president (Elektra’s Jac Holzman) that represented The Doors. At that time “Light My Fire” wasn’t even out yet and they were playing mainly on the West Coast. He said, ‘Richard I hear you are booking the Jefferson Airplane. Bill Graham said some good things about you. Would you be interested in this new band I’ve got? They’re fantastic, they’re like nothing you’ve ever heard before. I will send over a messenger with a copy of their first album. You listen to it, tell me what you think and we’ll go from there.’
I listened to the album and I was literally, in the parlance of the ’60s, blown away. I listened to it over and over again. The next morning I called Jac and I said, ‘These guys are great.’ He said, ‘Well, go see them, they’re playing uptown at a club on the East Side. A place called Ondines.’ I went up there and I was kind of like a fly on the wall with these models and Andy Warhol and his gang. Everybody who was anybody was there. The whole package was there they were really tight. The next day I told Jac I definitely wanted to work with them. That’s how it began so I had those two in my stable of talent. A lot came after that. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Steppenwolf. Iron Butterfly. Our agency became the agency for the new rock sound.
North Shore News: How did the Airplane get involved with Jean-Luc Godard for the 1 AM movie?
Richard Loren: He asked the Airplane to appear in his One American Movie. He had the idea of putting them on top of the Schuyler Hotel (in November 1968) and doing a performance up there. Much like The Beatles did (on the roof of Apple Headquarters in London Jan. 30, 1969)
North Shore News: But you guys did it before The Beatles shot theirs.
Richard Loren: Exactly. It was kind of a setup for a bust and that was what Godard was really after. He wanted the excitement of the event ‘here’s this band playing on the top of a roof.’ He filmed them from across the street. He filmed the police, he filmed the arrest, he filmed the whole thing. Marty Balin had said, ‘Hey you’ve got to see this thing we’re doing for Jean-Luc Godard. Marty was really into film.
North Shore News: Where were you during the shoot?
Richard Loren: I was up on the roof with the band. They played the “House at Pooneil Corners.” The police came up. I saw Marty get arrested with Rip Torn and get taken away.
North Shore News: When you moved to San Francisco in 1970 what was the scene like there?
Richard Loren: It was like walking into paradise. I’d come out of the boiling heat of the summer. New York was so different from the West Coast in 1970. When you set your feet in Marin County it was like ‘Wow.’ It was three years after the Summer of Love but it still had that feeling. The scene wasn’t as new in the Haight Ashbury as it had been in ’66, ’67 but it was wonderful to be in San Francisco. During my tenure with Jerry and the Grateful Dead I lived in Marin County which was where the band were located.
North Shore News: What were the Dead like to work for?
Richard Loren: The Grateful Dead is like a family. They’re not like any other band or any other band scene. Most bands have an integral unit — the band, manager, accountants and people like that. The Grateful Dead is not that. They are a collective and one of the differences between working as an agent behind a desk in New York City and working for the Grateful Dead you become part of that collective.
Even though Jerry played outside the Grateful Dead in his own Jerry Garcia Band or Merle Saunders or with Old and in the Way their bluegrass band, the Grateful Dead came first. The music they played never became dated because they never sought fame through their music. They never repeated the same show twice. Jerry never had any desire to have a hit single. Their goal was just to play music together and play what they wanted and grow as musicians. Jerry especially. He never sought the limelight and he never was a spokesperson for any movement. He was compassionate, humble, empathetic. A wonderful guy, kind of like the Buddha of rock’n’roll. His main desire was to grow as a musician. That was his main thing — you get good by playing a lot. You have to have your chops together. He’d go to a gig two or three hours before and sit backstage and play, just by himself.
Even when he was talking to people he would have a guitar with him just playing riffs. In this manner he could really connect with his muse. Jerry came from country and from bluegrass — he was never really a blues-oriented player (like many other rock guitarists). He didn’t learn riffs he would take the music where it took him. If you listen to Jerry play it’s very free form.
North Shore News: You mentioned the Dead as a collective. I wanted to ask about some of the individuals associated with the band. What was your relationship with Mountain Girl?
Richard Loren: Mountain Girl was a very close friend of mine during those early years. She lived with Jerry at Stinson Beach. I got to know her really well. I spent a lot of time with Jerry at his home and met his young children especially during the early days when I was his personal manager.
North Shore News: Was Ken Kesey involved very much with the Dead?
Richard Loren: Yeah, it was like Kesey and the Pranksters and the Grateful Dead and their family. Two different collectives. Kesey started the Acid Tests in the ’60s and the Dead were the band that played the Acid Tests at first. They had a very strong bond with the Pranksters.
North Shore News: You lived with Marty Balin for a spell in 1970.
Richard Loren: When I first moved to San Francisco I stayed with Marty the first couple of months until David Grisman and I got our scene together. We hit it off right away, I was totally intrigued by him. We shared a lot of interests. He was interested in the metaphysical as I was. He’s an extremely talented guy.
North Shore News: There’s many highlights from the Dead years but the top one must be the Egypt trip in 1978.
Richard Loren: No doubt. The Egypt trip was a highlight of my life and in the chronicles of Grateful Dead history I would say it’s got to be near the top. As my friend Dennis McNally was kind enough to say, ‘When the Dead walked onto the stage in front of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the highest point of their illustrious ride, they had Richard Loren to thank for their trip.’ In my career it was the most important thing that I’ve ever done. Marty Balin (of the Airplane) turned me on to Egypt. He’s the real reason the Grateful Dead went to Egypt. When I was living with him I got turned on by a lot of his books on Egyptian culture — metaphysical, esoteric stuff. I was engrossed in reading and talking to him about Egypt. He was extremely well-read on the subject.
This is ’70 so I said, ‘Boy, the first chance I get I’m going to go to Egypt.’ In 1975 when the Grateful Dead went on hiatus Ken Kesey had just come back from Egypt. I’d already planned to go and he gave me a few tips. I was up in Eugene with Jerry and the Garcia band and we got to talking (about the trip). He was writing five instalments for Rolling Stone called In Search of the Secret Pyramid.
I was there for three weeks. I was riding around a pyramid on a camel and I looked over to my left and I saw a stage. It kind of hit me like a light bulb went off in my head and I thought, ‘God, the band should really play here.’ By synchronicity or good luck, who knows how these things happen, I met this guy in Luxor, Upper Egypt, hundreds of miles from Cairo and I told him about my idea. He didn’t know from the Grateful Dead or California music but he was taken by my excitement and said, ‘Maybe I can help make that happen. When you go back up to Cairo I will come with you and introduce you to a tour manager I know that helps me put some stuff together here.’ Sure enough, I met with the guy and he’d met with a couple of bureaucrats and came back two days later and said, ‘I think this could really happen.’
I went back to San Francisco and told them there’s a possibility we could play this theatre in Egypt. At a band meeting they appointed me and Phil Lesh and a colleague of mine to go on a scouting mission to lay the ground work. We put on dark suits, got our hair cut, went and met with the state department, flew to Cairo and sure enough one thing led to another and we got a signed contract to play a couple of shows. And then what made it most amazing there was a full moon and lunar eclipse on the third night.
When we finished that last concert word came onto the stage that Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin had just signed the Camp David agreement which is probably the closest we’ve ever come to peace in the Middle East. The confluence of those events was immense. It was an extraordinary phenomenon and the synergy was extremely powerful.
Clearly that was a highlight of my career. I had a lot of great moments and met many interesting people through the bands that I worked with. (The book’s) a cultural coming-of-age story. I was a kid and I paid my rights of passage with other 20 year olds that just happened to be rock icons.
