Fifty years ago, it was clear that something unusual was
happening in San Francisco. Young people with long hair were arriving from all
over the country to be part of the “Summer of Love.” Peter Albin
was not only there, he was a founding member of one of the greatest rock ‘n’
roll groups to emerge from that scene: Big Brother and the Holding Company. To
this day, the group’s album, “Cheap Thrills,” stands as one of the quintessential
records of the era. Its singer, Janis Joplin, remains a legend.
Albin is coming through Rochester
to sign autographs and talk about the “Summer of Love” all day on Saturday,
July 15, at Bop Shop Records, 1460 Monroe Avenue. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. bopshop.com.
CITY recently reached Albin at his
home in San Francisco to discuss the “Summer of Love” and the great music scene
of half a century ago. The following is an edited version of that conversation.
CITY: Can you believe it’s been 50 years since the “Summer
of Love”?
Peter Albin: The real summer
of love was in 1966. A lot of people who were considered hippies were thinking
of new ideas and enjoying their freedom to participate in or initiate things in
the arts. There was also a lot of political free-thinking.
Was there a lot of free love during the summer?
There was a laissez-faire attitude about relationships. There
was that aspect of making love with people you’d see around the scene. As a
musician, we were in a position of being close friends with our fans.
What impact did drugs have on that scene?
I don’t think personally they were that important. It was
mostly pot. There was not much of an LSD scene at that time. Later, it became
more evident. My brother, Rodney, was involved in LSD rescue, people who had bad
trips. That year the Haight-Ashbury free medical clinic was developed to take
care of people who didn’t know how to handle very strong drugs.
In films of be-ins there’s a lot of pretty wild dancing
and nudity.
There were a lot of people who came to dance and they
couldn’t care less if they had a partner. When there was nudity, there was
usually some sort of outsize chemical involved. At the Trips Festival in 1966 a
girl got up on stage and started taking off her clothes. I was fearful that it
was going to bring the party to a stop, so I told her to put her clothes back
on, but there were private security guards, so no one got busted.
Whatever was in the air in San Francisco seemed to also
spawn one of the greatest concentrations of major bands in the 20th century.
The bands that were happening in San Francisco — it was
almost like a commune. We were seeing each other all the time. There were jam
sessions at my uncle’s house, a block off of Haight Street. People like Jerry
Garcia would be there.
Marty Balin was in a group called
the Town Criers, in the folk music days. He was auditioning people for a new
group. We found out later it was Jefferson Airplane. We would go down there and
see them rehearse.
Do you remember the first time you encountered Janis
Joplin?
In 1963, she came out for the folk music scene and I saw her
at a radio show called the Midnight Special — it started at midnight — on KPFA,
a radio station at Berkley. It was a lot of people sitting around in a circle
with a microphone hanging in the middle. My brother and I did a couple of songs
and Janis was to my left. I heard her sing and she was quite unique.
Big Brother had been together for a while before she
joined; how did you hook up with her?
We all said, “Let’s get a female vocalist,” so we started
auditioning. We knew Janis would be perfect for the group. She came in from
Austin for an audition, but it really turned out to be a rehearsal because it
was obvious that she was the person who could fill the void.
We knew she’d be the type of vocalist who would work well
with our music, which was pretty loud and crazy and had a lot of improvisation
happening. After she performed a couple of songs, we said, “We’ve got this gig
next week, I guess you’re in, right?” And she said yeah.
By 1968 there were be-ins and long-haired kids all across
the country. But it all started in San Francisco. It was almost like a tidal
wave came in from the Pacific and slowly spread across the country.
We weren’t trying to start any kind of wave. We were just
being artists and performers. Aside from the Jefferson Airplane, the
counter-cultural bands were local and underground. It wasn’t till the Monterey
Pop Festival that the word got out about the bands in San Francisco and we
started to tour nationally.
How did the straight world react to the hippies?
I remember going with the Grateful Dead up to Vancouver to a
Trips Festival, and we played the festival and then went into a coffee shop on
a main street. A waitress comes up to us and says, “I’m sorry we don’t serve
your kind here.” I said, “What kind are you talking about?” She said, “The
long-haired kind.”
We would run into that once in a while. Even in L.A. we got
stopped by the cops for brake lights, and one cop says to the other, “Is that a
guy or a girl?”And I thought, “We’re in
trouble now.”
Did the whole thing end in 1969 at Altamont when a member
of Hells Angels — hired for security — killed a man during a Rolling Stones
concert?
As far as audiences that went to large shows, that was a
disastrous development. Some people say the love went out of the audience. Not
really. There were people who didn’t know how to keep the crowd safe.
By hiring the Hells Angels for security?
Exactly.
In September 1970, Jimi Hendrix died. Sixteen days later,
Janis Joplin died. Were you shocked?
I kind of knew it was coming. She was burning the candle at
both ends. But It was weird — Jim Morrison, too. All of them were 27. That’s
too young.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2017.
