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| The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969 |
The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The
Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock,
and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the
Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the
Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized
the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their
successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and
after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted
memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through
December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are
what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.
In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.
If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.
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| 660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track |
The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.
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| One
of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great
Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969) |
The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The
Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of
San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced
the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly
named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and
foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but
rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great
Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference,
it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The
tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least
in American terms.
The Family Dog on The Great Highway was
smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up
to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike
the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from
downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to
get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great
Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing,
but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a
result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that
didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as
"Playland."
Chet Helms had opened the Family Dog at 660 Great Highway to much fanfare on June 13, 1969, with a packed house seeing the Jefferson Airplane and The Charlatans. One of the goals was that the Dog would feature mostly San Francisco bands and a variety of smaller community events and groups. Since so many San Francisco bands were successful, and had record contracts, this didn't confine the venue to obscurity. A lot of great bands played the Family Dog in 1969, but the distant location and the gravitational pull of major rock events hosted elsewhere in the Bay Area kept the Family Dog isolated. We know only the most fragmentary bits about music played, events and audiences throughout the year. Despite the half-year of struggle, Helms had kept the Family Dog on The Great Highway afloat. He had entered the new year of 1970 with a new plan.
- For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
- For the previous entry (February 6-7, 1970 Quicksilver Messenger Service) see here
- For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here
February 13-14, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Steve Miller Band/Elvin Bishop Group (Friday-Saturday)
At the end of January 1970, the Family Dog on The Great Highway had reconstructed themselves and apparently re-financed themselves. While a merger with the Grateful Dead organization had been scuttled (fortunately for both sides, since Dead manager Lenny Hart was busy ripping off the band), the Dog was on firmer footing. Even though the Dog focused on Bay Area bands, for each weekend in February and March, the Family Dog had the type of acts that would headline the Fillmore West as well. San Francisco was established enough that the "local heroes" had major label record contracts, and in many cases genuinely successful albums.
Steve Miller, for example, had moved to San Francisco from Chicago in October, 1966, seeking greener musical pastures. He had found them. Miller had rapidly formed a band in Berkeley featuring transplants from his days in Madison and Chicago. The first real paying gig for the new Steve Miller Blues Band had been when Chet Helms paid him $500 to play a weekend at the Avalon in late December, 1966. Miller used the money to take his band out to dinner and to rent an apartment on College Avenue in Berkeley, since he had been living in his VW Microbus. So Miller was original Avalon if anyone was.
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| Steve Miller Band debut album Children Of The Future (Capitol June 1968) |
In the intervening years, Miller had added another old friend to his band, one Boz Scaggs from Texas. In 1967, after shrewdly waiting for the market to ripen for San Francisco bands, the Steve Miller Band had signed a lucrative contact with Capitol Records. The band's excellent debut album Children Of The Future, recorded in London, had only come out in June, 1968. It's successor, Sailor, recorded at the same time, had come out in October and peaked at #24. Scaggs had then left to go solo, leaving the band a trio (along with drummer Tim Davis, ex-Madison, and California bassist Lonnie Turner). The radio-friendly Brave New World, with the enduring title track and "Kow Kow Kalkulator" had been released in June of 1969, reaching #22. The underrated Your Saving Grace had been released in December of 1969, still managing to reach #38. These chart numbers weren't what the Steve Miller Band would achieve in the mid-70s, but his records hadn't been ignored.
Ironically, the Steve Miller Band still hadn't played the Family Dog on The Great Highway prior to this weekend. Miller was loyal, and had headlined the November 19, 1969 benefit concert that helped save the Family Dog, so he knew who his friends were. But the fact that the Steve Miller Band hadn't headlined a weekend in 1969 was an implicit indication of the shaky finances of the Family Dog during the prior year. Here in February of 1970, the Steve Miller Band was finally on top of the bill for the whole weekend.
At this time, Miller was mostly working on recording his follow-up to Your Saving Grace, which would be released later in the year as Number 5. Tim Davis was still the drummer, but Lonnie Turner had finally left the band after three years. Replacing him on bass and vocals was Bobby Winkelmann, formerly of the East Bay band Frumious Bandersnatch. The Frumious had come from Contra Costa County, just over the Berkeley hills. At the time, there were plenty of teenagers there, but not many bands. The group was part of Bill Graham's Millard Agency, and played a lot of gigs opening for bands at Fillmore West and the like, but they had never made it over the hump. On September 29, 1968, Frumious Bandersnatch had opened a free concert in Palo Alto for the Steve Miller Band, which is where they met. Frumious Bandersnatch packed it in sometime in 1969. Ultimately, however, 4 of the 5 members of the band would end up joining the Steve Miller Band (Winkelmann, guitarist David Denny, bassist Ross Valory and drummer John King).
The Steve Miller Band were premiere Bay Area headliners, and the Family Dog on The Great Highway was finally in a position to book them. The only cloud on the horizon was that Bay Area concert promotion had a pecking order, and Bill Graham was always the top rooster. The Steve Miller Band had headlined the Fillmore West two weekends earlier (January 29-February 1, Thursday through Sunday), supported by Sha Na Na. According to Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column, it had been very well attended. That meant, of course, that the Family Dog was getting leftovers, if tasty ones. The Fillmore West booking also explains why there was almost never any "coming soon" promotions (like posters) at the Family Dog. Graham, like all promoters, would have insisted that a headliner like Miller could not advertise another Bay Area show until his Fillmore West dates were complete. Steve Miller probably still drew a pretty good crowd to the Family Dog, but Graham was getting first bite.
Elvin Bishop had been an original member of the groundbreaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band, going back to 1965. When the Butterfield band first played the Fillmore back in February '66, the twin guitars of Bishop and Mike Bloomfield, and the slashing harmonica of Butterfield made for an unforgettable front line. The Butterfield Blues Band would play their signature song "East-West" for 15 or 20 minutes, with beautiful modal jamming, while contemporary San Francisco bands were still figuring out electric instruments. When Bloomfield had left the Butterfield band in early '67 to move to San Francisco, Bishop had taken over the front line as Butter's main foil. After two more albums (Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw and In My Own Dream), Bishop himself had moved to San Francisco in mid-68.
By the end of 1968, the Elvin Bishop Group was playing regularly around the Bay Area. Bill Graham had not one but two record labels, in partnership with producer David Rubinson, and Bishop was signed to Fillmore Records, distributed by CBS. The Elvin Bishop Group album had been released in mid-1969. The Millard Agency booked Elvin Bishop all over Northern California, on the premise that even if suburban teenagers might not be allowed to come to San Francisco, Millard could bring the Fillmore West bands to them. At the time, the Elvin Bishop Group would have been
Elvin Bishop-guitar, vocals
Jo Baker-vocals
Stephen Miller-organ, vocals
Kip Mackerlin-bass
John Chambers-drums
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| Organ player Stephen Miller, from the Elvin Bishop Group, had released a solo album on Phillips in 1970 |
Stephen Miller (the "other" Stephen Miller) was from Cedar Rapids, IA, and had led the band Linn County, which had moved to San Francisco. Linn County had released three albums on Phillips (a Mercury subsidiary), while Miller had played with the Bishop Group when he could. Their last album had been Til The Break Of Dawn, released in late '69. Linn County still existed in early 1970, sort of, and played the occasional show, but Miller was full-time in the Bishop Group by now. Miller would release a solo album on Phillips in 1970, featuring members of both Linn County and the Bishop Group, probably fulfilling an obligation to the label.
The Millard Agency and Bill Graham was happy to book the Elvin Bishop Group at the Family Dog, even though the Dog was a competitor to the Fillmore West. It was probably a good paying gig, and in any case the Fillmore West had the dominant position. As I have stated in previous posts, I think Bill Graham was happy with Chet Helms as a weak but competent rival across town, rather than leaving an opening for a better capitalized threat.
For the next post in this series (Feb 20-21, 1970 Big Brother), see here
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