but like Henry, he had a sound of his own. He wasn't just another of the 4,297 guys who tried to sound like Eric Clapton. To the rest of us, who had gotten used to wondering whether the next lead guitar notes were going to come from the brilliant Henry or the wasted Henry, Harvey's control was a relief. We invited him into the band then and there.
Alan was devastated by Henry's leaving. Alan wanted the band to be a family, to be this sort of holy circle together, and it caused him deep pain whenever there was trouble between us. He didn't think anyone should be hurt or pushed out, and for some reason, Henry was especially important to him. Bear used to say "What are you, in love with that guy? Are you a faggot?" But Larry was all jazzed at having a lead guitar who didn't do heavy drugs. I didn't have any power but I was in favor of keeping the band together and playing, and if that meant we had Harvey, fine.
We drove right to the San Francisco airport after hiring Mandel out of the audience, slept on the plane to New York, scrambled in and out of the gig in New Jersey or wherever the hell it was and hit the Fillmore East, where there was another band we didn't know, new guys, I think making their first performance, named Sha Na Na.
Meanwhile, Harvey is learning our numbers and style as we go, learning in front of these huge audiences. With Harvey's talent and a powerful rhythm section, Alan's delicate harmonica notes and graceful rhythm guitar dancing around The Bear's gargantuan showmanship, we were getting away with it.
We were zonked, wasted, uptight, downbeat, ripped, torn and shattered. And we were supposed to be on our way to a festival called Woodstock. Big deal, just another gig, I thought, although we were sure having a hell of a lot of trouble getting to it.
So here we were hanging around the airport in Whitekill, New York for hours, waiting for our turn on the helicopter shuttle that was the only way for musicians to get to the stage, which by now was surrounded by a crowd that reached for miles in all directions, like a fortress of human bodies.
I was trying to sleep on the concrete floor of a hangar. Skip was going crazy, worrying that even if we got into the festival, we wouldn't have any instruments; from all the radio reports we heard, there was no way they could get through those traffic jams with the equipment truck.
It was after four in the afternoon, six hours after we got to the airport, that a helicopter had some passenger room. A TV crew and some reporters bolted for it, with us chasing them down the runway. They got to the chopper first but The Bear charged aboard after them.
"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" he asked.
"To report the news," a cameraman said.
"Fuck you, we're going to make the news," Bear roared, hurling the guy through the door.
He glared at the others. "We are the Canned Heat. It is more important that we get there than you, so we're taking this helicopter."
And we did. The Bear was a force of nature, like a tidal wave. Trying to stop him was like trying to stop an armored division. His hobby was breaking down doors. Really. He was always so happy when one of us got locked out of a hotel room on the road, or some dopey stage manager forgot the keys to our dressing room.
"Here, just let me take care of this," he'd growl, and there'd be this big happy flash of white teeth in his thick, black beard.
He didn't kick the door in, with a straight-ahead blow from the sole of his shoe, the way real cops do these days. He'd back up and run at the door, shoulder-first, like the heroes did in 1940s movies, and just crash through. He was always in a good mood after he got to break down a door.
The first sight of Woodstock from the air finally woke me up: A small city of a half million people. Tents and sleeping bags and blankets made little patches of blue and yellow and red on the green grass of the rolling hills for as far as I could see, from horizon to horizon.
I looked at Skip. He and The Bear were taking hits of LSD.
"Okay, man, it's cool,'' I said, "Dragging me out of that room. Look at the crowd."
I was overwhelmed that we were going to play for so many people.
As the helicopter came in, Skip stuck his brand new camera at arm's length out the door and blindly clicked off one shot. He sold the picture later for the cover of Ravi Shankar's Woodstock album.
"Holy shit," he yelled. "Look."
Down below us, we could see a familiar truck moving slowly through the crowd, casting long shadows in the late afternoon sun. It was our roadies, who had left New York with the equipment at three that morning.
The roadies. The goddamn roadies. How the hell did they do that? I read a lot of military history and I always think of the roadies as the infantrymen of rock: the grunts, the beat-up, unsung heroes that you never appreciate until your life depends on them and they come through for you, sort of like Gunga Din in the poem.
When we arrived, the Incredible String Band, the hippie group that played acoustic Medieval or Renaissance type music, was up on the stage. They had a name and all, but the audience could barely hear them. Their type of music was totally out of place. Gentle notes for Robin Hood in some English meadow. They just didn't have the power to turn on all those tripped-out young Americans watching the sun go down on Max's farm.
Skip was delighted with the timing. He had this thing about playing festivals at sunset. "If you start out with the sun going down around you and finish playing in the dark, it does something to the crowd. They think it's magic or something, man."
We did that at Monterey and Newport Beach and he was right. Those festival appearances boosted the band's rep right to the top.
Alan's parents met us behind the stage. They seemed oddly out of place, like running into your grandparents in a hot tub.
But dawdling along behind them, in cutoff denim shorts and a blue T-shirt knotted under her breasts was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. She was just slightly shorter than me, with long dark blonde hair, slightly Slavic cat's-eyes, of a deep blue color. She had the cutest damn legs and the kind of finely chiseled Anglo-Saxon features you see in parts of New England.
She was about 19, a nursing student in Boston. She and her friend Linda, a spectacular-chested brunette who was a friend of Alan's sister Sharon, had set off for Woodstock the day before in a band-new Mustang that belonged to Linda's mother. Abandoning the car in Bethel because they couldn't get any farther in the traffic jam, they walked five miles into the festival and hooked up with Sharon.
I said hello to Linda, who I had met once before with Sharon Wilson. But no matter how terrific the view of Linda's chest was, I just couldn't take my eyes off her shy friend, whose name was Diane.
The Incredible String Band was limping along toward what passed for a finale in their music. Skip was trying to push us up the steps to the stage, yelling "The sun is setting, you guys, c'mon. This is going to be perfect.''
Just looking at this girl made me nervous as hell, but I had to make a try.
"Come on up with us,'' I said.
She laughed. "Why? What can I do up there? You guys have to play.''
In the late afternoon sun, it looked like her head was surrounded by a ball of flames and I hadn't even taken any drugs except one little joint.
"I've got a job for you. Come on."
We
