San Francisco that he called the Fillmore West. That reminds me…I got dosed at the Avalon Ballroom one time. There was lots of acid at concerts which really brought out the sounds and the colours.
REDDON: So I’ve heard!
MALONE: Winterland was another venue that Bill Graham used. It was an ice skating rink used for the bigger events in San Francisco and the surrounding areas. Blue Cheer was also around at the time and they were fantastic. Hendrix played free in Golden Gate Park and a friend of mine grabbed me and said, “You gotta go hear this guy!” Another time I saw Hendrix, we dropped acid and he was playing a song that incorporated an extended jam. It was brilliant and I was at the side of the stage for that. I just love that Woodstock riff he played. I’ve been lucky to have been in the right place at the right time on many occasions in the 1960s. I’ve seen and heard so many talented musicians and I’m truly grateful to have been a part of it.
REDDON:
How interesting! Now, please tell me about Bill Graham’s humanitarian work in the 1960s.
MALONE: There were lots and lots of drugs around, as you can well imagine in San Francisco, throughout the 1960s. Some people seemed to handle them and get away with it. Others couldn’t and it either consumed them, killed them or both, eventually. Lots of these people on the San Francisco scene in the 1960s had bad luck…or a bad break or experience or all of that. Bill Graham would see a problem with someone and step in when he saw someone in trouble. He was aggressive and a man of action who always tried to help someone in need.
In many cases, Bill would provide them with a job in one of his businesses, to get them on the right path and help them out. He did a great deal of that. I’ve always admired and respected him for that. One way he would help all the time, is that he’d keep a big barrel of apples at the top of the stairs when you went into the Fillmore West for a concert or to pick up your tickets. Lots of times, an “apple a day” sort of thing would be enough to help someone out who might not have eaten for awhile because they were strung-out on something. Who knows? There are a million reasons why having those apples available as a healthy snack was such a great thing to do.
REDDON:
All right! What can you tell me about seeing Led Zeppelin perform at the Fillmore West on the group’s First U.S. and Canadian Tour, when the band played from January 9 through 12, 1969?
MALONE: I was very impressed with Led Zeppelin, for the same reasons I liked The Yardbirds so much. At no time did I think of Zeppelin as a blues band. You hear many people slot The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and other groups, as either “this” or “that”. You couldn’t do that with The Yardbirds and it was the same with Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin was definitely cutting edge all the way. I knew it instantly when I saw them perform in San Francisco. They had lots of different types of music mixed into whatever they were playing. You would think they were getting into one musical genre - they would give you just enough to make you think they were going in a particular music direction – and the next thing you knew, they were heading elsewhere. You were suddenly going along for a musical exploration into another totally new musical area, in a matter of seconds. They were wonderful at doing that.
It gets back to improvisation, mainly. I’ve always loved it and that’s what Zeppelin was delivering, just as The Yardbirds had. But Zeppelin was cutting edge rock’n’roll, coloured by all kinds of different musical influences along the way. It’s actually hard to describe, they were into so many things in any song they were doing live. They definitely weren’t playing bubble gum music!
As far as music coming out of San Francisco in the mid-late 1960s goes, the music and the Bay Area musicians were much less “produced”. There were local garage bands all over that were obviously greatly influenced by the English bands. Groups like The Yardbirds, Cream, Ten Years After, The Who were either listened to on record, or were coming over to the States and playing San Francisco as a tour stop. Led Zeppelin has always been a big influence in so many ways everywhere. At the start, it was here in San Francisco and they impacted the music scene in a big way when they played here. Always did.
The music that the local musicians on the San Francisco music scene were playing was completely different from the music being created and performed in Los Angeles during the mid-late 1960s. Were you aware of that?
REDDON: No, I had no idea! Can you tell me what the differences were?
MALONE: Oh yeah, it was like day and night the differences between the San Francisco music scene and the one going on in LA. The San Francisco bands were much more into raw improvisation, very extended at times. Think of The Grateful Dead and their often elaborate and lengthy improvisations. I love the long, improvised solos, as I’ve already told you once or twice! The long solos parallel the improvisational philosophies of jazz and the classics, which I love so much.
Improvisation was a mainstay for the San Francisco bands. Their records were also much less produced. They had a “take it or leave it” feel to them. What was on the records was precisely what was played, a kind of genuine effort put on the vinyl that wasn’t pretentious. You got the music the musicians offered, not a creation that was highly produced and then produced again. Groups like Big Brother and The Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish, Middle Earth and Steve Miller, to name some of them all had this feeling on their records. And when they were performing.
The Los Angeles scene by contrast? There was much more emphasis on the music’s production value. Theirs didn’t have that laid-back, experimental feeling apparent in the San Francisco bands and their recordings. Bands on the LA scene weren’t into improvising half as much as the San Francisco groups. They were much more heavily produced on record. A good example? The band that people instantly associate with the LA scene in the 1960s is The Doors. They were a slickly produced band, especially on record.
But I recognize preferences are a state of mind. I guess you could call those of us who think like I do about the respective San Francisco and LA scenes of the 1960s, somewhat elitist or musical snobs. But that’s the way it was. Those differences did exist between the two scenes and the music that’s been recorded is proof of that.
REDDON:
That’s an amazing comparison I would never have made myself. Thanks for bringing it to my attention and telling me all about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between music in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Very engrossing stuff.
Okay, given both the San Francisco and Los Angeles music scenes and the influence the British bands had on those music scenes of the U.S., how do you think Led Zeppelin fit into all of this? Was their music completely cutting edge, somewhat laid back, laid back, under-produced, over-produced, etc.? What did you think of them in comparison to what was going on in San Francisco and Los Angeles, when you first saw them at the Fillmore West in January 1969?
MALONE: That’s an amazing comparison I would never have made myself. Thanks for bringing it to my attention and telling me all about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between music in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Very engrossing stuff.
Led Zeppelin was mind-blowing when I saw them at the Fillmore West. I was never a musician but I always was very strongly connected to music in general. I expressed myself through dancing. It’s multi-dimensional: moving through time and space, creating emotion and culture. People danced at the Fillmore West, often barefoot on the parquet floor. Sometimes, you would step on a hot cigarette butt which you always wanted to avoid! We used to either sit on the floor or stand at the back or side of the stage.
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