The In Room, Swiss Chalet, 635 Old County Road, Belmont, CA 1965

Warlocks, In Room, Belmont, Fall 1965 (photo probably by Paul Ryan)

The Warlocks made themselves into a real band with a two-month stint at a Belmont, CA, "Lounge" called The In Room. The In Room was a bar attached to a Steak House restaurant called The Swiss Chalet, at 635 Old County Road. Old County Road was a frontage road across the railroad tracks from El Camino Real. El Camino Real ran from San Jose to Daly City (where it would turn into Mission Street), and was the main commercial district for all the towns in between. During the 60s, there was a general trend to make El Camino a center of entertainment like the Las Vegas Strip, so there were hotels, bars and restaurants in each Peninsula city. By the 1970s, the Peninsula had quieted down, and El Camino nightlife faded away.

The Warlocks' time at the In Room has been immortalized by Dennis McNally and others, and all the band members have told stories about how it was where they really became a band. Playing five sets a night, six nights a week for eight weeks, maybe sometimes backing touring singers or burlesque dancers, the Warlocks got a crash course in the 60s music biz, most of which they promptly set out to blow up as the Grateful Dead. The In Room, tacky name and all, was a seminal experience in the Grateful Dead zeitgeist. 

The only actual artefacts of the Warlocks' performance at the In Room, however, are some posed photographs (one of them is above). These were clearly done for promotional purposes, probably by the club itself, as the Warlocks couldn't have afforded it. Note the bright lighting, a clear indication that these were not real "performance" shots with the dark lights of a night club. Still, we can see the band's gear, their clothes, and at least a whiff of their on-stage demeanor. The only hint of things to come is the not-standardized lettering of the "Warlocks" band name. The drum head was painted by roommate, future banjo legend and artist Rick Shubb.

Further non-standardization would follow shortly. Given the importance of the In Room, let's figure out what we can about the brief history of the lounge.

A rare outdoor shot of The Chalet and The In Room marquee, from 1965 (source unknown)

The Warlocks at The In Room
The Warlocks were booked at the In Room for an 8-week stint in September and October of 1965. Deadcast host Jesse Jarnow and I looked in vain for any advertisement of the Warlocks. We are certain of the timeline, but neither Jesse nor I have never found an ad for the Warlocks at the In Room (and we tried). Per Dennis McNally, they earned at most $800 a week, but that was real money back then.

Their first week, the Warlocks backed the Coasters. It's not impossible they backed other singers during that time--it was common practice for a "house band" to back up a local singer--and they apparently backed some burlesque dancers. They probably weren't topless, but no one exactly knows. By the end of their 8-week shift, the Warlocks were a real band. Not exactly tight, maybe, but they had a groove.

Dennis McNally interviewed Dale O'Keefe, one of the managers of The In Room, so his description reflects the reality rather than the legend:

The Warlocks had found a home at a club halfway between Palo Alto and San Francisco in the town of Belmont. The In Room was a heavy-hitting divorcee's pickup joint, the sort of swinging bar where real-estate salesmen chased stewardesses and single women got plenty of free drinks. Dark, with red and black as the color scheme, it was the kind of place that sold almost nothing but hard liquor. The Warlocks' agent at the time, Al King, booked the headliners, like the Coasters, Jackie DeShannon and Marvin Gaye. Managed by Donald Johnson, also known as Whitey North, and Dale O'Keefe, it was a hot room, with bouncers escorting the waitresses through the crowd. 

At first the Warlocks seemed a mistake, playing too loud and too strangely. As O'Keefe saw it, the band would be okay for the first two of their fifty-minute sets, but by the third they'd be high, and by the fifth they'd be "barbaric." But in some sort of mysterious transference, they began to develop their own audience, and held their own, avoiding the management of the bar, except for Larry, their favorite bartender. Each night they'd show up with their equipment stuffed into Kreutzmann's Pontiac station wagon, set up, and get to work. One of the complications to their lives was that Kreutzmann and Weir were not only considerably but obviously underage. [Band friend] Bobby Petersen stole some draft cards that somehow passed muster, and the cops would look at the ID, chuckle and warn them not to drink. O'Keefe swore that he did not pay off the cops, so such tolerances could only be ascribed to providence.

Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)
McNally: "The In Room was located quite near the railroad tracks that run up the Peninsula to San Francisco, and as the band grew more and more attuned to the schedule, they learned to play with, instead of going against, the sound of the trains as they rumbled by."  [p92]

Between sets at the In Room, the band would cross the street and smoke (something) next to the railroad tracks. According to legend, there was a large sign that said "Caution: Do Not Stop On Tracks." The Warlocks heard Them's single "Mystic Eyes," took the chord changes and stapled them to their chugga-chugga train rhythm, and named it after the sign. Versions of "Caution" would appear in Grateful Dead performances at least as late as 1981, a legacy of the In Room. 

Kentucky writer (and Kesey pal) Ed McClanahan

Visitors
Writer Ed McClanahan, a friend of Ken Kesey and the Pranksters, dropped by the In Room to see the band. In an infamous August 1972 article in Playboy magazine called "Grateful Dead I Have Known." McNally excerpted McClanahan's description of the Warlocks at the In Room (p. 89)

Even though the Warlocks bohemian pals were hardly In Room material, a few friends did drop by. Tom Constanten, who had been friends with Phil Lesh since meeting him at UC Berkeley in 1962, was now in the US Air Force, stationed at Las Vegas. Constanten was also friendly with Garcia and the others, and had hung out a little at the Chateau. TC did find an opportunity to see the Warlocks at the In Room, however.

Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson, later of Moby Grape, were in The Frantics in 1965. They released the "Human Monkey" single on local Action Records in 1966, with lead vocals from bassist Bob Mosley.

Another late-night visitor at the In Room, was guitarist Jerry Miller, then leading a group called The Frantics. The Frantics had moved from Tacoma, WA, and were currently living in the mountains of San Bruno, not far from the In Room. The members of the Frantics (Miller, organist Chuck Schoning and drummer Don Stevenson) and their wives had gone to the Steak Pit to eat, only to find out there was a band playing. Miller loved hearing the Warlocks, and hung out a little with Garcia and the others. The Frantics would become regulars on the El Camino Real in early 1966, and would later evolve into the band Luminous Marsh Gas. By the end of '66, Miller and Stevenson would be in a rising band called Moby Grape, jamming with Garcia at The Ark in Sausalito and playing gigs at the Fillmore and Avalon.

[update 20240326: I forgot that I had 2013 email exchange with Wayne Ceballos]

Guitarist Wayne Ceballos was another young musician in the El Camino circuit. His first band was The Ethics, and by late '65 he had joined the Noteables, who played at the Fireside, also on El Camino. Ceballos was later in the band AUM, and jammed with the Dead on stage a number of times in 1969. In an November 2013 email to me, he recalled his days with the Warlocks: 

There was a club called "The Inn Crowd" [sic] on the Belmont/San Carlos border where I first heard and met The Warlocks.  They were backing up Bobby Day. ("Rockin' Robin.")  I saw them and thought to myself:  "What a mismatch!!"  lol.  But I liked the fact that the Warlocks played R & B and Blues, in spite of their looks.

In spite of our difference in dress, I made friends with the Warlocks, but especially Pigpen, while we were playing the Fireside.  A funny story:  One night I invited Pigpen to come to the Fireside to sit in with the Noteables, to sing and play some Blues.  One of the owners, an Italian guy named Phil, read me the riot act after Pigpen left.  "Don't you ever bring in hippie scumbags like that to my stage again!  This is a class joint!!"  ; )   

Bobby Day had scored a huge hit with "Rockin' Robin" in 1958, reaching #2 on the Billboard chart. Most modern rock fans, myself included, are more familiar with the 1972 Michael Jackson version, which had a similar arrangement, and also peaked at #2. Day never had another hit. It's hard to imagine Jerry, Bob and Phil singing "tweet, tweet" but we can dream, can't we?

 

The first ad for The In-Room was in the San Mateo Times on February 12, 1965

The In Room, 635 Old County Road, Belmont, CA (Opened February 1965)
The first notice of the In Room was an (in the San Mateo Times) for the weekend of February 12, 1965. The Furys were advertised as "Young America's Top Entertainment," along with "Leslie, Demonstrating Bay Area's Leading Dance Craze." It adds: Your Hosts: "Rich Romanello and Ralph Silva." Although Romanello and Silva had surely left by the time the Warlocks were booked in September, Romanello's career, at least, is worth noting in the context of 1965 Bay Area Rock and Roll. 

A San Mateo Times ad (June 19 1964) for the Beau Brummels at the Morocco Room, on 2010 El Camino Real in San Mateo (near W. 20th Avenue). The hosts were Jimmie and Rich Romanello (father and son).

Rich Romanello
Rich Romanello is actually an important name in Bay Area rock and roll, and I did not realize until recently that he had any connection to the In Room, and hence by extension to the Grateful Dead story. Since Romanello has been interviewed various times (for good reason) about his rock and roll history, and never mentioned the Warlocks, we can be confident he had no part in booking the Warlocks. Nonetheless he seems to have co-founded the In Room, which made the band, so it only adds to his interesting saga.

In 1964, Romanello's father James ran a club called The Morocco Room on El Camino Real in San Mateo. The address was at 2010 S. El Camino Real, near W. 20th Avenue. San Mateo is halfway up the Peninsula, midway between Stanford University and San Francisco, and near San Francisco Airport (SFO). The name and pitch of the Morocco Room had a Vegas slant, a cocktail lounge with entertainment and dancing all night long. Rich Romanello had discovered a new San Francisco rock band called The Beau Brummels, who performed original songs in a kind of Beatles-style, and the Morocco Room packed them in. 

Word about The Beau Brummels filtered up the line to KYA dj Tom Donahue, one of the biggest disc jockeys in the Bay Area. KYA (1260) and KFRC (610) were the two big rock stations in town. Donahue, transplanted from Philadelphia, was partners with another Eastern transplant, Bobby Mitchell. The two of them held down the afternoon and evening shifts at KYA, so everyone heard them. They also promoted concerts at the Cow Palace, ran a radio "tip sheet" and also race horses. Donahue and Mitchell had also started Autumn Records, and they had scored a big hit with Bobby Freeman's "C'mon And Swim" in 1964, produced by KSOL dj Sylvester Stewart, later better known as Sly Stone. 

Donahue later claimed to have heard about the Beau Brummels gig in the Morocco Room from a prostitute ("I always listen to prostitutes," he would say). In any case, El Camino Real and San Mateo was not a likely place to find a hit act, but find them he did. Rich Romanello acted as manager for the Beau Brummels, and Donahue and Mitchell knew hit songs when they heard them. Their song "Laugh, Laugh" would reach #15 after it was released on Autumn Records in December, 1964. The Beau Brummels went on to have other hits in 1965. Romanello would later lament that it was too bad that neither he, nor the Brummels nor Donahue and Mitchell knew anything about running an actual business. 

The February 17, 1965 Redwood City Tribune had an ad for the Grand Opening of The 'In' Room, describing The Furys as "The NEW ENGLISH SOUND by America's Top Entertainers DANCING 7 NIGHTS." The small print explains how to cross the tracks from either Freeway exit--there was no GPS.  Note the "FURYS", not FURIES, and no "Lesley."

In December 1964, a notice in the San Mateo Times indicated that James Romanello had sold the Morocco Room. But in early '65, Rich Romanello would have been right in the center of the action, and that action appeared to be on El Camino Real. The suburban Peninsula might seem an unlikely place for a rock and roll explosion, but it was happening on the El Camino just as it was everywhere else. After the Morocco Room and the Beau Brummels, The In Room would have been the second rock joint on the boulevard, and it was started by the proprietor of the first one. Fall '65 saw the Cinammon Tree in San Carlos, and the Tiger A-Go-Go in Burlingame, near SFO. By 1966, it was followed by the Big Beat in Palo Alto, the Nu Beat in Redwood City (which was later the Spectrum) and The Trip in San Mateo.

The Tiger A-Go-Go lounge at the SFO Hilton in Burlingame was a hopping scene, with future Fillmore players (Joel Scott Hill was later in Canned Heat, and his band included Lee Michaels, Bob Mosely [Moby Grape] and John Barbata [Turtles, CSNY, Starship]. This ad is from the Nov 12 '65 San Mateo Times.

The El Camino Real clubs were rising in exact parallel with the Family Dog, Fillmore and Avalon underground scene in San Francisco. The El Camino clubs tried different angles: the In Room and the Tiger A-Go-Go were bars for adults, primarily pickup joints (the Tiger A Go Go pointedly emphasized that stewardesses hung out there. In the 60s, stewardesses were understood to be glamorous unmarried party girls, fairly or not), The Cinnamon Tree was a "teen club," no liqour. The Big Beat and its sister club, The Trip, were pizza-and-beer places that allowed 18 year olds. There isn't any doubt that they were competing with the Fillmore. The Trip ads offered "LSD: Lights, Sounds, Delicious Pizza."

New Year's Eve 1966-67 at Winchester Cathedral, 3033 El Camino Real in Redwood City, with Sly and The Family Stone

The last of the important El Camino Real nightspots was also a "Teen Club," called Winchester Cathedral. Winchester Cathedral was at 3033 El Camino Real in Redwood City. It opened around December 1966, managed by Rich Romanello. Lots of fine band played there, including the Chocolate Watch Band and the Santana Blues Band. One of the first acts booked at Winchester Cathedral, however, was Sly And The Family Stone, who first played on December 16, 1966, and shortly after headlined New Year's Eve. They were an instant sensation. Sly and The Family Stone played all over the Bay Area, but at the beginning of 1967 they also played "Breakfast Shows" at Winchester from 2-5am every Friday and Saturday night (Saturday and Sunday morning). All of the local musicians showed up, including Mickey Hart, and were totally knocked out.

Romanello had an early management role with Sly And The Family Stone, too, but he lacked the clout to move them up the entertainment ladder. Joel Selvin's oral history of the band goes into this in some detail, but the short version of the story is that Columbia Records swooped in and made the band into huge stars. Winchester Cathedral didn't last until Summer '67, as far as I know, and El Camino Real more or less gave up on rock and roll. The Fillmore and Avalon won decisively. Since suburban kids would have to get into their (parents) cars to go to El Camino, driving another 30 minutes to the city seemed more enticing.

An ad for Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell's club Mother's, at 430 Broadway (from the Dec 19 '65 Chronicle). Reputedly the first "psychedelic" nightclub, Mother's generally booked standard Broadway nightclub acts rather than hip rock bands

Tom Donahue and Bobby Mitchell were still thriving when the Warlocks left the In Room in Fall '65. They had signed numerous local bands, such as the Great Society with Grace Slick, and seemed very tapped in to local happenings. They also opened a club at 430 Broadway in San Francisco, amongst the local topless joints. Mother's has been recognized as the first "psychedelic" nightclub, but I think it was mainly for the decor. The usual Broadway lounge acts were booked there, along with a few rock bands, including the Lovin Spoonful. Rhoney Stanley describes going to Mother's in her book, but the context is a bit fuzzy. 

Donahue and Mitchell must have heard about the In Room, since they recorded a Warlocks demo in San Francisco on November 3. The tape is now legendary, of course, but while The Warlocks showed promise, they were still an inexperienced rock band somewhere in between the style of the Beatles and the Stones. Autumn Records passed on the band. Within a few months, Autumn would go bankrupt, and their master recordings would be sold off to Warner Brothers.

 

The last sign of the In Room was an ad for a New Year's Eve party, with the band Group Therapy.  The Chalet itself closed shortly afterwards. In January, the San Mateo Times reported that Chalet owner Phil Martinelli was going to start a "Teen Club" at the site selling memberships and putting on dances on weekends. In fact, versions of this business model were tried out up and down El Camino throughout 1966, but this one failed pretty quickly.

April 11, 1966 Redwood City Tribune

A headline in the April 11, 1966 Redwood City Tribune exclaimed "Teen Club Closing Asked By Neighbors." The owners and tenants of the two office buildings next to the Chalet petitioned the Belmont City Council to revoke the permit of the Chalet Teen Club due to vandalism. It must have happened, since the club was closed shortly afterwards.

August 13, 1966 San Mateo Times

By August, a headline in the San Mateo Times said "Debris-Ridden Chalet 'Filthy,'" with a picture of the derelict club. At this point, 635 Old County Road truly was on the wrong side of the tracks. Soon there was no sign of the Chalet building. The Madison Apartments, at 649 Old County Road, first appears in listings in 1968. The Madison Apartments remain on the site.

The railroad has changed hands over the decades as well. I do not know if the Caution: Do Not Stop On Tracks sign is original.

April 21, 1965 San Mateo Times, listing the marriage license issued to Ralph N. Silva, 23, of Millbrae, and Leslie J. Renta, 20 of San Mateo.

Appendix 1: Ralph Silva
I know almost nothing about Ralph Silva, but searching "Ralph Silva" gave me some links, so I'm assuming the "Ralph Silva" from Peninsula newspapers is the same one. If anyone knows better, please hit up the Comments and I will add to or change anything I've written here. 

The April 21, 1965 San Mateo Times lists marriage licenses, and includes "Silva-Renta--Ralph N. Silva, 23, of Millbrae and Leslie J. Renta, 20 of San Mateo." Millbrae was two towns North of Belmont, and up the hill a little bit. One has to wonder if Leslie Renta was the same Leslie who had demonstrated the Bay Area's leading dance crazes when the In Room opened. I am going with "pretty likely."

The February 21, 1964 San Mateo Times also includes a notice for the wedding of Thomas Coster of San Bruno, and Ralph Silva is listed as an usher. Those who know too much will recognize the organist later made famous in Santana (who also played with Loading Zone, Larry Coryell, Steve Kimock and many other fine artists). San Bruno is the next town North of Millbrae, so this suggests that young Ralph Silva was a music guy early on. 

January 7, 1966 San Mateo Times

The January 7, 1966 San Mateo Times has a brief note that "Bob Mitchell and Ralph Silva, former owners of "Mother's" in San Francisco, have opened up a new night club in Redwood City called The Nu Beat." Bobby Mitchell and Tom Donahue's "Mother's" club was at 430 Broadway, and history has marked it as the City's first "psychedelic" night club. If Silva was a co-owner, it seems logical that as a young man partnering with two busy radio station djs, Silva probably actually ran the club for Mitchell and Donahue. The Nu Beat was 1836 El Camino Real in Redwood City (between Belmont and Palo Alto). The address was near "Five-Points," where Woodside Road intersected with El Camino Real.

Starting with the Morocco Room and the Beau Brummels, El Camino Real seemed like a ripe location for a rock and roll explosion. The In Room would have been the second rock joint on the boulevard, started by the proprietor of the first one. Fall '65 saw the Cinammon Tree in San Carlos (at 900 American Way, near El Camino), and the Tiger A-Go-Go in Burlingame, near SFO. By 1966, it was followed by the Big Beat in Palo Alto (on San Antonio Road), the Nu Beat in Redwood City (which was later the Spectrum) and The Trip in San Mateo (at 4301 El Camino). Note that the Nu Beat opening features acts from Autumn Records, including the Mojo Men and the Beau Brummels, and "Leslie, Our Go-Go Girl," most likely Mrs. Silva. 

When Mitchell and Donahue's businesses went bankrupt, the Nu-Beat seems to have become The Spectrum, and probably changed owners. One of the bands that played The Spectrum was Luminous Marsh Gas, a somewhat more psychedelic version of The Frantics. Ken Kesey gave them their name. Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson were in the band, along with organist Chuck Schoning, joined by singer Denise Kaufmann, soon to lead The Ace Of Cups.

Appendix 2: 635 Old County Road, Belmont, CA
The Belmont Casino, 635 Old County Road, Belmont, CA (circa 1959)
As near as I can figure out, the Chalet was originally called the Belmont Casino, and seems to have opened about 1959. I don't know if the building was new or remodeled. Presumably, no gambling was allowed. I believe the "Casino" name invoked Las Vegas, however. I'm not sure if there was initially entertainment or not. Old County Road was the former main road, on the opposite side of the train tracks from El Camino Real. Thus the location was broadly part of the El Camino Real "strip," but not on the boulevard itself (as noted above, the train tracks would turn out to play a role in the conversion of the Warlocks to the Grateful Dead).

San Mateo Times, October 27, 1954

[update 20230529] Exceptional researcher and friend-of-the-blog David Kramer-Smyth found that the Belmont Casino opened on October 27, 1954. The featured act was The Pratt Brothers Quartet.

From 1959 onwards, there were various mentions of events at the Chalet such as Singles Club dances. For example "The Peninsula Guys And Dolls Club," a club exclusively for divorced people, announced that it had expanded its membership to include widows and widowers (bonus points if you figure out the connection). The Peninsula Guys And Dolls Club held a private dance on a Tuesday night, when the Casino was closed. The Casino's draw on the El Camino was thus established early on.

The March 8, 1963 San Mateo Times announced the opening of Phil Martinelli's Steak Pit restaurant at the historic Chalet, 635 County Road, Belmont (San Mateo was one town South of Belmont)

The Swiss Chalet, 635 Old County Road, Belmont, CA (circa 1962)
The Belmont Casino was re-named to The Swiss Chalet, or sometimes just The Chalet, around 1962. By 1963, it principally advertised as a Steak restaurant, with a heavy emphasis of the "steak pit" on the premises. Steaks were the height of luxury dining in 1963 California, and the "Steak Pit" presumably allowed diners to see their dinner being cooked, instead of just kept in a freezer somewhere. The Chalet advertised itself as a family restaurant, and encouraged diners to bring their kids. By 1964, The Chalet advertised "Phil Martinelli's Steak Pit." Martinelli also had Steak Pit restaurants in other cities on the Peninsula. 

The Chalet continued to hold various private dances, presumably in an adjacent room. I assume the financial draw was that many of the attendees had dinner or drinks at the Steak Pit. I also assume that the adjunct building was later converted into the In Room. 

Warlocks Resumes, 1965 (pre Grateful Dead Employment)

The back alley behind 536 Bryant Street in Palo Alto in June 2009. On New Year's Eve 1963, Bob Weir heard banjo music coming from Dana Morgan Music at 536 Ramona, and found music teacher Jerry Garcia waiting for his banjo students. They agreed to form a jug band, and the Grateful Dead saga began.

It is an apocryphal rock-and-roll trope that real rockers don't want jobs. Keith Richard, the legend goes, only had non-musical employment once, as a Postal assistant at Christmas one year, and he was fired after three days for keeping a mouse in his pocket. Bruce Springsteen never had a job at all, as far as I know. Sometime in the late 80s, Jerry Garcia was asked in an interview if he was satisfied with his musical career, and whether he had achieved his professional goals, and Jerry said that his goal had been not to have a real job. From that point of view, his membership in the Grateful Dead had made his career a success "so far."

The Grateful Dead were a bunch of misfits, would be outlaws who did not feel comfortable in the paths that the "straight" world would have mapped out for them. The band members were an early wave of post-Beatniks who wanted something different from their life than the proverbial white picket fence and 2.2 children, commuting to the plant or the office 5 days a week. Indeed, with one exception the band members non-musical history only prepared them for being bohemians, so it is fortunate that the 60s came along when they did. This post will consider the educational and professional activities of the original members of the Grateful Dead prior to the formation of the Warlocks in May, 1965. It will not be a long post.

Jerry Garcia: Garcia had attended Balboa High School in San Francisco, but he dropped out around the 11th grade. After getting into some kind of scrape in 1959, a judge offered him the opportunity to join the Army instead of jail--a common enough choice at the time--and the 17-year old Jerry took the Army. Ironically, he was assigned to a base in San Francisco (at The Presidio), so opportunities to go AWOL were many and tempting. Garcia did discover country music in the Army. If he had been sent to a base in the South, he might have been a better soldier and learned about bluegrass more quickly, but it was not to be. Garcia was given a less-than-honorable discharge, but not a dishorable one (I think it was a General Discharge) in 1960. Not having an Honorable Discharge was a barrier to success in the early 1960s, when many males had served in the Armed Forces.

After his debut with Army buddy Robert Hunter as "Bob and Jerry" at Peninsula School, for which they were paid 5 dollars, Garcia played around folk clubs in various combinations. He did not earn a living from playing live music, or even much money, but he was actually paid. He also occasionally played electric bass with a band called The Zodiacs, who played Stanford Frat parties and the like. Bill Kreutzmann and Pigpen were occasional members of The Zodiacs as well.

Garcia also had a job of sorts doing the lighting at a Palo Alto theater group called Commedia Del Arte, around 1962. I think they were on Emerson Street (possibly on the site of the Aquarius Theater). I'm not sure Garcia actually got paid to do the lights, but he could have put it on his resume.

Garcia's principal source of income was as a music teacher at Dana Morgan Music on 536 Ramona Street in Palo Alto. Garcia gave guitar and banjo lessons to aspiring musicians, mostly teenagers, and probably taught mandolin and fiddle as well. Many people in the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area proudly recall that Garcia taught them guitar. The whole Grateful Dead saga began on New Years Eve 1963, when Bob Weir heard banjo music coming from the back of Dana Morgan's. Garcia was practicing, wondering why none of his students were showing up. Garcia told young Bobby that he was planning to form a jug band, and Weir said "I'm in," and so the story began.

In mid-1965, Garcia and Weir had borrowed equipment from Dana Morgan Music to start the Warlocks. When they pushed aside Dana Morgan Jr, the owner's son, as bassist, in favor of Phil Lesh, Morgan Sr demanded his instruments back and effectively fired Garcia and Weir (who by this time was a music teacher as well). Garcia and Weir moved their students over to Guitars Unlimited on El Camino Real in Menlo Park, and borrowed more equipment. When Garcia and Weir actually gave their final guitar lessons at Guitars Unlimited is unclear--probably late 1965.

Bob Weir: Bob Weir attended various High Schools, but did not graduate from any. I think he briefly attended Menlo-Atherton High School, and some private schools, but I'm not sure where. He seems to have met John Barlow in Prep School in the East. I have been told that his mother asked the future founder of Pacific Free High School (too long a story to go into) to "get him to stop playing that guitar and get him into something that will make him some money," but that did not happen.

When Jerry Garcia made his famous trip across country with Sandy Rothman in 1964, Weir apparently took over his students for a few months. Weir remained at Dana Morgan's, and moved on to Guitars Unlimited. Music Teaching music was (and is) a sort of freelance occupation, and fewer people claim Weir as a teacher than Garcia in the Bay Area.

Weir's only professional pre-Warlocks performances were with Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band Champions, and it is debatable whether they actually got paid.

An ad for Swain's House Of Music at 451 University in downtown Palo Alto. The ad is from the March 7, 1967 issue of the Cubberley High School paper, The Catamount.

Bill Kreutzmann: Bill Kreutzmann actually graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1965. By that time, he was married and had a child, so while he was able to avoid the draft (as sole support of his family), college was seemingly out of the question. During High School, Kreutzmann had played drums with a pretty successful Palo Alto band called The Legends. The Legends played "R&B," which at the time meant mixing James Brown songs with rock songs, and sometimes played for racially mixed audiences in East Palo Alto as well as the Stanford fraternity circuit. Kreutzmann occasionally filled in as drummer for The Zodiacs.

Kreutzmann also gave drum lessons at Swain's House Of Music, a competitor of Dana Morgan's. Swain's was at 451 University (near Waverley) just a few blocks over from Dana Morgan's.

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan: Pigpen had been expelled from Palo Alto High School in 1964 or '65, for some transgression or series of transgressions. Pigpen apparently had a job as a janitor at Swain's, but he did not give music lessons.

Phil Lesh: Unlike the other Warlocks, Phil Lesh bordered on the respectable. He had graduated from Berkeley High School in 1958, and attended the College Of San Mateo. CSM was a junior college with an excellent music program that included an excellent big band. Lesh played trumpet in the CSM band (Santana's Mike Shrieve was the CSM big band drummer some years later). Ultimately Lesh transferred to UC Berkeley in about 1961. Although University of California admissions were structured to favor California residents and junior college transfers, the fact that Lesh got into UC Berkeley means he had to have been a diligent and successful student. Lesh met Tom Constanten at Berkeley, and the two of them also studied with Luciano Berio at Mills College in Oakland The connection to Mills was probably through the UC music program (although Mills is a Woman's College, male students are admitted to its graduate programs, and there has always been reciprocity between UC and Mills classes). Phil also did some work at KPFA in Berkeley, which (similar to Jerry's stint as a lighting director) would not have been paid, but would have counted as work experience.

Phil dropped out of UC Berkeley about 1962. Unlike the other Warlocks, he had a variety of actual jobs. He worked at a Casino in Las Vegas with Constanten, and he drove a Post Office truck as well. Lesh has recalled hearing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" while driving the truck. Although the USPS was a "straight" job that required a uniform, many beatnik-types liked the work since it often involved being on your own most of the day, and Phil seems to have been no exception. Lesh, to my knowledge, never received a dime for a musical performance prior to performing with the Warlocks at Magoo's Pizza in Menlo Park. He had performed with school jazz ensembles, but those were not (by definition) paying gigs.

The Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building at 300 Pine St in San Francisco. Phil Lesh worked there briefly in the early 1960s as a board marker for Dean Witter.

While dropping out of UC Berkeley made Lesh a "dropout" along with the rest of the Warlocks, he was the only band member to have had to consciously avoid the middle class. Phil has occasionally alluded to various jobs he held between 1958 and 1965 in one interview or another. For a variety of reasons, Phil's most interesting brush with another path was alluded to in an extensive interview with Blair Jackson in The Golden Road. Phil said that through his father he got a job as a "board marker" for Dean Witter at the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.

A board marker put up qoutes for the stock trading on the floor of the old P-Coast (board markers were the equities equivalents of MQTOs, for those readers for whom that has meaning). Working on the trading floor, Phil would have had to have worn a tie, thus being the only member of the Dead to have had to worn a tie for employment. Phil's presence on the P-Coast was fascinating to me personally, because at the time I read the interview, I too was working on the Pacific Stock Exchange, albeit on the infinitely more exciting Options Floor around the block.

The P-Coast Equities Floor in the early 1960s had a reputation as a stifling place. When I told my options compatriots that Phil Lesh had apparently worked on the Equities Floor twenty-odd years earlier, their attitude was that it was no surprise that he left, the implication being that if Phil had worked on the Options Floor (which opened only in 1976) he might have stayed. While that is unlikely on the face of it, the Equities Floor had its roots in the 19th Century and showed it, so it's no surprise that Phil found it unrewarding. If he had discovered all the risk and reward of options trading, maybe David Freiberg would have ended up as the Warlocks bass player. To answer the question no doubt foremost in everybody's mind, I think Phil would have been a frontspreader rather than a backspreader.

Even in the mid 1980s, I knew some old Equities brokers who had come over to the brave new world of Options. Of course none of them would have remembered the name of any board marker, ever, much less one who only worked there briefly, so it was futile to ask. There were probably a bunch of skinny kids in ties and ill-fitting jackets, many with glasses, and to think that just a few years later one of them would be headlining major performances under strange psychedelic conditions was too much to comprehend. Of course, the old Pacific Coast Stock Exchange building is now an Equinox Fitness Club, and that too was impossible to imagine at the time. Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia.

The Warlocks At Palo Alto High School (Not!)

The Grateful Dead's first six months of existence as The Warlocks is shrouded in charming mystery. Since there has been relatively little documentation of their performances, myth and legend have free reign. It is a truism of every Bay Area High School that some aging graduate will swear that the Warlocks or the Grateful Dead played their school "back in the day." Alumni from a few High Schools--Awalt in Los Altos and Campolindo in Moraga--can state truthfully that the Grateful Dead played a dance at their gym, but for other schools it's just a story. However, since the Warlocks history is hard to document, its harder debunk the persistent stories about the Warlocks having played a given school.

One of the most persistent myths over the years has been that the Warlocks played Palo Alto High School. I normally don't take the time to debunk misinformation, but a couple of factors make the Palo Alto High myth a little different:

• a fake poster circulates widely, claiming to advertise the Warlocks playing Palo Alto High School on New Year's Eve, 1964, and
• Bill Kreutzmann, Pigpen and me all went to Paly

However, a recent non-coincidental meeting with a member of the Palo Alto High School class of '66 has confirmed my assumption that the Warlocks never played there. While it is impossible to prove a negative, since anything is possible, I am now confident enough to go on record as debunking the myth that the Warlocks ever played Paly.

The "New Year's Eve 64" Poster
Some company of unknown provenance marketed commemorative "boxing-style" posters of old rock concerts, usually sold through record stores. These circulate on eBay for appropriately low prices. In most cases, these posters listed famous events like Altamont with the location and the bands. I never found them attractive, but people are free to put up what they want on their dorm room wall. However, the one poster of that series that always irritated me (so much so that I refuse to link to it--google it yourself) was a poster featuring an iconic 1966 Herb Greene photo of the Grateful Dead, supposedly advertising a show on December 31,1964 at Palo Alto High School by The Warlocks.

For anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the Grateful Dead's history, the poster was self-evidently ridiculous: the Grateful Dead had not even formed in 1964, a 1966 photo of the Dead would not be used to advertise a Warlocks show, and so on. Nonetheless, as a graduate of Paly (class of '75) it was particularly galling to see this poster staring at me from so many record stores.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Palo Alto High School, September 19, 1965
The Mime Troupe performed at Palo Alto High School on September 19, 1965, probably at the school theater. I have seen this date floated around as a Warlocks show at Paly. However, although Bill Graham was the Mime Troupe's manager at this time, he had no connection to the Bay Area rock underground yet, so this too is a false trail.

The Bill Kreutzmann Connection
Bill Kreutzmann graduated from Palo Alto High School in June, 1965, shortly after the Warlocks formed. This was generally known around Palo Alto in the 1970s, and was generally offered as "proof" that the Dead or the Warlocks must have played Palo Alto High School. Famously, the 1969 Paly High graduation featured Santana, so it seemed plausible that in the misty days of yore, the Warlocks must have played some dance or other.

While Kreutzmann was at Paly, he mainly played in a band called The Legends. He also played occasionally in a group called The Zodiacs fronted by a guitarist named Troy Weidenheimer. That band mostly played Stanford fraternity dances (at places like Searsville Lake, for any of you who remember it). Weidenheimer was a manager at Dana Morgan Music, where Jerry Garcia worked, and while The Zodiacs played what was called "R&B" in those days (essentially modified blues), they were unique in that they did not play songs, per se. Weidenheimer simply called out a beat and a key, and soloed for a while while the frat boys boogied. The band had no set membership, but Kreutzmann sometimes played drums and Pigpen sometimes played harmonica. Jerry Garcia was a sometime bass player, and he has admitted to being profoundly influenced by Weidenheimer's approach to performing.

The Legends, meanwhile, were a more typical R&B outfit of the early 60s, playing songs by The Coasters and James Brown as well as old rock and roll classics. A San Jose musician from that era (a member of the group Sweet Smoke) told me that Palo Alto bands like The Legends played to more mixed audiences and thus had a more soulful sound than the surf oriented bands that played the San Jose area. The community next to Palo Alto was called East Palo Alto, which was not a town but actually an unincorporated part of a different County (San Mateo rather than Santa Clara). East Palo Alto was largely undeveloped and had the only substantial African American community in the South Bay. There were actual "juke joints" in East Palo Alto, and Pigpen at least, hung out there, even if few other white teenagers did. Thus Palo Alto, surprising as it may seem today, had a bit more diversity than some of the surrounding suburban towns.

The Legends had been a popular band in Palo Alto for some time. Kreutzmann had replaced one Nick Hammer as drummer. Other members included Howie Schonberger, "Byron" (last name unknown) and bassist Bob Kelley. I believe the band had a lead singer, although exactly who it was remains uncertain to me. Apparently the group performed Bobby Blue Bland's "Turn On Your Lovelight," but so did almost every other R&B band from the early 60s. Robert Kelley actually went on to some local fame as the founder of the acclaimed South Bay theatrical troupe TheatreWorks. When I was in High School, I actually knew Bob Kelley a little bit, as he directed an excellent theater group called Youth Workshop. He was a relaxed, cool guy, at least to a 14 year old. Of course, it never remotely occurred to me to ask him "were you ever in a band with any of the guys in the Grateful Dead?" and he never mentioned it.

Palo Alto High School 1964-66
Although the town of Palo Alto was liberal and tolerant, it was still the rather dull hotbed of social rest that it remains today. Would be bohemians were tolerated more than elsewhere, but not exactly encouraged. The class of '66 graduate I met was very bored by Palo Alto and Paly High, and couldn't wait to leave. Throughout the Fall of 65, she found Paly so dull that most lunchtimes she walked over to eat with Phil Lesh and his girlfriend, who lived nearby, so when she says "if The Warlocks played Paly, I would have known," I take that as definitive. Nonetheless, she made a couple of critical points.

First of all, she said that most of the bands who played dances, for money, were pretty well established, and the Warlocks were very much on the fringes in the Fall of '65. Most of the local bands who actually played Paly played for free at lunchtime, in the central quad. She was pretty sure that Kreutzmann and the Legends had played a lunchtime show at Paly, but at the time they would have played (between 1964 and '65) she would not have known Kreutzmann well so she doesn't have a specific memory. Nonetheless, it made perfect sense to her that a band featuring a Paly student would play the High School at lunch.

This of course begged the question of whether the Warlocks might have played for free at lunch. The Paly graduate had a long lost but very critical piece of information: although Pigpen had attended Paly, which was widely known in my day (his much younger brother had as well), she observed that Pigpen was actually expelled. I had known the not-surprising fact that Pigpen had not graduated Paly, but I had not known that he was expelled. She made the point that expelled students were not allowed on campus, so the Warlocks would not have been allowed to play even if Pigpen wanted to perform there, which he probably didn't. It wouldn't have taken much to get expelled from Paly in those days--no doubt any number of Pigpen's normal habits (except reading) might have caused his forced departure.

No one cares much about where the Warlocks didn't play, but I feel satisfied putting this issue to rest. I doubt people paid much attention to the bogus poster in the first place, but I take some satisfaction in the fact that not only did the Warlocks not play Paly, they would not have been allowed to play there in any case, due to some transgression or other by Pig. Palo Alto High School has many famous graduates (49ers coach Jim Harbaugh being the most recent), but Pigpen must be our most legendary non-graduate, and unquestionably the most famous expelled student.