Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival

Last updated
Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival
FantasyFairMagicMountainMusicFestival.jpg
Festival ad with scheduled performers
Genre Pop music, Rock music
DatesJune 10–11, 1967
Location(s) Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre in
Marin County, California
Years active1967
Founders KFRC 610 / Tom Rounds [1]

The KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was an event held June 10 and 11, 1967, at the 4,000-seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre high on the south face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Although 20,000 tickets were reported to have been sold for the event, as many as 40,000 people may have actually attended the two-day concert, which was the first of a series of San Francisco–area cultural events known as the Summer of Love. [1] The Fantasy Fair was influenced by the popular Renaissance Pleasure Faire and became a prototype for large scale multi-act outdoor rock music events now known as rock festivals. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Description

Spencer Dryden, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane performing at the Fantasy Fair KFRC Fantasy Fair Dryden Balin Kantner.png
Spencer Dryden, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane performing at the Fantasy Fair
The Doors on the main stage Doors007 c.png
The Doors on the main stage

The organizers chartered school buses to shuttle attendees and musicians up the mountain from Mill Valley, as Panoramic Highway had been closed to traffic. Those who missed the bus could catch a ride on the back of one of the Hells Angels’ Harleys. [5] Admission to the festival was $2.00 and all proceeds were donated to the nearby Hunters Point Child Care Center in San Francisco. The Fantasy Fair was originally scheduled for June 3 and 4 as a benefit for the center, but was delayed one week by inclement weather. Several acts booked for the original dates were unable to perform. [6]

KFRC 610, the RKO Bill Drake "Boss Radio" Top 40 AM station in San Francisco, had significant influence in the music industry among both counterculture and commercial acts. This enabled festival organizer Tom Rounds, KFRC's program director, to present a colorful and eclectic line-up of popular musicians from both in and outside the region. Canned Heat, Dionne Warwick, Every Mother's Son, The Merry-Go-Round, The Mojo Men, P. F. Sloan, The Seeds, Country Joe and the Fish, Captain Beefheart, The Byrds with Hugh Masekela on trumpet, Tim Buckley, The Sparrows, The Grass Roots, The Loading Zone, The 5th Dimension and Jefferson Airplane were among the performers who appeared. [6] The Fantasy Fair was also The Doors' first large show and happened during the rise of the group's first major hit, "Light My Fire", to the top of the charts. [7]

Among posters created for the event was one designed by artist Stanley Mouse, then gaining acclaim for poster-art created for Bill Graham, the Fillmore Auditorium and Grateful Dead.

"we did this bus thing where we parked everybody down in Marin County in various parking lots and bussed them up the mountain."
- Mel Lawrence (Fantasy Fair co-producer, later, Woodstock's operations manager) [8]

"There were school buses going up and down the mountainside. There's nothing like driving down the center line on a motorcycle with a bus going one way and a bus going the other way and a foot of clearance on either side."
- Barry "The Fish" Melton (Country Joe and the Fish) [8]

"I had my guitar in my hand and there was no way to drive up to the stage. So I'm walking and walking and going, "If I planned on going on a hike, I probably would've worn different shoes." I walked all the way up."
- Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) [8] [9]

After waiting hours [9] for a ride up the mountain from embarkation points at the Marin County Civic Center, Mill Valley and other locations, attendees were greeted by a giant Buddha balloon when they arrived at the amphitheater. Transportation was provided by the tongue-in-cheek-named "Trans-Love Bus Lines", a variation of the line "Fly Trans Love Airways, get you there on time" from the lyrics to Donovan's song "Fat Angel". Performances were on a main stage and a smaller second stage. Various art-fair type vendors sold posters, crafts and refreshments from booths scattered in the woods around the amphitheater. The festival included a large geodesic dome of pipes and fittings covered with black plastic that contained a light and sound show. [10] [11] [12]

The Lamp of Childhood plays while a stagehand attends to a backdrop banner KFRC Fantasy Fair backdrop.png
The Lamp of Childhood plays while a stagehand attends to a backdrop banner
One of the craft booths at the fair KFRC Fantasy Fair candle booth.png
One of the craft booths at the fair

The Magic Mountain Music Festival was favorably reviewed for safety in contemporary press accounts. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] Fights or disturbances were not an issue, and at the end of the day, trash was placed in or next to the garbage cans provided, and the crowd left Mount Tamalpais as they had found it. [18] [19] [20]

Reminiscent of their role at the Human Be-In the previous January in Golden Gate Park, members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club pitched in peacefully to help find lost children and to ferry musicians and others up and down the mountain's winding road. While they were not officially hired by organizers, the group also acted as de facto security for the event. [8]

Significance

While the highly documented Monterey International Pop Festival continues to be remembered as the seminal event of the 1967 Summer of Love, the KFRC Festival took place one week before Monterey and is considered to have been America's - if not the world's - first rock festival. [2] [18] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]

To some commentators, the festival represented a sea change in musical preferences among young Bay Area radio listeners as the hippie culture fully arose in mid-1967. Alec Palao and Jud Cost chronicled the San Francisco mid-sixties era music scene in 1991 in their magazine Cream Puff War #1. Writing about the weeks surrounding the Fantasy Fair, Cost noted that "the dichotomy in Bay Area music was never so evident, as the self-proclaimed "adult" scene separated itself from the "teen/pop" scenes." [26] Scram Magazine juxtaposed that view with pioneer rock magazine editor Greg Shaw's recollection that the rift between the tastes of teens and adults didn't form until later, after the freeform radio style then being established by Tom Donahue fully emerged in the fall of 1967. [27] A review of the bands that played indicates that most were groups that played the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and were part of the psychedelic rock scene at the time.

Performances

Saturday, June 10

Sunday, June 11

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Summer of Love</span> 1967 social phenomenon in San Francisco

The Summer of Love was a major social phenomenon that occurred in San Francisco during the summer of 1967. As many as 100,000 people, mostly young people, hippies, beatniks, and 1960s counterculture figures, converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed hippie culture, spiritual awakening, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, and free love throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as New York City. An episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience referred to the Summer of Love as "the largest migration of young people in the history of America".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychedelia</span> 1960s subculture related to the use of psychedelics

Psychedelia usually refers to a style or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience produced by certain psychoactive substances. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic music and style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted, surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippie</span> Person associated with 1960-1975 counterculture

A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964 and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mill Valley, California</span> City in California, United States

Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located about 14 miles (23 km) north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and 52 miles (84 km) from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human Be-In</span> 1967 countercultural gathering in San Francisco, California

The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monterey International Pop Festival</span> Three-day concert in California in 1967

The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience.

<i>Safe as Milk</i> 1967 studio album by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band

Safe as Milk is the debut studio album by American music group Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in June 1967 by Buddah Records. A heavily blues-influenced work, the album features a 20-year-old Ry Cooder, who played guitar and wrote some of the arrangements.

Mount Rushmore was an American rock band in the late 1960s from San Francisco, California, United States, that played a heavy blues rock style with psychedelic elements. AllMusic described the outfit as "also-rans of the San Francisco psychedelic era". They were named after the colossal statue in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sons of Champlin</span> American rock band

The Sons of Champlin are an American rock band, from Marin County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, formed in 1965. They are fronted by vocalist-keyboardist-guitarist Bill Champlin, who, after leaving the group in 1977, joined the rock band Chicago from 1981 to 2009, reforming the Sons of Champlin in 1997. They brought to the late ‘60s music scene in the Bay Area a soulful sound built around a horn section, Hammond B3 organ, sophisticated arrangements, philosophical themes, Bill Champlin's songwriting and blue-eyed soul singing, and Terry Haggerty's unique jazz-based guitar soloing. They are one of the enduring 1960s San Francisco bands, along with Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Moby Grape.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KFRC (610 AM)</span> Radio station in San Francisco (1924–2005)

KFRC was a radio station in San Francisco, California, United States, which made its first broadcast on Wednesday, September 24, 1924, from studios in the Hotel Whitcomb, at 1231 Market Street. KFRC originally broadcast with 50 watts on the 270 meter wavelength, then moved to 660 kHz in April 1927. As part of nationwide frequency reallocations on November 11, 1928, KFRC was moved to 610 kHz, where the call letters remained until 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mountain Play Association</span> United States historic place

The Mountain Play Association is a 501(c)3 organization responsible for the production of theatrical events at the Sidney B. Cushing Amphitheater within Mount Tamalpais State Park on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, United States. The stone amphitheater, named for the owner of the railroad company which constructed the Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway, is at an elevation of 2,000 feet and has 4,000 seats.

<i>Triangle</i> (The Beau Brummels album) 1967 studio album by the Beau Brummels

Triangle is the fourth studio album by American rock band the Beau Brummels. Produced by Lenny Waronker and released in July 1967, it was the band's first album to include songs that vocalist Sal Valentino and guitarist Ron Elliott composed together. The band incorporated fantasy elements and surreal characters into the album's song titles and lyrics, and worked with a variety of session musicians to create Triangle's psychedelic musical style. The Beau Brummels were reduced to a trio—Valentino, Elliott, and Ron Meagher—at the time Triangle was recorded, as former group members Don Irving (guitars) and John Petersen (drums) left the band following the release of the group's previous album, Beau Brummels '66.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blackburn & Snow</span>

Blackburn & Snow were a folk rock duo popular early in the mid-1960s San Francisco music scene in the United States. The duo consisted of guitarist-singer Jeff Blackburn and vocalist Sherry Snow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Lamp of Childhood</span>

The Lamp of Childhood was a short-lived American folk rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1966. The band released three singles which failed to chart and disbanded in 1967, but had several notable members.

Salvation was a late-1960s American psychedelic rock band, formed in Seattle, Washington, and later based in San Francisco, California.

Tom Rounds was an American radio broadcasting executive, founder and chief executive officer of Radio Express in Burbank, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electricity (Captain Beefheart song)</span> 1967 single by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band

"Electricity" is a song by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band on the 1967 album Safe as Milk. Beefheart claimed the label he and his band were signed to, A&M Records, dropped them after co-owner Jerry Moss heard the song and declared it "too negative" for his teenage daughter to listen to. Beefheart's vocals, while recording the final version for the album, shattered the microphone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre</span> Open-air theater in California

The Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre, also known as the Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre or simply the Mountain Theatre, is a 4,000-seat open-air venue in Mount Tamalpais State Park, in Marin County, California, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miami Pop Festival (December 1968)</span>

The Miami Pop Festival was a rock festival that took place from December 28-30, 1968, at Gulfstream Park, a horse racing track in Hallandale, Florida, just north of Miami. It is sometimes confused with a separate event that took place seven months earlier, at the same venue, though the two events were unrelated. The earlier event was officially publicized on promotional materials and in radio ads as the "1968 Pop and Underground Festival," and "The 1968 Pop Festival," but later came to be referred to colloquially as the "Miami" Pop Festival, a practice which has led to confusion between the two events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Goldberg (writer)</span> American novelist

Michael Goldberg is an American novelist, journalist, animal rights activist, and pioneering digital music entrepreneur. He is known for his work (1983-1993) at Rolling Stone, where he was first a senior writer and later West Coast editor, and for envisioning and co-founding the first web music magazine, Addicted to Noise, in 1994, for which Newsweek included him in its 1995 "Net 50" list of "the 50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet". Between 2014 and the fall of 2016 he published the Freak Scene Dream trilogy of 1970s coming-of-age novels, and worked actively in animal rights causes. His nonfiction book, Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey, was published in June of 2022.

References

  1. 1 2 Shannon, Bob (2009). Turn It Up! American Radio Tales 1946–1996. austrianmonk publishing. p. 310. ISBN   978-1-61584-545-3. OCLC   496123438 . Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  2. 1 2 Hopkins, Jerry (1970). Festival! The Book of American Music Celebrations. New York: Macmillan Company. p. 31. ISBN   978-0-02-061950-5. OCLC   84588.
  3. ↑ McKay, George (2000). Glastonbury: A Very English Fair. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN   978-0-575-06807-0. OCLC   47777589.
  4. ↑ "Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival 8mm film No Sound - YouTube". YouTube . Archived from the original on 2020-01-12. Retrieved 2018-01-29.
  5. ↑ "Marin's Summer of Love - Marin Magazine - June 2017 - Marin County, California". Marinmagazine.com. Archived from the original on 2019-02-25. Retrieved 2019-03-13.
  6. 1 2 Lomas, Mark. "Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival". Marin History. Marin Independent Journal. Archived from the original on 21 April 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2011. Note: some reports and omissions from lists confirm that Moby Grape, Wilson Pickett, 13th Floor Elevators and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, although appearing on the printed program, did not play the rescheduled event.
  7. ↑ Burrowes, Monica Dione (2010). Get together: the history of rock and roll in Marin County and the Marin History Museum's "Marin rocks" exhibition (PDF). Sacramento: California State University, Sacramento. p. 27. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
  8. 1 2 3 4 The Untold and Deeply Stoned Story of the First U.S. Rock Festival, by Jason Newman. Rolling Stone , June 17, 2014
  9. 1 2 "KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival". San Francisco Chronicle . 10 March 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  10. ↑ "She Photographed Jimi Hendrix Without Knowing His Name". KQED. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  11. ↑ Levine, Kyle (25 February 2017). "Midnight Cafe". Xiphias Press – via Google Books.
  12. ↑ "Gallery - Magic Mountain". Sound Summit. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  13. ↑ Kearney, John F. (June 10, 1967). "Mount Tam—It's Another World". Marin Independent Journal . pp. 1, 3.
  14. ↑ "Hippies Get Bouquet for Good Behavior". Marin Independent Journal. June 12, 1967. pp. 1, 6.
  15. ↑ Shearer, Alan (June 14, 1967). "Joyous Happening". Mill Valley Record.
  16. ↑ "Old Tam Rocks and Rolls". San Francisco Chronicle . June 11, 1967.
  17. ↑ Zane, Maitland (June 12, 1967). "Bash on Mt. Tam". San Francisco Chronicle.
  18. 1 2 Nicholson, John (May 2009). "A History of Rock Festivals". Rock Solid Music Magazine. Archived from the original on 22 December 2010. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
  19. ↑ "Summer of Love Conference 2017 – Revisiting the Summer of Love, Rethinking the Counterculture: A Conference on the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love". Engage.northwestern.edu.
  20. ↑ "1967 Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival". Steve Hoffman Music Forums. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  21. ↑ Mankin, Bill. We Can All Join In: How Rock Festivals Helped Change America Archived 2013-12-19 at the Wayback Machine . Like the Dew. 2012.
  22. ↑ Santelli, Robert. Aquarius Rising - The Rock Festival Years. 1980. Dell Publishing Co., Inc. Pg. 16.
  23. ↑ Lang, Michael (2009-06-30). The Road to Woodstock (p. 58). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
  24. ↑ Browne, David. (2014-06-05). "The Birth of the Rock Fest". Rolling Stone.
  25. ↑ Kubernik, Harvey and Kubernik, Kenneth. A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival. 2011. Santa Monica Press LLC. Pg. 54.
  26. ↑ Cost, Jud; Palao, Eric (January 1991). "Vejtables and the Mojo Men". Cream Puff War (1). Santa Clara, California: 17.
  27. ↑ Liebler, Ted. "The Last Boss Summer: the KFRC Fantasy Fair". Scram #16. Scram Magazine. Archived from the original on 9 March 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
  28. ↑ "Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival 1967 Setlists". setlist.fm.
  29. ↑ "Scholars gather to discuss counterculture, Summer of Love - Northwestern Now". news.northwestern.edu.
  30. ↑ "Relive the Summer of Love in Marin County - Marin Convention & Visitors Bureau 2022". Marin County Convention and Visitors Bureau 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  31. ↑ "Rare Polaroid Photos of The Doors Performing at Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in 1967". Shootingfilm.net.
  32. ↑ Morrison Moon (24 March 2015). "The Doors - Fantasy Fair And Magic Mountain Music Festival Tamalpais, Junio 10 de 1967". Archived from the original on 2021-12-21 – via YouTube.
  33. ↑ "The Doors - Tamalpais Mountain Theater 1967". mildequator.com.
  34. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : "The Doors- Fantasy faire & Magical Music festival. 1967". YouTube .
  35. ↑ "Jim Morrison, The Doors, Mill Valley CA Fantasy Fair, 1967, by…". Glamrock.blognook.com. 24 September 2017. Archived from the original on 23 December 2017. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
  36. ↑ "Jim Morrison, Fantasy Fair, Mill Valley, CA, 1967". Morrisonhotelgallery.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-23. Retrieved 2017-12-23.
  37. ↑ "Interview with Elaine Mayes, Photographer and Educator". Petapixel.com. 15 October 2013.
  38. ↑ "Jim Morrison Fine Art Print from Mt. Tamalpais Amphitheater, Jun 10, 1967 - Wolfgang's". Wolfgangs.com.
  39. ↑ "Sound file" (MP3). Cpa.ds.npr.org. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  40. ↑ "Interview: Halimah The Dreamah in the Summer of Love". Khsu.org. 9 June 2017.
  41. ↑ Eliopulo, James (29 April 2012). "Part Two of THE LOS ANGELES BEAT Interview With Emitt Rhodes". Thelosangelesbeat.coms. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  42. ↑ "Hugh Masekela @ The 1967 Magic Mountain Music Festival". Samakamusic.blogspot.ca.
  43. ↑ "Photographic image" (JPG). 3.bp.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2 April 2022.