What was it like in the 60's and 70's?

Another Sabbath occult factoid...notice from the 2nd album (Paranoid) on they're all wearing conspicuously massive metal crosses.  After the first album's inverted cross cover (thanks again record company) the following live shows were overrun by occult devotees throwing Ouija boards, tarot cards, rune stones, Witches almanacs, spell/shadow books, and disturbing Satanic artifacts at the band.  Even worse, after show backstage meetings with these more eccentric "fans" oft turned into occasions where spells were cast on behalf of the band.  THEY FREAKED OUT.  Turns out Tony Iommi's father was a little handier than Tony at sheet metal working (who famously lopped a couple fingertips off his left hand before a tour) and created a sheet metal crucifix for each member.  Many misconstrued that they were wearing them as some kind of Satanic statement but the band relied on them as protection from some of their most devoted "fans". 

 

A Robert Fripp series of journal entries tells a tale of the gift of a Ouija board from a "fan" which caused much distress and strange events as a US tour progressed.  RF also took to wearing a crucifix for protection around '74...

 

 

Underneath all of this rubbish...were real Satan worshippers sects of the older generations. They perhaps listened to music too. For example...the music of Gustov Mahler or Bella Bartok. They found the teenagers way of life farce. Therefore ..they were cunning by using young people in a scheme of their own. How diabolical that was of the secret families in the 60's and 70's. The media was parcially responsible for the malfunction of the youth. A Satan worshippers sect of the old was reality. It had been a reality for generations. Familes who migrated to the U.S. years ago and the music and films digested by the youth in the 60's and 70's was part of a fad. The 2 cemented together was a travesty.

 

The peer pressure of hair styles, music, and attitude was a embarkation of fixation employed for attention that produced atrocities. It could begin as something farce in nature ..like casting a spell on someone you hated and later developing into disturbing acts..like biting into a big cookie baked by the local teenage witch that was full of razor blades. Four razor sharp steal tips latching into the roofs and bottoms of your mouth.  Urging you like a thousand tiny razor wounds, to scream your poor fool head off. It was called "The Atrocity Cookie". It was good , because it was dead. Razor ribbon napalm cluster cookies. Other individuals made attempts at working roots on you by placing a piece of hair in your shoe or mixing roots into your food. Substance and roots were combined in a brownie mix at local parties. The purpose of this act was to keep you under control by following their orders while under the influence. In the 70's..it was widely known as a spell. In any event, they were all candidates for psychiatric treatment. Happy Halloween. 

 

They were in my face, sitting in with one of my bands to prove a point...they were a better guitarist than me and wanted to exhibit it in front of my loyal audience. Competition is evil that way. But that was the mentality and it was very vast in quanity because of the impact of 70's Jazz/Fusion. I felt that John McLaughlin played from his heart and the same applied to Pat Metheny, George Benson, and their ideology about music differed completely from these ego maniacs I traveled the road with. They were only interested in gymnastics for a showdown. So the observation was that they had taken it upon themselves to adapt this ego race to the phrasings of great Fusion guitarists. I knew how to play those styles early on , but disliked showboating. There were many diverse guitarists on the road who disliked it for it's lack of glory. Glory's designated spot was in the music. It was fine to improvise..but be more universal about it...where upon these professional sounding clowns had no idea how to open up to music. They were ignorant/rude about other styles of music , found other styles laughable, and thought that Al Dimeola was a huge contest..dismissing everything else.

 

During the double/triple headers, if a guitarist was decent and felt you were too much competition for them..they would have their manager pay off the sound tech to make you sound like rubbish. When you played 30 second notes, the tech placed enormous amounts of echo on your guitar to clutter up any existing clarity.. They would send feedback noise through the moniters. This is what happened to Alan Holdsworth at the Tower Theatre when U.K. opened for Al Dimeola. It's a cruel act. It's all about pay offs to protect how you look. I hated dealing with this mentality on the road because I lived in my own world and couldn't relate to a contest. If you had a reputation of being a decent guitarist, you might become a threat to others.  

 

More money. stranger people, guards, and con artists who use thousand dollar words like scholars. You're sitting in the office with staff members and owners who spread out lines of whatever?...offer it to the band and the rest is history. One huge difference I noticed between the lower scale bookings and the higher was WHERE the drugs came from. There is always a definite possibility that drugs will come from the audience..regardless of where you play..but it seems to evolve from that situation more frequently when you're just playing in local bars and clubs. On the celebrity circuit drugs are offered to musicians from the corporation and that's when life gets scary. I was out-right handed TOO many expensive gifts to think otherwise. I would be given a car, a new guitar, clothes, money and half of these gifts came from the crazy but loving people in the audience..while the other half was handed down to me from corporate wealthy married couples who had invested thousands in the entertainers I worked for. Right out of a flippin' movie and didn't seem like real life at all. I didn't deserve any of those gifts and used to wonder what the payback was going to be. As it turned out....simply to continue doing a fine job. Sometimes I signed contracts, other times I didn't. It was difficult to understand WHO you might trust and WHO you wouldn't. A corporation has subordinate level individuals that lie to you and confuse. A wolf in sheep's clothing (so to speak), while the passage of time reveals the individuals you are suppose to be listening to..for real! and they are the ones looking out for you. So..you're working for God and Satan? I was too young to understand it ..so I followed the wisdom of my older bandmates who had decades of experience.

 

The Sex part. It's rather strange to be 22 years old and be propositioned by 40 year old beauty queens because you work for an entertainer who has fame. The bodyguards won't allow them in the dressing room ..so they go through you by verbally offering a sex act or handing you a couple of hundred dollar bills to get them in.. I'm serious,,that is really sick. I'm walking through the hallway to enter the dressing room and my boss is standing there laughing and drinking with Mohammed Ali or Doc Severson. I'm nothing more than a hired gun to perform while vampires want to suck me dry. I doubt  it is much different than that today. I also worked for entertainers who were up against million dollar lawsuits from huge and powerful estates. They care little about your insignificance as a guitarist and by the power of money..will track you down to find the entertainer you worked for years ago.

 

  That was a crazy experience for me in the 70's and early 80's. I'm glad it happened..but it was scary to be around those people. It's definitely not a normal everyday way of life..but who in their right mind would think a musician's life would be?

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you're between 18 to 23 years of age, you are still a kid underneath and naive about life. With all of these surroundings..it became confusing to me and I no longer understood who I was. Or maybe..I already had these characteristics of growth and the environment increased it's realization for me? I tried to hide in the Holiday Inn's , put headphones on and listen to Univers Zero. Keep in mind that this environment is the size of a pea..compared to the magnitude of what The Beatles went through. It was more like 30 girls following you from state to state or 60 of the same people showing to your concerts. The point is...they were always ON you! They would sleep outside the Holiday Inn's...in their cars, or they would rent rooms down the hallway and it became increasingly annoying. If I took a taxi to the beach...1 or 2 girls would follow me. I could not live up to their expectations. I was on the beach in the daytime, sitting on the rocks practicing and with little sleep. I had no room for people's conversations and sexual desires. By the time I got off the road, taking a short break, I had issues to be sorted out. I was too young to understand what getting attention was about and I started thinking the whole world was out to get me!

 

 

Many of my stories are like those of the late Peter Banks. It's like someone is tossing a coin and your destination is planned. I never witnessed so much sexual promiscuity in my life. It was insane! Then there was the mofia , criminal pay offs between managers and agents....Satanic cults or I guess sects played a role in the business too. I was hired through a promoter to play Classical guitar for these high society devil worshippers in 81'. These performances took place in mansions. The gigs lasted for about 4 months until I developed the creeps , falling on my hands and knees to one of our corp members ..claiming that I was sick and needed mental help. Then I just continued performing in theatres for expensive entertainers. Being on the road made me paranoid and I took on a role I was not ready for. I was the quiet kid who played lead guitar and half of the time pretended that I was dumb ..instead of standing up for what I believed in and easily performing the task of turning people down.

Cool post TODDLER...I was quite a few steps down the professional ladder from you at the time playing in a San Jose prog band in '78.  We did a few Crimso covers (opening our set with "Talking Drum" and encoring with "One More Red Nightmare") and many originals, had a great demo tape, and couldn't get hired to take out the trash.  We were all prog fanatics and it was heartbreaking to finally arrive on the scene writing and playing what we dearly loved while the music machine turned a blind eye.  After a year I think we all knew prog was going to hell too...we did have a lot of fun though!

It makes me feel good to know there are people posting on PA who were actually there