Editor's Note: Today, motion pictures can virtually set the mood of youth for as much as a year. Easy Rider, Woodstock, and Bonnie and Clyde taught us that. As such, motion pictures are incredibly powerful influences in the direction of movement. Sometime in 1971, a new movie will be released by Warner Brothers land by the C.T.A., It has been alleged) as their big box office follow-up to Woodstock. A publicity barrage has already begun and will escalate sharply to convince us that this movie portrays the hip cultural event of 1979, as Woodstock was of 1969. The movie, admittedly, will probably be exquisitely excellent, but it will also be irrelevant. The story which follows is the true story of what really happened on die "Caravan of Love" was called. Save it for future cultural warfare.

They called it the Caravan Love, but they got love mixed up with screw. Screw your culture for profit, screw one another for cheap thrills, screw yourself for imagined gains.

The idea was to send 150 picturesque hippies, including the Hog Farm, cross-country giving free concerts, then make a “documentary" movie of it and clean up on the combination of Woodstock and Easy Rider in one “package”. The originators were Tom Donahue. KSAN radio personality and listed among Esquire's 100 “rock heavies”, and Francois Reischenbach, French filmmaker and 1969 Academy Award wintiet tor his

Their angel is Fred Weintruub, Warner Brothers’ creative pioducer rising last on the basts of bis baby, Woodstock, Weintrauh owns the B|&|||rtd m New York as well, and has owned pieces of numerous folk

acid for the first time tins year and became psyche deltcized At any MI., Warner Bioihei'. pin up the mahey-In exchangl for first rigMRH||| tire negative, and in the spu it of the old Franks tet dictmii mat \o-:

need is money", the Caravan

Before going any further, J should say that despite the many negative aspects of the Caravan, it was a heavy liappening, a significant prognosticate of the Zeitgeist of the Seventies. Perhaps it was one of the first million dollar bashes - bread and circuses tot the hippie masses - or maybe it was one last party before we _ start digging trenches, or maybe it is some kind of way of bringing about] massive social change by a new method. But in many wayZjl Caravan was like a month-long acid nip, with all the possibilities that implies.

The Caravan began with a picturesque procession across the Golden Gate Bridge, led dramatically by a tall dude on J a nearly stock Harley which, for some reason, was referred to as his “chopper”. Following were six buses, three ' Winnebago motor homes, and a number of rented trucks; 1 and cars. The only -two'authentically■funky vehicles were 1 a tiny Jeep mail van with right-hand drive painted I red-white-ami-blue, and a furniture van with the upper j half of an old Hudson welded on top as an observation Jj deck. The “chopper” was shortly loaded into a U-haul £j9 trailer, to ;be brought out for later dramatic entrances 33 and exits.

Somewhere pbt of San Francisco, part of the 1 Caravan took one fork in the road, part took the other, ,||| everybody got strung out alongf jhe highway, and it H wasn’t‘Until the first concert in Albuquerque thatthey|l got completely together again. The site was in Placit.is, beautifully natural area near a commune in high plateau 1 country. There, -the Caravan was confronted for the first time with political reality, a confrontation they found! unpleasant but managed to usually ignore. As thH technicians began to prepare the site, group of commune hippies, ecology freaks, came down out of the hills. ' , *hj “Please;;: go awayj” they dedfifci-slrs' 11J

streaming down their faces. "Please, this "is out land and we don’t want you here. You’re ruining the ecology." They were distraught v over the adverse effects of:media exposure and population influx.

The ptigpconlirvued building, and eventually the (ontattM were convinced to supply free food for the concert. How a movie ■ company with a budget of SI,000,000 could have the nerve to ask for free food from a group of impoverished communers is beyond me. but they did;SU# things repeatedly, playing on the myth of : Woodstoekian sharing. It was a case of stealing from the poor to give to the licit. * .

The concert featured Rhinoceros, B. B. King and Stone Ground, the .band traveling' 5$ft the Caravan It drew about 3,000 people, which is perhaps an optimum number for a pleasant outdoor ■« -conceri. avoiding the absurdity of .lJbtOO0 person crowds, for the sake of impressing the media.

The Grateful Dead originally was intended ib travel with the Caravan ami play at each concert, hut negotiations broke down ‘. shortly before the Caravan left, That night, reportedly, then manager. Sam Cutlet, of Altamdni remembrance, .sent back a messenger for an object which one of the Caravan execs, had . touched. Purpose: witchcraft, ft didn’t work apparently, because the Caravan left withoutthem.taldng the bus intended for them and ;L their secretary.

On the night of the Albuquerque concert, somebody (sagmjMMra Michael hot man. j consultant to Warner Brothers) slipped acid to the entire French Film crew They w.md-Jted around slioo'n g ** everything in sight. Francois was seen pointing his camera at the sky in a driving rainstorm (since Woodstock, every good festival flick needs a good rainstorm).

J Quiet, please,*' he said. ^Gbd is speaking to me!’*

After the concert, the next stop was the Holiday Inn so everyone could freshen up a bit. Yesr folks. just us poor hippies. As the caravan progressed, it became' a status symbol for some to stay in

iotels I actually rather staying than camp in camp, but while By mid-America, the rest would only show about up haifwere in the morning,' suspielou^lylike extras coming to work'on a moviesfetJ j How about that* Some |© at all, espqea^yi g couples.

Another aspect of the -Caravan was the over-reaction to the cameras. The first week was especially baCMthalmost everyone I jumping in front of the cameras. Some of the women were up ifo-five costuteb-changes per day, and t arly ah

clothed as the GTOY. The ( t \ t h u I la portable shower (with hot water, no less I and people would stay in it for hours, \ wrinkling up like old appies, In hopesof a pah b ft om the cameras. People were taking their clothes /,' off at the drop of a ha t, and RF Francois dropped 11 hat often.

One of ine e. d\ tushes shows Wash-.' Mike, i * e of I jj the mechanics, sweating ^KrujjlMK-'uhdfettieatli one of i* the buses as he works. The [camera pans to a knot of IS ~ painted hippies, grinning ■ idjotically Some of into the the women lens (and some of the If A. men?) triedsleeping with the

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cameramen, but it didn’t seem to bring much more than a good night’s sleep. The smarter ones starting creating little scenarios which the cameramen were known to like — smoking joints, balling, looking wistful, dancing ecstatically, etc. It wasn’t hard because it soon became apparent that Francois had already decided the content of the “documentary”, based on some idea of what Haight-Ashbury was in 1965.

The hippie movie of the Seventies may become the equivalent of the Italian western, the Japanese samurai

And now the drum solo

movie, or the American gangster flick. If so, certainly bus trip movies will be a favorite theme. Kesey made the first recorded epic journey, and it was also a movie, if you recall. Before, Kerouac made Hudson trips. Since then, there have been several legendary crosscountry jaunts.

The reason you go in a bus is so more people can enjoy it — road communalism. Also, so many bizarre things happen that you need all these'people as witnesses. Otherwise, no one would believe you.

1 made my formal entrance to the caravan in Albuquerque. I was not an “official” caravaneer, and I paid my own way all the way to London. I work with the U.P.S. and the White Panthers in New York. I decided to come along because I wanted to take a vacation from New York and get back in touch, with the America of the Seventies and because there were no movement people on the Caravan and I felt there should be a movement presence/conscience since movies are a major influence on the direction of the youth class.

I drove up in a car I had built especially for this, a ’65 Cadillac nine passenger glass partitioned limousine, chosen for its extreme load capacity. We weighed in at over 7,800 pounds. Driving was a German hippie who spoke almost no English and who was formerly a chauffeur for a German general. I planned to recruit people out of the Caravan and off the road, rather than show up with an external group of people.

The Caddy was painted olive drab with a big white star on each side and on the hood and trunk, identical to a U.S. Army staff car. On top was a 20 foot stage going from bumper to bumper. On the stage were two 550 watt quad-drive speakers, monstrous things from a Minuteman missle site which were also used to test rocket parts to see how much sound they can withstand. Each has a range of five miles. Also on top was a four-foot lucite sphere which was the sound mixing booth. Inside, enough amplifiers to power it all, and a gasoline generator capable of lighting a small house. Also, boxes of firecrackers, flares, sky rockets, smoke bombs, squirt guns, spark guns, picket signs, Magic Markers, underground newspapers, White Panther leaflets, a bubble machine just like Lawrence Welk’s, a Rudy Vallee megaphone, a Mack Sennett clapboard, two telephones (bootleg), paint brushes, paint, a 16 mm Bolex, a typewriter, and all the other appurtenances of the modern day gorilla/guerilla.

Within ten minutes after our arrival, two things began to happen. One, a number of people came and begged us to take them in, as they had had it with the Caravan. Two, several people came up with conversations like the following:

“Are you going to run down some kind of trip, Tom,” asked Evan of the Hog Farm, eyeing the big speakers.

“Are you?” I asked.

“No, man, we’re just here to have a good time.”

“Well, I’m not necessarily running down any trip either. I’ll just be here if somebody else has a trip that they won’t allow over the regular sound system.”

After a brief conversation with the

Caravan “leaders”, we pulled out for the next announced campsite in a cloud of smoke bombs and firecrackers. A short distance out of town, a tire blew out and only the intervention of a VISTA

the Caravan continues

volunteer smuggling food to the Indians and a $200 deposit on a jack saved us from rotting there.

San Pablo was a trip. Everyone has heard about the chicano’s hostility toward hippies, yet despite the fact that northern New Mexico is crawling with hippies, the chicanos and anglos were without exception unduly warm and friendly, from townspeople to villagers to back country dirt farmers. San Pablo is a town with no apparent hippie population at all. I went into a bar to inquire as to the whereabouts of the Caravan. Two chicanos in classic pachuco attire accosted me as I entered.

“Hey, man, what’s happening?” one asked.

“Just passing thru town.” I answered.

“Far out. You got any acid.”

“No, sorry,” I answered. “But just keep asking. Somebody’s bound to have some. It’s good stuff. Have you seen a bunch of buses parked around here?”

“No, man. We’ve been smashed on weed for two days and haven’t seen much.”

The dope culture spreads onward. We exchange small talk about the disposition of the local pigs and push on.

The site in Boulder was 20 miles out on the desert, a beautiful spot. The dozen Caravan tie-dyed teepees were arranged in a circle, the two flatbed trucks comprising the stage were out front. The concert itself featured several

excellent local bands first, again disproving the star system.

The first name band was Cold Blood, a much underrated group. When they came on, a stage hand called for more mikes. The lead singer yelled, “Yeah! More mikes! More lights! More sound! More everything! It’s Cold Blood!” The lead singer is a woman who has been compared to Joplin, but there is really no comparison. She is completely unique and just as good. She has all these West Texas truckstop waitress moves that, if you dig them, can only tear you up. The band has a couple of guitars and a 4-man horn section which looks like it was found in a speakeasy in Tijuana but, friend, can they play. Soul music for Texans. Unfortunately, the French cameramen seemed to have no awareness of the emotional dynamic taking place between the band and the audience, so don’t look for them in the movie.

The Youngbloods were next. More refined than Cold Blood, it was the difference between an aphrodisiac and a psychedelic. I went off to talk to Tom Donahue. I told him that I thought the Caravan was artificially excluding political awareness and political content, and that this was just as bad as artificially injecting it. Donahue was too spaced out to cope, a state of mind he used successfully to get across country without dealing with any of the very serious problems that were to arise. I fucked with his head considerably and eventually he said, “If you want the mike, go ahead.”

“That’s not what I want,” I said. “They don’t want to hear speeches and I don’t want to give any. I want all of us to act together and talk about using this Caravan to deal with some of the real problems going down in America. I don’t want a few of us to have heavy politics in opposition to a majority who are anti-political. It would have much more impact if we all had a little politics.”

Donahue promised a meeting the next day, a promise never fulfilled. Basically, he was unrecalcitrant. Donahue is a formidable example of highly developed mescaline conscious. As he said, “I don’t use drugs to escape reality. Drugs are reality.” A bit like Leary. He weighs 300-400 pounds and looks like an evil Santa Claus. His armory is a store of highly entertaining stories, an ability to move sideways rapidly, a set of deep, intense eyes, a sincere sounding radio announcers voice, and considerable personal charm. Mescaline consciousness, directed toward the acquisition of race horses, Ferrarri’s and villas in Mexico. Too bad, because Donahue’s a helluva nice guy and tremendously able, and until the movement can attract more like him, it will be handicapped.

Doug Kershaw came on, and I went back out into the audience, spreading the word that Donahue’s Winnebago was the bad trip hospital and the free food kitchen. It was great. People would wander in, horribly spaced out and lay their trip on the equally spaced out Donahue'. Others would come in, walk by the wide-eyed Donahue, open the refrigerator, and help themselves. Donahue was too stoned to resist.

Kershaw, after pissing off most of the local axmen, had found two guitar hands to play behind him who really knew how to drive a guitar. Kershaw, a friend of Dylan’s and giving off a lot of Dylan vibes, is visibly insane, but whereever he goes, he dominates the scene. Kershaw played with three feet of gut dangling from his fiddle bow, rushing madly around the stage with everyone jumping out of his way. The crowd demanded more and more, and he kept coming back, playing the same songs over again. Finally, they were satisfied, but Kershaw was crazed, so he came back onstage and played some more.

There was only one band that could have followed the energy level Kershaw had built. Stone Ground played a set that must stand, like the Band’s legendary performance in San Francisco, as one of the major historical events of rock and roll. They took us all on a, trip, perhaps the heaviest we’ve ever taken. No one came away from their performance the same person,.or unconvinced that here was the best rock and roll has to offer.

Stone Ground is like a pro football team.. They seem to have a defensive team, an offensive team, a kicking team, a starting team, and reserves on the bench. They have depth, as they say in the leagues. One of their many talents is Sal Valentino, former singer and writer for the Beau Brummels. He sings “Spanish Harlem Incident” (Gypsy Girl, you got me swallowed ...) in a way that makes you forget Dylan, honestly. And catch “Thunder and Lightning” by him, too. He sings sideways into the mike, slurring the words into one another, and leering evilly. The band has seven people who can sing lead, and they do it in a complex system of relays. Verne Bildt sings in a shouting style and looks and sounds like nothing so much as a grizzily bear. Annie Sampson is a rich vein of black soul for the band and she can take over the show at any time. Lead guitarist plays in an obscene humping manner reminiscent of the late Hendrix, but completely unique and not stagey. Stone Ground is real energy and they are great. If there is a movie, it lies with them. The rest is a shuck I hope no one will take seriously. Donahue, who owns the band will reportedly be asking $2,000,000 for them to sign with Warner Brothers records. That’s how good they are.

Th? sound system for the Caravan was by Alembic Sound, the same as at Altamont. It was designed by Owsley Stanley III, the acid alchemist. There were quite a few familiar faces from Altamont — Chris Langhart, some of Chip Monck’s crew, the sound people, etc. Caravan of Love, from the same people who brought you Altamont! The sound system crackled and honked and squeaked and fed back and was perfect in its raunchyness, unlike Hanley or Haddox, who are so flawless as to be lifeless.

The set went on. M.C. Morgan Upton (of The Committee fame) resplendent in electric blue nylon windbreaker and garish orange framed Pat Boone shades, announced the end of the show several times, and finally the drummer took over as M.C. and continued the show. It was perhaps the peak point of the entire caravan, except for the David Peel stabbing incident in Antioch. The French cameramen had gone home and missed it, as they did the Peel stabbing, and it became a saying on the caravan that the cameramen are never there when you need them. It was unforgetable, with smoke boiling off the gelatine spotlight filters, dust rising from the kids dancing in the Boulder prairie dirt, and drifting ghostily across the stage.

A group called the STP gang added to the color. They are a bunch of hippies who are pseudo mountain men, with carefully tattered leather outfits, carefully matted hair, and carefully draped beartraps on chains slung over their backs. Also, clubs and bowie knives. The freak story of the caravan next day was from the Caravan doctor, who told of one of the STP women who came in with a 4-inch slash across her crotch, compliments of her old man. Apparently she hadn’t heard of women’s liberation.

The sexism on the caravan was amazing for 1970. When Ellen told the other women she didn’t like washing dishes, they told her she couldn’t wash unless she liked it. When the women of the kitchen (yes!) offed the male gourmet chef, it wasn’t an act of women’s liberation, it was a move to consolidate the cooking for the women.

Next stop, Kearney, Nebraska. I had nailed a gold four-poster bed with black sheets on top of the car in the center of the stage in parody of the Caravaneers frenzy to get laid. It falls off as we are cruising along at 80, smashing to smithereens on the highway. Oh well, we shrug, it’s biodegradable. Biodegradab'e is the standard of virtue on the caravan. Ecology is the morality and biodegradable is the Holy Ghost.

We go into a service station for gas. I am fixing something and mash my finger. Forgetting that I am in my clerical garb, I yell, “Goddamned sonofabitch.” Six nuns are at the pump next to us, looking ill. We leave as soon as humanly possible.

Coming into the campsite at Kearney, we lost a wheel seconds after slowing down from our standard cruising speed of 100. Kearney features Joni Mitchell flown in to play for the Caravan by the campfire. A bit unrealistic, especially when Francois runs them thru several takes Of singing along with Joni, while everyone pretends to act naturally.

In the morning, the accountant from Warner Brothers comes out with his adding machine and his wad of money, and hands out money to a line of hippies clutching receipts. One Hog Farmer turns in a receipt marked “Cokes all around -If $30.” The accountant pays it off. It is for cocaine. When available, each caravaneer was given a daily dope ration. At times it seemed like the Caravan was being manipulated via the dope. Like a cathedral organ, they would press a button and channel down speed, grass, acid, hash, mescaline, or peyote depending on what response they wanted.

Onward to the Winnebago Indian Reservation near Council Bluffs, Iowa. We pick up David Peel at the airport. David and his band, who play such songs as “Have a Marijuana” and “Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker” will be playing on top of our stage and riding with us to complete our countercaravan. Jethro Tull was to play at the reservation, but after arriving at the concert site, they refuse. Some say because there was no piano, others say because they considered the crowd too small. Stone Ground does their thing, and about 500 people attend. A nice little concert.

Next morning, the Caravan folk are assembled to listen to one of the Winnebago elders. He tells us about how the Winnebago tribe is being screwed by the government. He starts out in French. Anybody who has any French in their repertoire finds some way to use it. The filmmakers are all French, after all. We parody this by wearing Avis buttons that say “We Try Harder” in French.

Everyone listens attentively to the elder and is properly guilty. It is an especially phony scene, even for the Caravan. Someone asks what we can do to help After all, I think, we’re going to be around for all of a couple more hours. The elder tells them to mind their own business, in effect. The Stokely Carmichael line.

One of the Caravan execs tells me that the next campsite is in Moline, but later it is announced that the next campsite is Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Butch, famed No. 1 driver for the Hog Farm, is doing our driving, for the whole trip, except for when the Germans were driving. Butch is the Neal Cassady of the Seventies, and he cruises the 4 ton car at 100 for hour on end. Other people in the car are people who dig what we’re into, recruited from the Caravan. Some of them leave as our thing gets'heavier and heavier, but others replace them.

We get arrested in Galesburg, Illinois for running a stop sign. Taken to the city jail, we all pose in front of it while David takes our picture. We make it into an outrageous joke.

I give them $25 and we are given a police escort to the city limits. We pick up the rest of David’s band, the Lower East Side, in Moline and-make it into Yellow Springs. In the morning, we wake up to find a guy pretending to push one of the mammoth buses through the mud, while one of the pseudo-stars of the movie leans out of the door of the bus into camera range, supervising. It is patently staged. The scene for the “documentary” finished, they head back to town for breakfast. We greet them as they go by with firecrackers and smokebombs. One of them comes over and gives us a lecture for disturbing the crickets for the benefit of the cameras. Others on the bus register their disgust into the tape recorders. David points out that we’ve been there all night and so perhaps we are in a better position to talk about the cricket population than someone who has been “relating to the ecology” for five minutes. They leave.

We decide to go into town for breakfast and a little street concert. We have been trying to penetrate to the Caravan’s consciousness for some time, trying to get them to think about what they’re involved in. Many of them have been into politics in the past, but it’s been cooled out for the movie. We decide to step up our campaign. We paint the side of our car in huge letters: Free Bobby; Free John Sinclair; Free Tim; Free Everybody: Caravan, Love It or Leave It; Caravan of Pirates, etc.

We set up bn the lawn of the school. We have forgotten some of the instruments, the microphones, and the amplifiers, but David decides to play anyway. Shortly after he begins, a man and a woman begin digging up the turf in front of David. He ignores them. It is guerilla theatre of a high order, but no one can figure out to what purpose. As David continues, a UCLA film crew brought in that day to film the movie being made walks up. They don’t know what’s going on and think we’re part of the Caravan, not realizing that this is going to be an anti-Caravan rally. They begin filming. Immediately they are surrounded by an angry mob, chanting “Fuck Warner Brothers”, The crowd thinks we are with Warner Brothers, too. They begin painting slogans on the side of the car, like A Hip Capitalist Is a Capitalist Pig; Culture Rip-Off; Fuck: etc. They pour paint over the windshield and turn on the wipers, and start letting the air out of the tires. It is an orgy of destruction. I am digging on the irony of them attacking us, anxious for things to quiet down so we can explain and direct the energy someplace useful. They demand the use of the cameras to film a hospital strike. I tell them, right on, and offer to take them out to the campsite to confront the Caravan. So many people pile in the car that I can’t get in to drive. It looks like a fraternity stunt.

Someone yells, “If the White Panthers were here, they’d rip this thing off.” Someone says I am with the White Panthers, but no one is listening. Eventually it all gets straightened out, but about that time, Chan, one of the people from the Caravan arrives to “cool things out”. He begins to defend the Caravan vociferously. People who are just arriving are still attacking the car, and people who have been there for a while start to go. away, confused.

Chan accuses me of taking money from Warner Brothers. He says David has been causing trouble since Albuquerque, although he has only been with us since Council Bluffs. He calls us parasites, although I have eaten only one meal with the Caravan and gave them 50pounds.of rice when I arrived. We argue. The crowd decides against Chan.

. Chan tells us to get off the campus. The crowd shouts that it’s their campus, not Warner Brothers’, and they want us to stay. Chan, a radio announcer whose air name is Travis T. Hip, demands again that we leave.

“I’m a Jew and you’re Hitler for Warner Brothers,” says David.

“Nobody calls me that,” shouts Chan. “I’m going to kill you, you motherfucker.”

Chan pulls a lethal looking bowie knife and whirls on me. I am at the other end of the stage talking to some people, but I still have two drumsticks in my hand. Chan turns on the defenseless David, grabbing on his vest. David pulls away, ripping his vest neatly from his back. David runs. Chan chases him, knife in hand. David stumbles and goes down. Chan lunges, knife in hand. I and several others jump on him, and Billy White, David’s guitarist, peels back his fingers and disarms him.

“It’s all right. I’m cool now,” says Chan, disengaging himself from the pile.

A girl in the crowd has become hysterical, crying and screaming at Chan, “You life-hater, you life-hater!” Francois arrived, late as usual, camera in hand. I was furious. I snatched a camera from his cameraman. I incited the crowd to riot.

It was over. We split, after making arrangements to meet with the campus radicals later. The Caravan lawyer, Jules Bonjour, San Francisco defender of the Hell’s Angels and pro dope dealers, found us in town and tried southing us.

I told him the next time someone from the Caravan pulled a knife on us, we would defend ourselves in kind.

We went into the next town to get David a new guitar ($5) while David sold his old guitar ($5). When we got back to camp, we were immediately surrounded by a mob of caravaneers. Chan had spread a skillful distortion of what had happened. But it wasn’t really Chan, it was the Caravan. The next day, Chan was the one who found one of our speakers on the road after it had been ripped off.

A camp meeting was called. Chan introduced himself as the one who had tried to kill David. The members of the “Caravan of Love” cheered. They said we were on a bad vibes New .York political “trip”. I pointed out to them that Woodstock took place in New York, while Altamont took place in California. Finally, we had penetrated, and people were beginning to question the efficacy of an apolitical movie to make Warner Brothers a lot of money. Finally, the issue was out in the open. Even so, the meeting was broken up before we could take it too far. But afterward, dozens of people came up and said they were glad the issue had finally come out, and that they wanted to talk about it more.

Unfortunately, the radicals didn’t get it-together, and a vote of a general meeting of Antioch College students that night was to allow the coricert to go on. The concert featured Van Morrison and Stone Ground. Van Morrison was very packaged, a do-your-gig-andsplit kind of thing. Stone Ground cut too short. In the middle of the concert, they raised a huge 12 foot peace sign on one of the light towers and lit it up with Christmas tree lights. Absolutely the worst taste seen anytime, anywhere. The radicals chant, “Fuck Warner Brothers, Fuck Warner Brothers!” But wait, they have their hands cupped over their mouths,, as though to muffle the sound. Wha.t the hell is this? They don’t want to ruin the sound track? Media, especially movies, can be amazingly corrupting.

Morgan Was happy to give them the mike, as was Wavy Gravy. Morgan’s' tactic was to mock the speaker. If they said, “Warner Brothers is ripping us off,” Morgan and a chorus of caravan. eers would shout, “Right on!” Wavy’s tactic was to treat each petitioner as though he were on a bad acid trip, which was even more destructive.

During the evening, a baby was found high on a light tower. A group of people were in the process of getting her down, when the Caravan “leader” came running over, had the rescuers come down, and went up to rescue the baby himself, for the cameras.

The evening was filled with one confrontation after another, with everyone in the Caravan playing John Wayne. Every day was beginning to seem like High Noon. At one point, a caravaneer attacked David and only Billy’s timely tripping of his assailant saved him.

During the course of the concert, Wavy filled up the bottom half of our plastic sphere with jello. Large chunks of dry ice mixed in, which put out a mist. A guy walked around with a picket sign reading “World Peace Through Smoky Jello”, Wavy went to dive in. David tipped the bowl over. Later, some guy came up with the picketer and told him, “I agree with your goal, but I can’t agree with your methods.” In all seriousness.

Next day, before the Caravan pulled out, I went around to each car, truck, and bus with a heap of varied political bumper stickers. Without exception, every vehicle took a few and put them on. Women’s liberation stickers were especially popular. It was a dramatic change from their earlier position, and our organizing was gradually taking effect.

The next concert was in Washington, D.C. in L’Enfant Plaza across from the FBI Building. The Washington Post published a story alleging that the Caravan was jointly sponsored by the USIA (often a CIA front) and Warner Brothers. Later, Donahue reportedly said that the USIA would be screening the movie. I showed the article to various Caravaneers, but no one seemed interested. “Groovy. Far out,” was the general response. Brian Rohan, San Francisco rock lawyer and also listed as one of Esquire’s “100 rock heavies”, seemed to have no trouble getting passports for people, even when they had no birth certificates.

At the concert, the radicals were out in force, with picket signs and-chants. Francois generally ignored them in the shooting of his “documentary”. Someone distributed thousands of firecrackers and sm >ke bombs to the audience. Messes up sound tracks, you know. The caravaneers were in good form with their mocking and jeering, but it didn’t help when one of the Caravan “leaders” went put to confront the crowd and got his tie-dyed shirt ripped and got knocked down.

For myself, I was rather depressed. Michael Forman, who was once the U.P.S. ad rep and a former co-owner of Concert Hall, was acting as a special consultant to Warner Brothers for this movie. As a trusted friend of mine, I was counting on his help. Forman was the one who engineered the $ 10,000 rip off of Woodstock behind the scenes, with Abbie Hoffman and others, including myself. I was hoping he would set them up to do it again, but he wasn’t into it. He apparently had pretty much used up his pull taking grievances of caravaneers to management, and keeping Warner Brothers from interfering in the Caravan. Shit, all we wanted was $50,000, but as a result of this, it was never made a serious demand.

The night of the Washington concert, Francois was into filming crowd reactions-. Alice Cooper and Hot Tuna played. When Hot Tuna segued into “Volunteers”, for the first time the crowd jumped on its feet, fists raised, yelling, “Right on!” Francois ignored it, as did the people in the Caravan who were constantly saying that rock audiences don’t dig politics.

The caravan does not realize that I am paying my way to London, too. I meet them at the London airport in a rented van with Free John Sinclair on the side. It seemed to upset them. They thought they had finally gotten rid of me.

. The site is near Canterbury, about 40 miles outside of London. The concert features Pink Floyd, Formerly Fat Harry, Rod Stewart and the Small Faces, and, of course, Stone .Ground. Stone Ground is always put on last, because no name group around can follow them. They’re too good. One bass player didn’t come over with them because he didn’t trust Warner Brothers to bring him back. One girl’s parents insisted on a written promise from a high Warner Brothers executive before they would let their daughter go to England.

The concert was pleasant. The finale of the caravan was a trip up the Thames River in an excursion boat. Stone Ground and Formerly Fat Harry play.

A benefit featuring Stone Ground and Silver Metre is held at the Roundhouse, a hip community theatre center in London, to raise money to buy a bus for the Hog Farm. At one point, a guy from the audience went up to an unused mike and started singing into it, rather well, in fact. Stone Ground is like that. They create an impression that you would be welcome to come up on stage and plug in.

Some of the people like the candy fantasy world of the Caravan so much that they think they can continue it, and there is talk of finding new backers for a continuation of the movie to Katmandu. A Katmandu Klub is formed, but it all seems rather doubtful.

Meanwhile, back at the Mayflower Hotel where we were signing a Warner Brothers exec’s name to the tab (without his knowledge), the exec called up Ron Rosenbaum’s room while I was there. Ron was with us for much of the trip, and had written a sensitive and aware account of the Caravan. I impersonated Ron over the phone, and told the exec that I thought the Caravan was rather phony and that I had written a negative story. Later, the exec tried to stick Ron with part of the hotel billj apparently in revenge for what he though Ron had said over the phone.

Many of the people on the Caravan thought they were using the movie for their own purposes of changing society. We tried to convince them that they were only making money for Warner Brothers and that there should be politics in the movie. We were only partly successful. Coming off the trip, we had to admit that virtually all of the people we met in America were helpful and .friendly to us above and beyond the call of duty, despite our outrageous appearance. Repeatedly, people with right ring type stickers on their car would go out of their way to help us get back on the road when we broke down. In 1965, hippies were the most tolerant people in America. In 1970, we found them to be the least tolerant.

Rock and roll will stand. Chairman Mao says, “Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people .. . There is the political, criterion and the artistic criterion.” I don’t know what Chairman Mao would say about the Caravan, but I don’t think he would much equate it with the Long March. Can you dig that?