" I was consuming three bottles of wine...every day...Grace Slick "

Sandy Pearlman was the first longhair I ever made friends with. It was 1965 and he was president of the student government at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island. He got me to run for freshman class president. He told me about Vietnam, Negroes, the Rolling Stones and LSD. When our leftist government was swept out of office the next year, Pearlman's last official action was to appoint me chairman of the student activities board for the following year, a position I held for about three years, controlling in excess of $100,000 a year for concerts, dances, lectures, athletics, etc.

They tried to impeach me when I put on a Fugs concert. When Stony Brook and Bryn Mawr College hired the Airplane to play their first East Coast concerts—for $750—only 300 students showed up. The next week they tried to impeach me again. They wanted Dave Brubeck, The Chad Mitchell Trio and the Four Tops. I gave 'em the Doors, Hendrix, Mitch Ryder, Country Joe and—every year—the Airplane. I told them that one day they'd thank me.