Pepperland: the Untold Story of the Infamous Psychedelic Rock Venue, pt. 1
Pepperland: the Untold Story of the Infamous Psychedelic Rock Venue, pt. 1
Pepperland: Woodstock West (1970-1973)
The San Francisco Bay Area has a rich history of showcasing musical performance. From gold rush-era piano saloons to the smoky 1950s jazz clubs and the psychedelic ballrooms of the 1960s, numerous Bay Area music venues have served as the backdrop for the region’s ever-changing eclectic musical expressionists. Longtime sites like the Fillmore in San Francisco and the Trident in Sausalito are reminders of the Bay Area’s historic musical evolution. As the passion from the Summer of Love was wearing off in the late 1960s, many Bay Area musicians were migrating north from the increasingly seedy mad scramble of San Francisco into easygoing Marin County. The influx of musicians inspired several new North Bay music venues. Places like Lion’s Share in San Anselmo and The Sleeping Lady in Fairfax had long runs and showcased great talent, while other clubs closed as quickly as they opened. Although short-lived, the former Pepperland (1970-1973) rock hall in San Rafael is one of the most historically underrated music sites in the Bay Area, having hosted some of the biggest names of the post-1960s era -including dozens of artists who played Woodstock, earning it the nickname “Woodstock West.”
A Place in the Sun
The specifics regarding the establishment of Pepperland remain as hazy as the air in the club itself. Nevertheless, in late 1969, work began to transition music performances from a club at the Litchfield’s Bermuda Palms Motel (737 E. Francisco Boulevard) in San Rafael, California, to a much larger building on the same lot (now 721 E. Francisco). Litchfield’s Bermuda Palms Motel was constructed in 1949 by Marin County, California resident and construction
The original motel is still recognizable by the refurbished Litchfield’s sign along Highway 101, twenty minutes north of San Francisco.
mogul Irving “Whitey” Litchfield. The motel resort ultimately included a ballroom, upscale dining room, Bali Hai Cocktail Lounge, and convention rooms. The Bermuda Palms Club hosted nightly dancing and was known by locals as the dance hall at Litchfield’s Bermuda Palms. The original motel is still recognizable by the refurbished Litchfield’s sign along Highway 101, twenty minutes north of San Francisco. According to Marin resident Charlie Litchfield, “My grandfather, Irving ‘Whitey’ Litchfield, built the original Bermuda Palms motel complex in the late ’40s, including the iconic Litchfield’s sign. It was originally a resort motel with an Olympic-sized pool. Sometime later, he built over the pool and created the club, centered around the large ballroom that hosted shows and entertainment.”
The Bermuda Palms club attracted several big-name jazz artists during the 1950s & 60s, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Etta James. It was a popular California gateway and drew many entertainment influencers, including American Bandstand host Dick Clark. Movie stars John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Robert Mitchum stayed at the resort while filming “Blood Alley” at nearby China Camp (State Park) in 1954. Whitey Litchfield also facilitated a boxing camp during the 50s frequented by boxing greats Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, and Don Cockell, who trained at the site for his World Heavyweight Championship fight against Marciano on May 16, 1955.
Courtesy of Thelen Creative
Alex Call, the lead guitarist/vocalist for the popular Marin-based band Clover, shared this description of Litchfield from his autobiography, 876-5309/Jenny, The Song that Saved My Ass… For a While. “Whitey, who must have been in his sixties at the time, was a real character. He was, short, wiry, and tough– a film noir pug-faced gangster with a heart of gold and a Saturday Night Special in his briefcase kind-of-guy.” Litchfield was a good promoter with an “old school” style. “The Club was a happening place,” said Whitey’s grandson, “hosting acts like Frank Sinatra and even an event for Richard Nixon’s failed 1962 gubernatorial campaign. My grandfather griped long after that Nixon never paid his bill.”
A Big Empty Room
In January 1970, owner Whitey Litchfield announced a new venture based in a former storage Quonset at 721 E. Francisco Blvd. He had recently remodeled the building hoping “to host big name bands, entertainers, special functions and one-off events.” He called the new music venue The Citadel. However, there is no record of any shows at this location under the Citadel name, only a burglary and vandalism of the club on December 11, 1969. Earlier in September,
The story I got from Janis was that two or three Angels immediately jumped on him and punched his lights out.
Litchfield had agreed to lease the space to John Shaw and Lawrence “Larry” Paul Samuels as a concert and civic events venue. Two fellow east coasters, Benjamin Blatt and Natan Shind, would operate the site. According to a July 1970 mention in Billboard magazine, “four independent backers are providing the funds to open the rock ballroom, which will not compete for audiences with Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco, some 12 miles away.” They didn’t know it then, but Graham’s Fillmore would close less than a year later -eliminating the competition altogether.
According to Charlie Litchfield, “It was an existing industrial Quonset used for storage by the Litchfield Construction company, and it was converted into a concert space. It used to extend all the way back to Front Street, so it was a 16,000-square-foot venue. Whitey cut the building in half in the late 70s/early 80s to build another section of (Bermuda Palms) motel on the back half of the lot.”
Big Brother and the Holding Company drummer Dave Getz recalls performing at one of the first shows in the “new” music venue. “I remember a show we did there that was put on by the Hell’s Angels. The stage was rather low, there was an area behind the stage for bands and friends to hang out, and the room itself was pretty much just a big empty room with nothing architecturally interesting.”
Although the former Quonset at 721 E. Francisco may have been uninteresting, the Hell’s Angels event was not. What happened on Sunday, May 21, 1970, was a far cry from the former Bermuda Palms club shows. The event was a fundraiser for the Bay Area chapter of the Hell’s Angels and featured Bay Area performers Big Brother and the Holding Company, Gold, and Janis Joplin with her new band Main Squeeze. Janis was asked to perform at the benefit by one of her Hell’s Angels “friends” named Sweet William. Her former band, Big Brother, and her current band, Main Squeeze, were each booked. Before the show, Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew said, “This will be the first time that Janis’ old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge.” Andrew was right, as the scene was intense. Several “rent-a-cops” wandered through the crowd, and motorcycles lined the parking lots as attendees took over the surrounding neighborhood. The event had a coat check and a weapons check.
Getz, shared a story about the Hell’s Angels benefit at Pepperland from his upcoming memoir, Death of Janis. Getz writes: “Big Brother with Nick Gravenites singing, played before Janis and ‘Main Squeeze’ (a tentative name that was later changed to ‘Full-Tilt Boogie’). During BBHC’s set, a girl took off all her clothes and jumped on stage, dancing around. A guy took off all his clothes and proceeded to try to go down on her while she was dancing around.
Euphoria touted “organic foods” and “good people,” with performances by Boz Scaggs, The Grateful Dead, and The Youngbloods
No one tried to stop this, and some bikers were banging pool cues and hands on the stage -which was only about two feet high- yelling for him to ‘get it up’ and fuck her. Nothing much happened, and at the end of the evening, I saw the two of them huddled together in a blanket, talking, possibly getting to know each other. Maybe they eventually married and had a family. While this was happening onstage, Janis was backstage prancing around like a peacock with a couple of friends and a bottle of Jim Beam. A biker from another club -I was told he was a Gypsy Joker- said to Janis something like, ‘Hey mama, gimme a taste of that’ and reached for the bottle. She told him to ‘Fuck off, man,’ and he either slapped her or punched her in the face. I personally saw the black eye. The story I got from Janis was that two or three Angels immediately jumped on him and punched his lights out. When Janis came out on stage, she was a fucking mess, and her band was trying to find a way to sound coherent, being her rant went on for at least 20 minutes. She ranted about the events that had happened and was full of self-pity about how what had happened was the story of her life. Her set was awful. I know that’s hard to believe, but she knew it later and told me she knew it. To redeem herself, she had Big Brother open for her in San Diego a few months later when she was about one month clean, and her band had been touring. Her act was smokin’. We sat next to each other on the plane back from San Diego. That was the last time I saw her.” After Joplin’s “performance” at the Hell’s Angles event, the band helped her to a waiting car. Her roommate, Lyndall (Erb), had driven and did not find it unusual that Janis was upset that she’d been “punched around” or that “she’d gotten so drunk that she was unable to remember the performance. It has happened before,” Erb shrugged. The Angels paid Joplin $240 for the gig and had officially christened “the big empty room”.
Euphoria
A month after the Hell’s Angels fundraiser, the venue began operations as Euphoria, with shows presented by Euphoric Entertainment. The first lineup under the new name saw Ike & Tina Turner, Boz Scaggs, and A.B. Skhy, who performed on Saturday, June 27, 1970. Shows by the Marin County group Clover and Big Brother and the Holding Company on the first weekend of July helped spread the word about this “out of sight” new space in Marin that books great acts. The former Quonset at 721 E. Francisco quickly became a happening scene. Euphoria touted “organic foods” and “good people,” with performances by Boz Scaggs, The Grateful Dead, and The Youngbloods during its three-month run from May to July 1970. Many local attendees recall Janis Joplin joining the Grateful Dead on July 16, and singing a sultry duet (“Turn On Your Lovelight”) with Grateful Dead keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, with whom
Many local attendees recall Janis Joplin joining the Grateful Dead on July 16, and singing a sultry duet with Grateful Dead keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, with whom Joplin had a romantic relationship.
Joplin had a romantic relationship. Most of this performance was captured on a bootleg recording that is still popular in the boot world. Joplin (who was living in nearby Larkspur at the time) would die from a drug overdose in Los Angeles less than three months later. You can hear McKernan and Joplin’s original Pepperland bootleg HERE.
Events at 721 E. Francisco Blvd. were produced and presented over two-plus years by a handful of promoters, including Berkeley Folk Music Festival founder Barry Olivier, Skip Whitney of Fun Productions, and most notoriously by Larry Samuels and two East Coasters, Nat Shind, and Ben Blatt. “Two drug dealers from New York,” says former Pepperland promoter Skip Whitney. “They did a number of shows. We took over from them (in Sept. 1971.) They eventually got into some pretty major trouble”.
That trouble was a drug raid at the Bermuda Palms motel on June 30, 1970. The raid netted seven arrests, including club operators Nat Shind for marijuana possession, Larry Samuels for heroin, and Ben Blatt for battery on a police officer. The police also found and confiscated $15,000 in cash and charged each with being under the influence of narcotics. It was the first of many impediments the trio would face operating the club. “From the very beginning, it was like, ‘is there going to be another show?’” recalled Pepperland Stage Manager, Mapes Root. “I don’t know how they funded it, but they had a source (laughs)… and it wasn’t probably good. No question the money came from lord knows where!”
The venue closed for a remodel and a re-branding at the end of July 1970. The “new” club was set to open on Labor Day Weekend 1970 with a bill featuring Deep Purple, but the gig never happened. A week later, on September 18, 1970, the space at 721 E. Francisco Blvd. officially opened as Pepperland.
The Purple Palace
Pepperland was billed by proprietors Ben Blatt and Nat Shind as the “biggest ballroom on the West Coast” and as “Marin’s first rock hall,” both of which were untrue. The building was painted a loud (and locally controversial) purple color as the re-imagined club had an unapologetic Beatles Yellow Submarine influence. The venue featured a quadraphonic sound system developed by Meyer Sound founder John Meyer with giant molded fiberglass speaker cones big enough for die hards to sit in, and many did. In an interview with Mix Online Magazine, John Meyer said he “started a company called Glyph to design and build sound reinforcement systems. Glyph’s first installation was at Pepperland. It was a pure exponential horn-loaded bi-amped quadraphonic sound system. Each stack included a white fiberglass bass, mid-range, and high-frequency horns. The bass horns were huge, measuring 8×8 feet with 30-inch drivers.” The system was big enough to fill Pepperland’s giant interior (and most of the surrounding neighborhood) with sound.
Fitting with the “Yellow Submarine” influence, Pepperland’s interior support girders were adorned with painted portholes mimicking those of a submarine. Although large, the performance space had low ceilings and poor ventilation, with cigarette and pot smoke saturating the air. According to Pepperland Stage Manager Mapes Root, “The place was not a good set-up for music. It had concrete floors throughout, and the exposed rafters in the ceiling… not a good
Fitting with the “Yellow Submarine” influence, Pepperland’s interior support girders were adorned with painted portholes mimicking those of a submarine.
place for sound. But man, what incredible shows! Just incredible acts.” Root had toured with the Johnny Winter Group after working at Woodstock less than a year before being hired by Blatt and Shind to become stage manager at Pepperland. “I worked on the stage at Woodstock. Friday night, the crew they hired got stoned on acid and couldn’t go on, so I worked the whole weekend. I met the road manager for the Johnny Winter Group and toured with them for a while. Then I drove cabs in New York, saved some money, and moved to Lagunitas (Marin County). I met these two guys from New York (Blatt & Shind), and I told them about my experience at Woodstock, and they said you can be our stage manager!”, Root recalls.
Whether there was ever competition for artists or not, the roster of performers at Pepperland was entirely on par with that of Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Many artists that played at Graham’s Fillmore West also played at Pepperland, and a couple of groups Graham “managed” (including Lydia Pense and Cold Blood) began playing Pepperland after the closure of Fillmore West. “I don’t think Bill had any official association with Pepperland, though. He had Winterland (Ballroom) and other things still going on,” recalls Cold Blood management and one-time Fillmore Stage Manager Charlie Ellicott. “I was out of there by that time anyway. Things were really changing in the city, and it got more violent and dark. I moved up north”.
Pepperland’s September 18th opening night lineup included Captain Beefheart, Charles Lloyd, and San Francisco staple Hot Tuna (featuring Jefferson Airplane members Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Marty Balin & Papa John Creach -who had played Woodstock just a year before). It also happened to be the day Jimi Hendrix died in London. The music world was in shock. Hendrix fan Steve Miller showed up to Pepperland that night unannounced and played a tribute to the 27-year-old musician. Miller’s performance at Pepperland was captured on a bootleg recording and later released in 2020 as Peppa Sauce (Sailor Records / Capitol Records). Hear it HERE.
The Scene
Pepperland bills usually featured at least three artists, and shows often lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Monday nights were only a dollar, and most shows were all-ages. From September 1970 until mid-1971, the performance space was enhanced by the Brotherhood of Light (BOL) shows led by Bob Pullum. Pullum had produced light shows for many notable San Francisco venues in the late 1960s, including the Avalon Ballroom, Carousel Ballroom, and Bill Graham’s Fillmore and Winterland Ballrooms. Pullum came to Pepperland after the Fillmore West closed.
Pullum recalled those days in a 2002 interview with Pooters Psychedelic Shack, “In the late spring of 1970, my (BOL) partners, Brian and Ed, had left, and Bill Graham was talking about shutting down (the Fillmore). I took an offer to do the light show at Pepperland in San Rafael with the promise of complete creative control. We had great shows there.” Pulllum’s Brotherhood of Light shows splashed Pepperland’s relatively small stage and exposed ceiling, adding some much-needed ambiance to the former construction Quonset.
According to a review of Pepperland’s first night printed in the September 25, 1970 issue of the underground newspaper Berkeley Tribe, “the new concert-dance hall has a 5000 (person) capacity. The place is reminiscent of the Fillmore, including a light show by people (Brotherhood of Light) from Bill Graham’s Fillmore West.” Bill Graham was also at Pepperland that evening, hanging “in the back with the performers, groupies, etc.” As for the new club itself, the reviewer noted it had “a snack bar that serves organic foods, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, organic juices, cucumber sandwiches; an $18,000 quadraphonic sound system and remote controlled lights revolving in circles around the walls.” Although he was not on the bill, Steve Miller and his new group opened the show, paying tribute to guitarist Jimi Hendrix. The Berkeley Tribe review stated, “Miller is now playing with ex-members of the
Although he was not on the bill, Steve Miller and his new group opened the show, paying tribute to guitarist Jimi Hendrix.
old Frumious Bandersnatch, and they haven’t quite got it together yet. The harmonies are weak, the music is sloppy, and at this time, the entire thing just isn’t together. Miller had a few good moments of his own, but the rest of the band wasn’t cutting it.” Less than three years later, the “rest of the band” would get it together as founding members of the group Journey.
The remainder of the opening night featured performances by Charles Lloyd, followed by Bay Area favorites Captain Beefheart and Hot Tuna. The reviewer noted, “Security was running through the crowd keeping the people out of the doorways and booting those without tickets. It was very crowded. Very hot. Several people on intense acid trips had to leave. Greed, shadiness, and contempt for the people who pay to support all this have made it all but impossible to feel at home in places like the Fillmore (East and West) as well as their bastard offspring like Pepperland. It’s a social event. But no one gets it on. No one dances; there is very little motion. All you can do is sit down or lie down and listen. As far as the people at Pepperland go, they’re nice. Marin freaks. So are the people who work there. You can rap to them. They listen and understand… and care about people, or at least they say they do”.
End of Part One
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