The Name That Shall Not Be Named

Life is hard, especially when you are stupid...

That first day in Golden Gate Park, I not only met Marty Balin, Janis Joplin, the guys from Moby Grape and Quicksilver, but I met another San Francisco character that had a huge impact on my life, a relationship that, looking back, I see as a mixed blessing. Without it, I probably would have ended up back in Seattle and might have eventually returned to Walla Walla, which may not have been such a bad thing after all. But through the meeting I’m going to share, everything changed for me and for my musical career. Because I made that connection, I stayed in San Francisco and had some outstanding musical experiences and met a lot of talented players and singers. In the long run, though, I think I should have gotten a teaching degree, stayed in Walla Walla, bought a house that looked up on the Blue Mountains, and played with the local guys at the Elks Club on weekends, instead of becoming an unprescribed chemical test engineer and plunging into the mystic haze of San Francisco in the 60s.

Here’s how it came about. West Coast’s bass player, Dave Burke, knew a guy named Smitty and his wife Jody. Smitty was an old Hell’s Angel that Dave had connected with who was now working for a big time Rock and Roll manager. After the gig was over, Dave introduced us to Smitty, who told us he really liked our set and we should come meet his boss, Matthew. Matthew had gotten some notoriety by being part of a team of explorers that went to the south Pacific looking for Amelia Earhart. They wrote a book, The Search for Amelia Earhart, that got on some best-seller book lists, so he had a platform when he came to S.F.

When Matthew got to S.F. he opted into the whole hippie lifestyle and created a persona for himself. He wore Spanish capes and a flat Spanish hat and adopted a villainous-looking goatee. His last name was Katz but he demanded that everyone pronounce it “Kayts” not “Cats.” In later years, because of his association with The Airplane, Moby Grape and It’s a Beautiful Day, Matthew would tell everyone that listened that he was the creator of the “San Francisco Sound.” As a musician, I found that most managers, producers, club owners, and ballroom operators fancied themselves to be the heart of the music scene, simply because they provided various dives for local musicians to perform in or somehow got them a record contract. Such hubris from people who didn’t know a song lyric from a C Chord. Laughable, really.

Anyway, Matthew got in with Marty Balin and used some of his LA connections to get the Jefferson Airplane their deal with Columbia Records through a friend of his, Tommy Oliver, a producer who had recorded people like Mel Carter, Vicki Carr and others in the “unhip” music scene. Tommy was a nice guy, but the Airplane were way too weird for him, especially when Grace got in the group.

Before the Airplane, the major happening San Francisco bands were The Beau Brummels with Sal Valentino, and The We Five. Sal re-surfaced in the early seventies as the leader of Stoneground, a band that featured Lydia Moreno, a singer who is featured on some of my recording work with the actual Indian Pudding & Pipe (more about that in part II of this episode). The We Five featured Michael Stewart, the brother of John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, and lead singer, Beverly Bivens. My friend Rex Larson who later joined Indian Pudding & Pipe played the 12-string riff in You were On My Mind, a huge hit out of SF that made #1 on Cashbox, #3 on Billboard and #1 on Adult Contemporary.

But that was pretty much it for San Francisco until the Airplane recorded their “Takes Off” album and created a few ripples locally and around the country. Then Signe Tolne Anderson, the Airplane’s lead singer, left the band and they got a singer from another local band, The Great Society. Her name was Grace Slick, and she brought two of Darby Slick’s tunes with her—White Rabbit and Somebody to Love, which of course became monster hits and put the San Francisco music scene on the map. At the same time, Skip Spence the Airplane’s drummer, left the Airplane and started a new band where he played guitar and sang. The Band was Moby Grape and Matthew immediately glommed onto them. He also got them signed with Columbia. They created an uproar in the music business by releasing eight singles at once from their first album. The Grape were the best west coast rock band by far with the wonderful harmonies, Gerry Miller’s astonishing guitar work and the soulful singing of Bob Mosley. They also spent years battling with Katz and disappeared up the hyperspatial tube that claimed so many great musicians who had great talent but no common sense.

We spent some time with Matthew. He liked the band and when he offered us a contract he was still in fairly good standing with both bands and so this was all very exciting for a seventeen-year-old from the boonies of eastern Washington. What we didn’t know was that we signed away all our publishing and the rights to the name of our band.

Through Matthew, we did some sessions over at Coast Recorders on Bush Street. We recorded some of our original tunes and they came out pretty good. One song we recorded, Hashish, traveled around the world. It ended up as a European hit by Sweden’s number one band, Seid. Just in case you are thinking right now that we were one of those bands that glorified drugs, the song was about the dangers of smoking hashish, especially for young people. (So there, all you finger pointers.) We also got to do a White Levi’s commercial, and it became very popular throughout the country.

Then, in 1969, Steve Mack, who had a family in Seattle, left the band and went home. West Coast Natural Gas decided to go back to Seattle and when we did, we played as a four-piece and I started playing piano. We came home to a hero’s welcome and, for a short time, reigned as the top psychedelic band in town. That didn’t last long, though, and the band broke up.

Meanwhile, Matthew was pulling the scam that would lead to one of the most long-term kefuffles in SF music history. Matthew had a list of imaginary band names that he owned and he would get people to join his bands under his names. He did that because he was embroiled in two lawsuits over who owned the names Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. (Both bands had split with him.) He owned the recordings of West Coast, so he put the music out under the name Indian Pudding & Pipe. Ever since then, I have spent many hours explaining to fans that the songs on Matthew’s San Francisco Sound label, listed as Indian Pudding & Pipe, are actually West Coast Natural Gas. We also discovered that he owned all the publishing rights, and we never saw a dime in royalties, even though the records sold many copies. I finally got the copyrights back after they expired 28 years after we signed with him. So that’s the end of the first part of my Mathew Katz story. Stay tuned for the next episode and you’ll learn all about how stupid an eighteen-year-old-desperate-to-make-it musician can be.