Dr. Jeff has made a key to the photo, putting names to faces:
In January 1969, the Dead and some of their family & friends went out to Olompali to take a group shot for their upcoming album Earthquake Country. They’d taken photos of just the band, but that wasn’t quite what they had in mind; they wanted more of a “family” portrait – women, children, animals, a communal feel. Some girls from the Olompali commune were invited to join them, and they arranged themselves in front of a picturesque tree on a hillside above the main house. Pigpen, then the most well-known face in the group, sat in front, while the rest of the band mingled with the crowd.
The photo was taken by Tom Weir (no relation to Bob), a San Francisco photographer. The Dead had also used him to take the back-cover photo for Anthem of the Sun – if you look up other photos of his, he has a recognizable style that they must have liked: low-angle circular images, set in nature, taken with a wide-angle lens. (He also did album cover shots for the Steve Miller Band in ’68 and Shades of Joy in ’69.)
The people in the photo are surprisingly random – perhaps whoever was available that day.
A half-dozen girls from the commune sat in the photo. The McCoy sisters, Noelle Barton, and Siobhan McKendrick were the daughters of the commune’s founders (Don McCoy, Sandy Barton, and Sheila & Bob McKendrick, not pictured). Maura McCoy and Sheri Jensen sat by Garcia; Sheri’s sister Rhonda held Mickey's horse Snorty for him. She had been teaching the other girls at Olompali how to ride horses:
Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi showed up; he had been hanging out with the Dead since their days at 710 Ashbury, and was even known to sit in at some shows.
Prankster Ken Babbs appeared, along with his partner Gretchen Fetchin and two of their children. Babbs had known the Dead at least since the Acid Tests; he was then living with his family at the Dead's warehouse/studio by Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, and working as the caretaker there.
Band manager Jon McIntire appeared, but none of the Dead’s other managers like Rifkin or Scully (among others). McIntire was a recent addition to the Dead management team, having joined them during the Carousel days in early ’68.
Bill Kreutzmann brought his daughter Stacy and his new partner Susila Zeigler. She was then pregnant with their son Justin, who would be born in June.
The woman next to Mickey Hart is Terry, his girlfriend at the time. (Nothing more is known about her at the moment.)
Oddly, some of the Dead's other friends like Owsley, Mountain Girl, and Rosie McGee weren't present, though photographer Tom Weir’s wife sat in.
The woman next to Mickey Hart is Terry, his girlfriend at the time. (Nothing more is known about her at the moment.)
Oddly, some of the Dead's other friends like Owsley, Mountain Girl, and Rosie McGee weren't present, though photographer Tom Weir’s wife sat in.
Courtney Love, of course, was not there.
The one person who hasn’t been identified is the woman sitting beneath Guaraldi and holding flowers to her face (#12). Our guess is that she may have come with Guaraldi; but if anyone recognizes her, speak up!
UPDATE: It turns out the woman with the flowers did come with Guaraldi - she was his girlfriend at the time, Gretchen Glanzer (later Gretchen Katamay). She also worked with Bill Graham's Millard Agency promoting concerts, and around this time was working with the Dead. (Bill Graham was "managing" the Dead at the start of '69, and had a representative go with them on their Feb '69 tour. Gretchen also went on tour with them at some point.)
Vince and Gretchen had been seeing each other for years (despite his marriage), but were not a couple much longer. She later said, "Vince and I split up and got back together a lot. But we finally did it for good in 1969, when I was working for the Grateful Dead. I got a truck and told Vince that I just couldn't go back to this. There was just a lot going on. One of the Grateful Dead managers helped me move out of Vince's house." (0)
UPDATE: It turns out the woman with the flowers did come with Guaraldi - she was his girlfriend at the time, Gretchen Glanzer (later Gretchen Katamay). She also worked with Bill Graham's Millard Agency promoting concerts, and around this time was working with the Dead. (Bill Graham was "managing" the Dead at the start of '69, and had a representative go with them on their Feb '69 tour. Gretchen also went on tour with them at some point.)
Vince and Gretchen had been seeing each other for years (despite his marriage), but were not a couple much longer. She later said, "Vince and I split up and got back together a lot. But we finally did it for good in 1969, when I was working for the Grateful Dead. I got a truck and told Vince that I just couldn't go back to this. There was just a lot going on. One of the Grateful Dead managers helped me move out of Vince's house." (0)
It would also be nice to know who the dog in the photo was…
The photo may have been inspired by the Band’s Music From Big Pink album, which had been released in summer '68 and featured a “Next of Kin” photo of the Band with their families:
Another possible inspiration for the Aoxomoxoa photo was the cover of the Incredible String Band's album The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, which also came out in '68:
The photos are quite similar - pastoral "family" shots with trees, kids, even a dog! This could be chalked up to coincidence or the common vibe of the times, but I wonder...
A little background on Olompali’s history can be found here:
The Dead had a close connection to Olompali – it was, for them, something like sacred ground. After returning from Los Angeles in spring ’66, they moved to Rancho Olompali and stayed there through May and June, renting the property for several weeks. Though they weren’t there long, they would remember their stay as an idyllic golden age, a “paradisiacal retreat.” (Although sometimes in their acid trips, they’d have threatening visions of the ancient Indians who’d used to live there, their spirits still haunting the walls and trees.)
The band held some famous parties during their stay, playing music for a stream of tripping visitors from San Francisco. On one occasion, May 22, they sent a flyer to all their friends in the music scene: “The Grateful Dead invite you to an afternoon of inter-galactic travel, to a communion with the spirits of long dead Indians, to a dance celebrating mainly all of us.”
Garcia remembered: “It was a great place. It had a swimming pool and barns and that sort of thing… We didn’t have that place very long, only about eight weeks. It was incredibly intense for everybody… Novato was completely comfortable, wide open, high as you wanted to get, run around naked if you wanted to, fall in the pool, completely open scenes. And I think it was the way they went down and the way people responded to that kind of situation. Everything was just super-groovy. It was a model of how things could really be good. If they really wanted to be. All that was a firming up of the whole social world of rock and roll around here…all the musicians in the Bay Area, most of them are from around here, they’ve known each other for a really long time in one scene or another – and that whole thing was shored up…at those parties. The guys in Jefferson Airplane would get together with Quicksilver and different guys, 81 different players, would get together and get high and get loose and have some fun… That was when we started getting tight with Quicksilver… They came and hung out at our place in Novato when we had our parties. And a lot of people like the various filmmakers and writers and dope dealers. All the people who were into doing stuff. People who had seen each other at rock and roll shows…in that first year. Those parties were like a chance to move the whole thing closer, so to speak. It was good times – unselfconscious and totally free. After that we moved back into San Francisco.” (1)
Phil Lesh fondly recalled Rancho Olompali, “its huge adobe mansion, several large outbuildings, a swimming pool, and acres of grounds… The surrounding fields were leased by some kind of rancher, who took an immediate dislike to our presence; we were informed that trespassing on his land would not be tolerated for any reason… That summer, we invited pretty much everybody in the local music scene (the bands, the promoters, the poster artists) out to Olompali to celebrate… All the musicians came and played (or not). Bear and some of the Pranksters…set up [speakers] in the living room and all over the grounds; there was food and drink for all, and the pool was wall to wall with mostly nude people… From the makeshift bandstand by the kitchen terrace, an ad hoc band composed of members of the Dead, Quicksilver, and the Airplane played some of the most startling music I’ve ever heard, a new kind of music no one had ever made before, a true synergy of spontaneity and structure, created on the spot.” (2)
George Hunter of the Charlatans remembered visiting the Dead at Olompali:
“The Dead used to have some pretty good parties out in their place in the country, in Olompali. Two or three hundred people would come, and of course, most of them probably took LSD… It seemed like a third to half of the people at these parties would be naked, hanging around the pool. It was a great place. It was sort of a ranch estate that had a nice big house that looked kind of like Tara in 'Gone With the Wind'. Then there was a lot of land around it – hills, a creek in the back, a big lawn and the pool. It was maybe 1000 feet off the highway, so it was fairly secluded. In between the house and the pool the Dead would set up their equipment and play from time to time during the day. Usually there'd be members of other bands there too, like the Airplane and Quicksilver, and there'd be little jams with people who wanted to play. I remember that the Dead would be playing and Neal Cassady would be doing this strange little dance… Neal was always in the thick of things. Those parties (I'm not sure how many of them there were) were always on a nice afternoon. Everyone would play all day in the sunshine, just doing everything, and then when the sun would start to go down and it got cold, people would pack it in. By the time it was dark most people were gone, but there were always enough people who were either around to begin with or who wanted to stay, so that the party would continue inside. In fact, with the number of people hanging out there all the time, it was pretty much a party all the time anyway. I don't know if it was 24 hours a day, but every time I was there it was going.” (3)
After the Dead’s lease at Olompali ended, they headed on to Camp Lagunitas in late June ’66, and then moved to the house at 710 Ashbury Street in September. Now that they lived in the city, they needed a new place to rehearse; and they came into contact with Don McCoy, who was renting space for bands to rehearse in at a heliport he owned.
According to the Olompali Movie facebook page, "The Dead rehearsed at Don McCoy's Gate 6 warehouse at the heliport in Sausalito. Other bands that rented the space from McCoy were Country Joe and the Fish, Sons of Champlin, Quicksilver, and even Chicago... McCoy also owned a small houseboat complex at Gate 6, where entertainers like Otis Redding and Bill Cosby stayed."
It seems that Dan Healy, John Cipollina and other members of Quicksilver also stayed in McCoy’s houseboat community, and the Dead may have heard about McCoy’s heliport rental space from them. Or, according to McNally, McCoy also owned the house at 715 Ashbury Street, across the street from where the Dead were living, and they may have met him there. At any rate, the Dead soon started regular rehearsals at the heliport, and even held a concert there on October 15, 1966. They’d use it as a rehearsal spot until switching to the Potrero Theater sometime in mid-’67.
McCoy had divorced his wife Paula in 1966, and kept custody of their three children; and she continued to live at 715 Ashbury. McNally says the house “had been owned by Don McCoy, a wealthy young hippie, and then by his ex-wife, Paula, who became involved with the Diggers… [She was] the doyenne of the Digger salon at 715 Ashbury Street, who liked to wear boots with a mink coat and nothing else.” (4) (Another resident of 715 Ashbury was Glenn McKay, who did light shows for Jefferson Airplane.) “All sorts of people - musicians, poets, artists, Diggers, and Angels - would shuttle between the two houses to hang out, play music, share ideas, and of course, borrow a cup of sugar.” (5) Her daughter Maura writes that Paula “was good friends with Bill Graham and Peter Coyote, among many others.” Paula and Coyote were also among the band of Dead friends who traveled with Rock Scully to London in December ’68 to meet the Beatles and the Stones.
Meanwhile, Don McCoy was going through changes. After his divorce, “I found myself a lonely man… It started in disillusionment with what I was doing.” Though wealthy from an inheritance and the profits from renting his properties, he said that “I had become a slave to my business affairs. If you are unhappy, you are a failure, no matter how much money you have.”
McCoy was willing to help out his friends when they needed money, and to support those in need. One instance was the visiting Indian musician Ali Akbar Khan: “Through his recent connections in the American counterculture, Khan had made friends with author and Zen Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts, who had been living on a houseboat in Sausalito. When Khan told Watts of his desire to open a new school devoted exclusively to North Indian classical music, Watts immediately picked up the phone and called Don McCoy, a wealthy real-estate agent, who came to Watts’ houseboat within the hour and presented Khan with a check for $20,000… [Using the money,] the Ali Akbar College of Music was founded in December 1967.” (6) (Mickey Hart would start taking courses there the next year, and would become friends with Khan.)
McCoy became restless: “I was really looking to duck responsibility. I also was on a search for meaning in life. I was looking for answers. It seemed like the world was going headlong to its own destruction. It seemed like man was raping the earth… I wanted to change the world.” He sold the houseboat business, and started looking for a new place where he could live with his friends. “I wanted a family. I wanted a big place where the kids could all be together.”
Possibly the Dead told him about the place at Rancho Olompali, or he’d heard about their stay there. McCoy rented the land there, moving to Olompali with his friends and their families in November ‘67. It proved a perfect location for McCoy’s flight from the ‘establishment,’ and as more people moved in, the Chosen Family commune was formed around the hippie ideals of freedom, togetherness, collective child-raising, and plenty of marijuana.
“I felt we were chosen for something,” McCoy said. “I thought we were going to create a new society…a new way of doing things, a new way of living together, getting along in a peaceful world.” The commune became well-known in the area for its large-scale baking operation: each week, nude commune members would bake hundreds of loaves of bread for the Diggers to distribute for free in San Francisco.
Reporters became interested in this communal experiment, and there are many retrospective articles available on the Chosen Family. For those readers interested in learning more, I’ve made a separate page with several articles on Don McCoy and the commune at Olompali:
Friends with McCoy, the Dead visited the Olompali commune through 1968, sometimes playing impromptu shows or jam sessions there on the weekends, along with other San Francisco musicians. McNally writes, “They still had a connection to Olompali, which had been taken over the previous December by their Ashbury Street neighbor, Don McCoy, who had inherited money and set up a commune at Olompali that taught children in the manner of the British experimental school Summerhill. Nicknamed by the students the Not School, it served eleven kids and included twenty-five people. Spiritual but not formally religious, it was a good place that summer, with the Dead visiting at times to play music by the pool. Mickey boarded a horse there…so it felt like an extension of the band’s scene.” (7)
One park ranger recalled, “This was a big weekend gathering place for the San Francisco rock icons. They had a lot of jam sessions here. They could play their music loud. They didn't have neighbors to disturb.”
Don McCoy said, “The Dead played because they loved the sound. They'd get into these long, long riffs. They'd improvise. It would echo throughout the hills. You could go up in the hills anywhere and hear the music. It sounded like it was coming from above.”
Per the Olompali Movie facebook site, “Also joining in on these sessions would be members of the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Charlatans, among others. It was a magical setting, with grassy lawns to dance on and a beautiful pool to cool off in, surrounded by the open country and rolling hills.”
Per the Olompali Movie facebook site, “Also joining in on these sessions would be members of the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Charlatans, among others. It was a magical setting, with grassy lawns to dance on and a beautiful pool to cool off in, surrounded by the open country and rolling hills.”
There are photos of the Dead stage setup at Olompali sometime in '68, and Garcia jamming with Jack Casady there, during a pool party held by the commune:
Mickey Hart formed a particular bond with several of the commune members. McNally writes that when Hart moved out of San Francisco to Marin County, “he moved first to a home on Ridge Road in Novato. He owned horses, stabling them at Olompali, but it was not terribly convenient, and he got a friend, Rhonda Jensen, to seek a better place to rent.” (8) She found a ranch nearby off Novato Boulevard that Hart took an instant liking to, and it would become a central gathering place for the Dead family over the next few years, various friends staying or living there. (8-1/2)
Among the first to live there were “Mickey’s informally adopted ‘daughters,’ the Jensen girls, Rhonda, Sherry, and Vickie. The Jensens had been living at Olompali, part of Don McCoy’s child-based commune. Their mother was Opa Willy, a pot smuggler, and when she failed to return from a business trip to Mexico, Mickey became a substitute parent.” (9)
The Jensen girls from Olompali also danced onstage at some Dead shows in this period. Ken Babbs says, "I remember the Olompali Angels...all these beautiful girls living up [in Olompali] and they all wore these white diaphanous outfits. The Grateful Dead would be playing and here they'd come wafting in; it was quite a sight."
For instance, at the March 15, 1969 Black & White Ball, they came dressed as angels, and a reviewer remarked on them: “the "Angels of the Dead" - the five little daughters of the group - swaying in the background, wearing white robes, looking like swinging seraphim. Will they be stone deaf, the Grateful Deaf, by the time they're 15? ‘No, because we never never stand in front of Jerry's speaker.’”
For instance, at the March 15, 1969 Black & White Ball, they came dressed as angels, and a reviewer remarked on them: “the "Angels of the Dead" - the five little daughters of the group - swaying in the background, wearing white robes, looking like swinging seraphim. Will they be stone deaf, the Grateful Deaf, by the time they're 15? ‘No, because we never never stand in front of Jerry's speaker.’”
Rhonda is in the back of the Aoxomoxoa photo, with Mickey's horse; her sister Sheri is also there. Sheri would later marry a Hell’s Angel, one of Mickey’s friends; their sister Vicki remained friends with the Dead, and would go scuba-diving with Garcia in Hawaii in '87. (Steve Parish would write that Vicki was "a dear friend...a lifelong Grateful Dead family member [and] an avid diver.") Rhonda was close to Mickey Hart for years, and was with Mickey in his car crash in June ’77; she was able to crawl out of the car to get help. Rhonda also worked with Courtenay Pollock on his tie-dyes in later years, and still runs his website.
When the Aoxomoxoa photo was taken in January ’69, the Olompali commune was entering a crisis. There were a couple drug busts at the commune in January; and on February 2, the main house burned down, leaving many of the residents homeless. The Jensen girls went to live with Mickey Hart.
Don McCoy made an impromptu appearance (in the nude) at the Dead’s “Celestial Synapse” show on February 19 – Bill Graham had to restrain the Fillmore security crew from pulling him off stage, as he remarked, “What are you doing with all those clothes on, baby? I thought we were going to be naked up here! Now wait, this looks like the long arm of the law…excuse me, sir, but I’m just doing my thing.”
The album picture was taken shortly before the mansion burned down, but the Dead lent some support to the Chosen Family afterwards. On March 17, a benefit was held at Winterland for the commune. A Berkeley Barb notice read, in part: “A "Superjam" dance and concert will be thrown at Winterland this Monday, St. Patrick's Nite, to benefit the Chosen Family that was busted and burned out at Rancho Olompali in Novato. Featured will be musicians from the leading Bay Area rock groups, according to Bob McKendrick from Olompali, the Airplane, the Dead, and Sons of Champlin are expected to show up; also jamming will be the Garden of Delights. […] Glen McKay’s Headlights will provide enlightenment for all. The Superjam is for a good cause...something like 18 to 20 people from Olompali haven't the bread to pay their attorney's fees, and they are all homeless, as Burdell Mansion on Olompali burned down after the bust.”
Bob McKendrick was a sometime concert promoter and hippie event organizer, who probably helped arrange this benefit - he had produced the "Dance of Death" Costume Ball at California Hall back on Halloween '66, which the Dead had played instead of the Acid Test Graduation. Lately he had been trying to run the Olompali commune while Don McCoy was on a trip to India, though the residents were unhappy with his leadership (many blaming him for the commune’s downward turn). His wife Sheila had been a co-founder of the commune; she had also gone off to India, and would later divorce Bob and marry Don.
Noelle Barton, a teenager at Olompali (and in the Aoxomoxoa photo), worked for the Garden of Delights, a light-show outfit sponsored by McCoy that worked at various venues in '68-69 - the Carousel, the Fillmore West, the Avalon, the Family Dog – in fact, they’d done the lights for the Dead’s recent shows at the Avalon. They had been doing a light show at a Longshoreman’s Hall concert the night the mansion burned down.
Unfortunately no details are known about the “Superjam” as no tape has come out.
McCoy apparently had a nervous breakdown around this time and went to the hospital for some time. The commune remnants staggered on for a few months longer, but after two kids drowned in the pool in June ’69, everyone was evicted and the commune shut down. The former residents went on to new lives, though many of them kept in touch with other Family members. McCoy recovered and went back to the ‘straight life,’ putting his Olompali episode behind him. The land was eventually bought by the state, and turned into a state park. The commune itself became part of the distant sixties past, a failed utopian hippie experiment living on in stories and memories, its most visible legacy the back cover of a Grateful Dead album.
An Olompali lily field…
Thanks to Dr. Jeff, Maura McCoy, Rosie McGee, Ken Babbs, and Jerilyn Brandelius for their help.
NOTES
0. Derrick Bang, Vince Guaraldi at the Piano, p.248
1. Garcia, Signpost to New Space, p.32-33
2. Lesh, Searching for the Sound, p.88-90
3. Jackson, Garcia, p.104 (See also Scully p.53-59 and McNally p.144-147 for more Olompali anecdotes.)
4. McNally, Long Strange Trip, p.193, 282
6. Peter Lavezzoli, The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, p.66
7. McNally p.262
8. McNally p.307
8-1/2. See also Rosie McGee's book, which says that Mickey got the ranch in early spring '69.
8-1/2. See also Rosie McGee's book, which says that Mickey got the ranch in early spring '69.
9. McNally p.308 (Some of McNally’s details are taken from band anecdotes, so they may not be correct.)
* * *
ADDENDUM
Dr. Beechwood has tried to find the exact location in Olompali where the cover photo was taken:
A couple possible areas are shown...
