Rock Stories #9: Joni Mitchell & John Allen Cassady

Folk family gather in Kerouac country

Son of Carolyn and Neal, John Allen Cassady has garnered a cache of musical adventures over many decades. His Big Sur experience in 1969 includes a chance encounter with Arlo Guthrie and the first opportunity to hear Joni Mitchell live…

I was surfing the web this morning, and Joni Mitchell's site popped up (I think she wants to marry me, poor girl). It reminded me of a stellar event in my life, and the first time that I got to see Joni perform live and in person.

It was at the Big Sur Folk Festival, September 14th, 1969, at the Esalen Institute (Kerouac wrote about bathing in their sulfur hot tubs while writing his Big Sur novel).

My old pal Jim and I hitchhiked down there with only our sleeping bags and a gallon of red wine (fully equipped for any outing!). We set up camp at the top of Palo Colorado Canyon, where all the ex-Haight Street hippies lived in little cabins on stilts that looked as though they would fall into the creek at any moment!

Pictured above: Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash at the Big Sur event, 1969

The next day, we went to the concert site, but we didn't have tickets (of course). We stood on Highway 1 at the top of a steep driveway leading down to the event, hoping to at least hear the music.

Suddenly a guy on a Harley pulled up behind us. It was Arlo Guthrie! He had a girl behind him on the seat, and a guitar case strapped to the ‘sissy bar’ with bungee cords. I said something clever, like, ‘Wow, Arlo! I dig your work, man! "Alice's Restaurant", "I Don't Want A Pickle", and so on,’ I said. ‘Did you drive that thing all the way up here from LA?’ He said, ‘Highway 1, all the way.’ I said, ‘Wow. you must be sore!’ (Another clever remark, darn it).

He asked, ‘What are you guys doing up here?’ ‘We don't have tickets.’ I replied. He said, ‘Follow me.’ So he went real slow for us to follow, using the front-wheel brake. The security guys looked pissed, but Jim and I just smiled at them, as if to say, ‘You lose, assholes!’

The venue consisted of a stage, a swimming pool (?), and bleachers on the other side of the pool. Besides Arlo, the artists included Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Joan Baez, Mimi Fariña, Judy Collins, Cass Elliot, Judy Collins and a host of others, whose names I forget at the moment. (What's new? Ha ha). ‘An amatuer band! I want my money back!’ (Oh yeah, it was a free concert).

One sort of a dramatic moment in the proceedings, there was a heckler in the crowd. I have no idea now what he was shouting about, but Stills lost it (personally, I think that Stephen was WAY too high on something!). He put his guitar down, and walked around the  pool to call the guy out! I swear, they got into a fist fight by the diving board! It was hilarious. (Where's my camera when I need it!). Some guards pulled them apart, but I was thinking, ‘This is great stuff! What's next?’

On the website, there's a photo of Joni and Mama Cass giggling backstage (I think that they were smoking something). And a great photo of Joan Baez playing a Martin D-28 acoustic guitar (I know this stuff), with Joni just staring at the chords that Joan was playing on the neck of the guitar, enraptured. I thought that was cool, because Joni uses her own bizarre guitar tunings, EEEEBE, for example. What the? So she can play open string chords that way. Whatever works for Joni is alright with me!

Onstage, Joni looked great onstage, wearing a mini-skirt (it was 1968), and her guitar was almost bigger than she was!

Here’s her setlist from that day…

‘That Song About The Midway’

‘For Free’

‘The Gallery’

‘The Fiddle And The Drum’

‘Both Sides Now’

‘Cactus Tree’ 

The highlight of the show though was the encore. Now I forget what song that they sang (of course), but I think it was a ‘We Are The World’* kind of theme. It was a capella, except for Stephen Stills playing a Hammond B-3 organ! (that guy can play anything. Pisses me off. He's almost as good a musician as I am! Ha ha).

Go to sleepSo Jim and I met some folks who gave us a ride all the way back up to Santa Cruz in their VW Microbus. Smoking reefer all the way, of course. ‘What's my name? I forget’, ha ha. It was truly a magical time...

A quick aside. She played a show in San Francisco once, and, when she sang ‘For Free’, instead of singing, ‘I slept last night in a good hotel’, she sang, ‘I slept last night in the Fairmont Hotel’, and giggled. The crowd roared, and it took her a minute to continue, the crowd was so loud. A local tribute always works!

‘They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot’ (Ooo, la la la la). ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, brilliant. You wouldn't hear that screen door slam behind ME, Joni (if only in my dreams).

‘Blue/Here is a shell for you/Inside you'll hear a sigh/A foggy lullaby...’ May she sing forever!

With all my love,

John Allen Cassady

* Editor’s note: Could that song have been, I wonder, ‘Find the Cost of Freedom’? Or would that have been too early?